Training session with Accolon

It’s the first sunny day in weeks, both outside and in your heart. Its frenzied beating has slowed down, and you find calm in more than fleeting moments. As you head down the hill, you dread your training less.

You wonder how long it’ll last.

In the weeks following your twelfth birthday you could barely be roused from bed, let alone wield a sword. And the ones you’d have comfort you were the ones who hurt you.

This time, when you see Accolon waiting for you on the training grounds, you don’t feel like turning around and running. Instead you take a steadying breath and hasten your step.

“Good morning,” Accolon greets with a radiant smile. “Ready? Today I thought you’d spar with me instead of a dummy, if that’s alright?”

“Yes,” you say, surprising both. “I’ll spar with you.”

It seems now easier to not let your thoughts wander, to focus on your stance, your strikes, your parries. Lately, you’ve been sloppy, mind too fogged, throat too chocked; the dummy would get in hit after hit, and you’d get bruise over bruise. Accolon, however, didn’t reproach you for your performance. He’s offered words of comfort and talked things out with you. At first you’d scurry off, but more and more you’d stay and listen, desperate to get to how things were before, but not seeing a clear path back to it.

There is a soothing familiarity to sparring with Accolon; you’ve done it for as long as you can remember, first playing, then training. You fall into a rhythm you know, the world reduced to this moment, to the dance of your feet, to the swing of your swords. By the time you’re done, as he pats your shoulder and congratulates you, you’re actually smiling.

You collapse on the bench tired, while Accolon produces a paper bag from his satchel: caramels, your favorites. It used to be a welcome surprise – except for lately when you couldn’t force them past the lump in your throat. Now you eagerly reach for the sweets. A sense of normalcy starts weaving around you, slow and delicate, framing a familiar image: the two of you, carefree and content, eating and chatting. As if nothing ever happened.

As if your life hasn’t been a lie.

The caramels come back up your throat, bitter with bile. You put down a half-eaten piece and say, “I’m not hungry anymore.”

Accolon shoots you a concerned look but you glance away, fumbling with a buckle.

“Mordred…”

“I just want things to be normal,” you say – plead. Your world has been thrown off its axis and you’ve been left careening. You need someone to put it right, but you fear that won’t be you, not when your own body doesn’t feel right, heart beating too fast, skin fitting too tight. Can’t he do it for you? He’s offered you so many gentle smiles and understanding words, yet nothing seems to work for long. You keep circling back to that night.

“I just want to feel normal –” your voice breaks “– I want –” and dissolves into tears.

You want to feel safe in the knowledge that he loves you the way you thought he did. You want to open your heart to him like before. You want to be rid of this sense of betrayal.

Accolon tentatively reaches out for you. When you don’t shrink back, he pulls you into a hug. You cling to him like a little child and cry till your tears dry up.

“It will be. Things will get better.”

You don’t argue; you want to believe it.