strangetrip | [GP] training day

There was a trope that in prison there wasn't much to do except work out or read. As colorful as Madonna Inn might be, it was still a prison. And look, somebody had put together a library.

Put fifty some people, many of them military, adventurers, vigilantes, or superheroes of one stripe or another, in a prison with none of the urgent missions or near-death experiences they were used to, the fitness center was going to be a popular place. Maybe almost as popular as the bar.

... Probably not quite that popular.

There were free weights and weight machines, treadmills and ellipticals, yoga mats and exercise balls. A room set aside for classes, if someone decided to lead. A large square had been taped over an area of the floor off to one side as a make-shift sparring space. Sports equipment had been brought back from Bonesville for those who preferred more organized games. And those who had been stuck here longest remembered there hadn't always been a salmon ladder.

In other words, something for just about everybody. And you could usually find someone in there if you were looking for a spotter, workout buddy, sparring partner, friendly competition too.

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"I didn't," Kitty answered the first question because in a funny way, it was actually her point. "I wasn't conscious, either. They had to create a stasis field to put me in until they could figure out how to bring me back."

She'd been so confused, she remembered. How much time had past, what had happened, why was she like this? "It's pretty terrifying for some of us, for sure. For me, what helped was what I was saying before about physics and dance and fighting. The more I learned about how energy changes forms, the more I understood me."

Her expression grew pensive then and she asked, "What was it like that for you? Learning music and dance and fighting because at some level sound is movement?"

"Echo was the name of a play I did," Maya began, knowing it didn't seem like an answer to Kitty's question, but it was a beginning to one. "Then some kids saw me and Daredevil in the middle of a fight, so they, and later the newspapers, thought we were doing a playground performance of it. It was the papers that first called me Echo."

Unlike 'Indians', Echo was appropriate. "It fits, though. When I was little, my father used to tell me stories, making shadow puppets with his hands. They always started out as shadows, but as the stories developed they seemed real. I'm like that with the things I've learned. What I can do, I start out as an echo of the teacher, but as I make it my own, it becomes real.

"Music was maybe the first clue I had. The first time I watched someone play piano, I was fascinated. I went up and put my hand on the piano, and I could feel the vibrations. I couldn't see the movement of the wood, but I could watch his hands, and then I echoed them perfectly, and I could feel the tension and vibration as I played. It was like the whole world opened up then."

Kitty had no trouble imagining the frustration and alienation of Maya's world before she found ways to communicate. Even if she couldn't inhabit the emotional space, Maya's storytelling made it real and present for her.

For awhile, Kitty was quiet. Quiet to her own ears, in that she didn't speak or make deliberate sounds. But she reached out toward Maya, palm up, like a child making an offer of pattycakes, but the movement wasn't impulsive or earnest or playful. It came almost as the end of a piece of choreography, graceful and eloquent -- like touching the surface of a mirror.

She didn't know how Maya would respond, but at the same time, she felt the way this section of the dance ended, before merging to the next, and she wondered if Maya could too.

Maya and Kitty had talked before, as they were talking now, but they'd created shared language with their dance in the form of sparring. And it was that language that Kitty used now, reaching out. Like the shadow puppets. Like a mirror. And Maya, was that mirror, that echo, her hand coming up a reflection of Kitty's until their palms touched in a feather light brush of contact.

When Maya's palm touched hers, Kitty held the pose, held her breath.

One beat, two, three, almost a fourth--

Before the fourth beat finished, her hand passed through Maya's flexing down to curl her fingers gently around Maya's wrist.

Maya watched as Kitty's hand ghosted through hers, waited a beat once the fingers wrapped around her wrist, then turned her hand over, palm and fingers lightly cupped under Kitty's wrist.

Kitty let Maya's fingers pass just through the surface of her wrist, mingling their energies in a metaphorical and metaphysical Moebius loop. Her body and her expression relaxed into shared, restful understanding.

It had been a long time since she felt so comfortable in herself with someone.

[GP] training day

Re: Kitty & Maya

Re: Kitty & Maya

Re: Kitty & Maya

Re: Kitty & Maya

Re: Kitty & Maya

Re: Kitty & Maya

Re: Kitty & Maya