<div class="floatleft">(https://i.imgur.com/7nywiRN.jpg?1)</div>Waiting in the wings, 'Wyld Gold' lifts up a handaxe and buries a tip into a rafter beam.  Muttering softly to herself as she watches the performance, she simply says again and again, in a hushed whisper muted by the noise of the room's thunderous applause,<i>'I'm fucked, I'm fucked, I'm fucked.'</i><br/><br/>As Sharell leaves the stage, Mara rears back her head, taking a deep breath, and closes her chestnut-colored eyes.<i>'Nothing to lose...'</i>and throws back the blanket over her costume from her costumed shoulders.  She has been forcing herself to sweat more, keeping her muscles loose under the heat and moisture of the blanket, making the sheen of perspiration glow atop the glaze of natural oils she's been coating over her skin, layer upon layer, from forehead to toe, even beneath the now-damp leather brassiere and thong.  First, she covers herself with the bearskin she could only afford because it was punctured with so many spearpoints it couldn't keep out a draft... and then, in the shadows of the stage wings, she kneels and places her body against "the target"-- a tree trunk roughly hewn to a sizeable timber pole-- and lifts the eight-foot long caber upon her shoulder from its base.<br/><br/>Taking the stage one strut at a time, she feels the eyes settle upon her and lets their residual enthusiasm over Sharell's masterful performance bolster her.  She doesn't flinch  or readjust her grip upon the timber, and the surge of adrenaline at so many expectant eyes-- drinking in the illusion of her, taller than all the human women most any of them had seen, with hair like spun gold and copper skin gleaming like polished bronze-- causes her to strut more slowly, to lift the weight with ease, to preserve its balance effortlessly while she carries herself like a conqueror from stage left to right.<br/><br/>At once, she casts her gaze upon the audience with a daring stare, one mingled with daring contempt as if for an inferior and provocative, inviting lust for a spurning lover.  Her chestnut eyes catch a glint of the stagelight-- perhaps luck, perhaps practice-- as she reaches center-stage, giving off the gleam of a predatory wolf just as her bare foot finds the wooden stage for a thunderous step.  She seems larger than life in that moment, each bare thigh sliding from under the black fur of a great beast's cloak hinting at something preciously feminine beneath the hide of a monster, each glint of calf or turn of her bicep revealing some strange power and grace.<br/><br/>She places the target upon the stage next-- she's been instructed where, of course, the boards are more sturdy and the supports won't be damaged-- and deftly balances it upon its flat end where the starts of roots create a widened base.  This was not the mightiest of trees, but it was a tree, growing strong in the forest.  This is not some trick of the stage.  Yet she will prove this, as with a whisper of steel she faces the audience, parts her hands before her, and reveals-- with a fanning of her arms and a subtle shift of her grip to her belt-- the gleam of two polished hand-axes, their bears and grips balanced for throwing, their faces gleaming like silver.  Holding them aloft before her, she is like some ancient Druid war-nymph, her blades spread like wings, and the bear's pelt falls from her shoulders to reveal a glistening, bronze-skinned physique of lean muscle and generous feminine proportion.  And with a simple twist of her body, focusing the momentum from her feet to a twist of her hips, then cleanly snapping her arms to follow, she brings the blades together with a resonant THUD-- chopping a clean notch from the middle of the tree's face, so neat it reveals rings four layers deep.<br/><br/>With a smile tightening one corner of her mouth, she crouches over the hand-sized chunk she's freed, and uses the tip of a handaxe to flick it toward a wealthy-looking patron in the front row for examination.  She doesn't bother with the obvious jests, only adds a sly wink before stretching herself aloft and tossing one axe shoulder-high in the air and catching its haft effortlessly.  Turning to walk slowly away, she swaggers her way to the far end of the stage, letting the audience have a long look at just how coconut oil emphasizes the curve of her muscle and flesh.  Crossing her feet with each step, the walk itself takes an astonishingly long time.  Mara, however, is focused entirely on the target-- remembering it, visualizing the subtle fall of the axe into its target, remembering the slip of the handle along the surface of the leather on her fingers.<br/><br/>She tries not to think of laughter.  She simply turns, rolls forward, and lets the haft slip from her fingers and the blade carry it in its overhead arc, the head of the axe tumbling slow, then whipping end-over-end quick at the base then again, slow, over the top-- she doesn't even think it through before readying the second axe, rising from the floor, and throwing again.<br/><br/>The first axe embeds itself into the wooden pole, and a moment later the next.  And through the act of throwing, she dips into a two-step ballet, sweeping her long and taut form like a dancer from floor to rise as her muscle memory takes over.  And for that moment, it's beautiful.<br/><br/>Stepping back, she throws up her chest and cries out in victory, then takes a running leap at the pole and lands atop it, clinging to it like a bear with her naked thighs before seizing her axes from the bark and leaping off, landing soundlessly.  She begins to hack mercilessly at the wood, spinning, arcing the blades overhead, underhanded, and overhand strikes finding purchase again and again, until she's hacked it mid-ships to a mauled, whittled shaft.  Heaving for breath, and with fresh sweat glistening on her body, she draws back and, in a repeat of her earlier demonstration, matches both hand-axes in a v-shaped notch in the midst of her handiwork.<br/><br/>She steps back.  Her breath is the only sound.  Then there is a creaking, and she steps forth and catches the now-split log as it falls, like a fainting damsel, onto her shoulder.<br/><br/>Exiting the stage, she carries the broken timber on her shoulder with as much poise as she bore entering, though her breasts now rise and fall with strained breath.<br/><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Dice Rolls.  My ID is 768</div><div class="spoiler_body">Athletics At 2019-02-05 22:12:18, icsyhyat (uid: 768) rolls: 1d20a5 Result: 23 (https://elliquiy.com/forums/dicebot.php?r=130422)<br/>PerformanceAt 2019-02-05 22:12:03, icsyhyat (uid: 768) rolls: 1d20a4 Result: 20 (https://elliquiy.com/forums/dicebot.php?r=130421)</div></div>