Raising an eyebrow as she watched the priest adjust his weapon over his shoulder, Harris ran a hand through her blonde bangs and shook her head.  He was either dense or far more clever than she’d originally made him out to be.  She refused to believe he’d missed her meaning; she’d spelled it out pretty perfectly, if she did say so herself.  So the Blitzer decided it was the latter.  And if Ethan wasn’t going to entertain her admittedly underdeveloped attempt to embarrass the warrior and the mage, she’d have to find another way to settle her irritation.<br/><br/>It probably involved finding a cold ale and someone who promised to be more fun than the priest.<br/><br/>Muttering to herself the jungle might have been preferable to sharing a bed with the mage again, Harris began to follow after Ethan.  Where the priest was polite enough to move aside for the villagers who were carrying home their treasures from market, the Blitzer kept a more straight-forward path through the busy thoroughfare.  She wasn’t bothered in the least to watch the way women and men alike stepped around her.  After all, she was nearly an entire head taller than any of them and she knew she made for a rather intimidating sight, what with her eye patch and the pale scar beneath it.<br/><br/>Harris just hoped none of them might want to wish her a good day.  Or maybe she’d been gone long enough for all of them to forget her; Yevon knew she’d been too young when she’d run away from this backwater village.<br/><br/>When she noticed Ethan glance back at her, Harris raised an eyebrow and smirked at him.  Yeah, she’d caught him looking at her, and whether or not he understood all of the different ways she could perceive it, the Blitzer decided it wouldn’t hurt to have a little fun at his expense.<br/><br/>She was bored and frustrated.<br/><br/>While she was searching for the right thing to say to bother him, Ethan interrupted her thoughts with a barrage of questions.  Harris had half expected it since Besaid; she’d shared her life’s history with Chiron as the pair hurried to polish off a cask of the captain’s ale, but neither the priest nor the mage had bothered to stay awake long enough to listen in on any of that conversation.<br/><br/>“I can’t tell you everything, priest, not right away.  There would be no surprises left for the road,” she smirked, dodging all of his questions with a coy laugh.  Stepping around him, she led the way forward to turn right and cross a bridge over to the other side of the small river leading inland.  Pointing to a building three huts away, she narrowed her eyes as though challenging the priest to disagree with her, “Inn’s up there on the left.  There should even be enough beds no one has to share.”<br/><br/>Then she pointed to another building a few doors beyond the Inn.<br/><br/>“That’s the local watering hole, Summoner.  And it’s where I’ll be conducting my ‘business’ until its time to reconvene at the gates with Chiron and Amal.”<br/><br/>Without looking back at him, Harris made short work of hurrying to the establishment and disappearing inside.<br/><br/>---<br/><br/>Amal let Chiron take the blades from her and watched in silent awe as he spun them expertly around in his hands.  She tried to tell herself he’d been practicing as a warrior for at least as long as she’d spent studying black magic; it would take years Amal knew she didn’t have to learn to do something like he’d just managed.<br/><br/>Accepting the blades back as he offered them to her, she smiled shyly up at him and teased, “I think you already know something as dramatic as you just described would never suit me.  I liked these because they’re understated; they seem sturdy, and I think it’s likely they would have gone unnoticed forever in that O’aka fellow’s bag.”<br/><br/>She followed him to the beach.<br/><br/>“I like to think I’ve rescued them from a life of never being used to their full potential,” she laughed, watching with curiosity in her eyes as Chiron began to jump about on the sand.<br/><br/>Frankly, the mage would have been just as happy never to see sand again.  It was coarse and had managed to find a way into her tall leather boots, though she had no conceivable notion for how such a terrible misfortune might have befallen her.  She’d only walked a few hundred meters across the beach in Besaid to arrive at the ferry; the amount of sand which had ended up in her boots seemed out of balance compared to the act that had gotten it there.<br/><br/>Taking a deep breath, she dropped her daggers next to Atilla and bit her tongue to keep herself from asking if she was doing it right as she struggled to follow his lead.  She expected the warrior would correct her if she was doing poorly; Yevon knew she’d been the sort of teacher who had expected a lot from the warrior when she’d taught him his spells.  Their first three lessons together had been gifted entirely to seeing to it that Chiron's hands always found the proper configuration to cast; it had been another two lessons before Amal had even started teaching him to collect mana or fashion it into a spell.<br/><br/>If they spent their first lesson without so much as touching their weapons, it wouldn’t have seemed strange to the mage in the slightest.  She fully expected Chiron viewed his craft to be as much as an art as she considered black magic.  Amal did not interrupt him with questions and he only affirmed her expectation he’d correct her when she was wrong.  When he did correct her, which was necessary on more than one occasion, he’d done so gently.  He would move her arm to the right position, nudge the heel of her boot into position with his toe, or demand she make better use of her peripherals.<br/><br/>She supposed she must have done alright.  Her Moogle had only laughed in its silent but animated manner at her three times over the course of the lesson.  It had never laughed at Chiron, even when he’d over-exaggerate how the force of her weak strikes might make a potential assailant respond.<br/><br/>When the time eventually came to rest, the mage was exhausted.  She fell onto the sand with a soft sigh, closing her eyes as she laid back against the warm surface, which shifted slightly beneath her.  Amal expected to be allowed to rest, so when Chiron’s voice spoke of the ‘final dogma,’ her heart sank.  What, exactly, had she asked the warrior to teach her?  At least with her magic, she’d become practiced enough the feat of casting a spell wasn’t so exhausting to her as all of this… exercise.<br/><br/>She smiled when Chiron revealed it was only peace.  Peace she still had enough energy left to manage.  Any more striking and general movement really at all and she half expected Chiron would have to carry her back to the gates, she’d be so exhausted.<br/><br/>Groaning when the warrior suggested they hurry back to Ethan and Harris, Amal laughed at her own dramatics and rushed to stand up.  She hid the daggers in her boot precisely the way Chiron had shown her earlier, after they’d agreed she would need a few more lessons before either Ethan or Harris needed to be made aware of exactly what the pair of them was practicing.  ‘More lessons than a few,’ Amal thought to herself, already feeling her muscles starting to stiffen.<br/><br/>“I’m sure we’re probably already late,” she said, looking up at the warrior with bright eyes full of gratitude.  “But thank you, Chiron.  Really, for everything.”