It took me a bit to figure out where the tumbling room was because… well… I wasn’t in any physical educati- I mean body refinement classes as they were called here. All those years of doing the run-until-you-pass-out test in elementary school had made me uncomfortable with P.E. courses. Admittedly, I likely need to get back into the habit of exercising regularly, but with my amazing metabolism and genetics, I never gain any real weight. I’m sitting at a comfortable “girl’s secret” pounds, and it makes me look just fine. Sure I’m not thin like fianna, but I’m not as large as Shuri either… Then again, Shuri is mostly muscle and not pudgy, so maybe she’s a bad example?

Anyway, I finally found the room with a few minutes to spare. As I opened the door, I saw the room was almost completely empty save Fianna and some martial arts equipment. It dawned on me that I didn’t have gym clothes, or any clothes that were not school related really. I wondered how Fianna was going to react to that.

Speaking of our wonderful Headless Horsewoman, I noticed her head was on a bench while her body was getting into her own gym clothes. It was slightly unnerving, seeing a head watching its own body, but at the same time it left a lot of potential ideas up in the air. Until I saw what I swore was a grey mist coming from her neck. There was no fire, so I had no idea how to handle what was essentially smoke coming from a severed neck.

“Fianna, you’re… um… smoking?” I called out, not certain how to broach the subject.

Fianna’s head was shifted by her free arm to look toward me as the other arm held up the pair of biker shorts she was using for her bottoms. I was kind of amazed at how well the body moved with the head removed, I was also admittedly checking out the curves that the sleeveless tennis polo she had on accentuated. For being slender, Fianna definitely had some wonderful material to work with.

“It’s a side effect of being headless. After a few minutes of the head and body being separated, the neck begins to send out smoke that allows me to… perceive my surroundings. Think of it like echolocation. If my head were to go missing, I’d be able to function still, but I’d be mute.” Fianna explained diligently as her body shifted the shorts to a more comfortable position.

“Now if you would stop looking at my ass for a few seconds, I’ve gotten a hold of a few options for your gym wear. Please select one, drop to your skivvies, and throw it on. Don’t worry about needing to change your bra, these clothes are like everything else here at Avalon.” Fianna huffed and tried to get me to do what she asked as her body turned around.

I moved over and saw three sets of bottoms and three tops. I looked at the bloomers, the biker shorts, and the standard gym shorts first; each was a shade of red with gold accents, and they all looked like they’d fit, so I ended up grabbing the biker shorts for that comfort factor. Then I addressed the tops before me; a sleeveless tennis polo, a muscle tank top, and a regular tee shirt. As much as I liked the tennis polo Fianna had on, I had to go with the muscle tank because it would make me feel more powerful.

I grabbed the clothes, ran over to the corner, caught my breath, and got changed. I felt a series of little pickles from both the tank top and the shorts after I got them into position, and then I could swear I felt the clothes themselves adjust to make me more comfortable. That must be what Fianna meant, magic clothes!

I turned around to show off for Fianna, but she was slightly busy putting on a set of training gloves for boxing. I guess we’re going to start off with the basics and work our way up? Jeez, talk about a boring way to start things.

“Hey, Fianna,” I called out as something struck me as odd, “today was crazy exciting… I’ve not seen any situations like today’s in the almost two months I’ve been here. So I have to ask, was I being hazed? Like, was this an elaborate ruse to get me to think before I lie again? Because if that’s the case, call it lesson learned. We can drop the charade now.”

Fianna’s body adjusted the head so it could see a majority of the room from where it sat on the bench. “No, Lauren, it was not a hazing. This kind of thing normally happens only about once or twice a quarter. It just happened to fall on your orientation day this time. Speaking of, how did you disarm the IED?”

“Oh, well… Dad never liked to be in the same job for more time than it took to ‘get good’ at it. So he’s been in a number of high intensity jobs like ordinance disposal, counter-intelligence, construction, and he did the medical thing a while back too. Currently though, he’s taken really well to his job as a federal agent, he stopped doing field work a few years back and took up a desk job for the agency. I think he’s mellowed out, but Emrys inherited that same kind of spirit I think.” I said as I walked over toward where Fianna’s body stood.

“That’s typical for mages trying to get by when they leave magic behind. It does explain your rather unique skill set.” Fianna replied softly, her body stretching out before assuming a training stance that would give me an unfettered hit at her gloves.

I stretched, cracked my knuckles, and took up a broad stance with my hands up. “Thinking back, I never would have thought dad was a mage. Like how would I have caught that? And… Actually, I’ve got a question that I’m not sure you can answer.”

“Put on a set of gloves please, I’d rather you not get hurt. But please, do ask.” Fianna’s head called.

“So, in a normal situation with demihumes, are you born with a glamour or do you develop it as you get older?” I asked as I walked over to pick up a set of training gauntlets.

“We are normally born without a glamour. We are gifted a temporary glamour at six weeks, and that holds us over until we reach our sixth or seventh year, when we learn how to project our own glamour. Why?” Fianna replied.

“Well, so… If I’m a demihume, and I never had to learn to glamour before coming here, what does that mean?” I asked, returning to the spot I was standing before, gloves now firmly in place.

“Well, there’s a dozen or so ideas about that, but I’ll list the ones I had assumed before you discovered your abilities. Throw a couple practice punches dearest, I want to gauge your strength. Two hard, two soft, then six at a comfortable level.” She called, starting to give me instructions as she went on.

“Ok, so what were the top three?” I called over as I focused my energy in the center of my fist and struck out as hard as I could at the gloved hand.

As my fist hit Fianna’s glove, I saw her body go off balance and she shouted an obscenity in Gaelic… or at least I assume it was Gaelic. “Where did you learn to throw a punch like that? I swear, my bones are still vibrating. Was that infused with magic? Crap that hurt.”

“Sorry! I was taught to focus all my energy into the center of my fist before I throw the punch, it’s supposed to stop the fight before it begins.” I said sheepishly.

Fianna’s body took off the gloves and shook her hand out. “Yeah, well, it wouldn’t surprise me if the fight stopped before it started with that kind of a first strike. Cac, that hurt. Ok, we’re switching to something that doesn’t involve punching.”

“You still haven’t answered my question!” I called out, taking off my gloves as well.

“Alright, I’ll talk, you follow what my body is doing for the next few minutes, and then we’ll spar and see where we need to go from there.” Fianna’s head called out and her body came back over to stand next to me.

“The first theory I had was your dad was keeping up the glamour while you were home so you’d grow up human. That got shot in the foot when he allowed you to come here, though. A glamour spell needs to be cast via touch.” Fianna said as her body started going through a series of steps that I thought I had seen before… yeah, the old people in the park near school did these movements every afternoon!

“What exactly are we doing? Isn’t this old person exercises?” I asked, mimicking her movements.

“It’s called taijiquan, it’s a form of martial exercise that anyone can do. Practiced in tandem with Qi Gong, this martial art will keep you healthy and ready for a majority of unexpected situations.” Fianna said, never breaking her stride.

This made me a little curious, “How many forms of martial arts do you know Fianna?”

She sighed, “I’ve learned three variants of taijiquan, judo, aikido, danbe, krav maga, bataireacht, kendo, German and French fencing, and shorinji kenpō. Please do pay attention, I’d rather you not slip and fall.”

“You’re making some of those up.” I challenged.

“No, I’m not. I have seven brothers, they all love those garbage kung fu flicks. Our parents like us to do things together, so… yeah. We all learned how to keep ourselves alive in a fight.”

We stepped up the speed as we repeated the exercises for another twenty minutes in silence.

“So what were the other guesses you had about my delayed glamour?” I asked as we reached the fourth repetition of exercises.

“Well, the second guess was an item like a bracelet or a ring or maybe a necklace. But I’ve only seen you wear jewellery once, so I discounted that. But the last one is… a little dark. Since we only ever had one Leanan Sidhe in the world at one time… or so we have heard… it might mean-“ She tried to get everything out.

“She’s not dead. My mom wouldn’t just keel over and die. Don’t ask how I know, but I do.” I cut her off.

“Of course, I apologize for even implying. Let’s go ahead and do a little sparring. We’ll do that for a little and then we can get cleaned off and I’ll treat you to crepes.”

Her body shifted to face me, and I shifted to face her body. We began to circle one another, and then I shot my fist forward at her-

And now I’m on the ground… How did… Ok…

I got myself back up as Fianna giggled. I never realized how odd that is, being that she is a severed head with no lungs, but it sounded slightly scary with the chiming echoes it had. So I focused on her body, mentally tracing lines that my fists would follow to strike. I feigned with my right and struck with my left and… Oh, hello mister ceiling, how are you doing today?

So I got up again. And I waited for Fianna to make the first move this time. Which ended about as well as you would expect. Once more on the mat, Fianna’s knee in my back, my arm somewhere behind my back, and my face flat in the cushion. I don’t even know what happened, but it did.

“We’ll go another two rounds and we’ll get cleaned up.” Fianna called out.

I responded as best I could with my face in the matting.

About five minutes later, I was sitting on the bench next to Fianna’s head and feeling like I’d been beaten with a meat tenderizer. I sipped the water bottle Fianna had prepared for me and wiped the sweat off with a towel.

“There’s a shower in the next room, I’d recommend you wash up. I’ll be sending my body in first, but I had better not sense you pulling anything on it or I will have to discipline you. And not in the kinky way I am assuming you’re imagining.” Fianna said.

I wasn’t certain what was worse; that she knew I had been considering some soapy, sudsy, fun time… or that when she said discipline I was slightly aroused. Oh god, am I a masochist?

Anyway, I went and got myself all cleaned up and changed into my uniform and stepped out again. Fianna was also in her uniform, and had just finished packing up, but hadn’t yet noticed my entrance. So I decided it was time for a little payback and snuck up on her. Just as she was standing up, I- was flat on my back on the floor again… is that the theme today?

“You really shouldn’t sneak up on people, it’s how you end up hurt.” Fianna called from above me.

Well, I guess that’s one way to look at it.