Climber's Journal

Arrows and bow now made, Climber was ready to practice. As Bougin watched, he gathered up all the arrows, laid them out, and set his gaze at a wooden board a short distance away. "All I have to do is shoot these things into the board, and then I'll be all set," he explained to her. The odd bird nodded eagerly, and silently observed as he grabbed one arrow and strung it on the bow. He pulled the string back -

- and the arrow slowly fell off of the string. Oh. He strung it again, and kept a finger under the arrow so that it didn't fall. He pulled the string back once more, paused a moment to see his target across the garden, and fired.

The arrow flew through the grass and landed short of the target. Climber sighed, thankful at least that Bougin wasn't laughing at his failure, and tried again. The next three arrows were all short as well. The fourth, however, hit the edge of the target. Shocked at his success, he kept firing. After all fourteen of his arrows had been shot, only five had hit the target. Well. It was a start, at least.

"That wasn't bad," Bougin said, grinning as they followed Climber to help collect the arrows. "You planning on fighting someone with this stuff?"

"Yes," said Climber as he pulled an arrow out of the target. "I'm training." He kept it short, mind focused on his practice. The lizard trotted back to his starting spot, and when Bougin was out of the way, he started again.

This second round, he did slightly better. The arrows that hit got slightly closer to the center of the board, though the ones that were off were still very off. When done, he went forwards to collect them all once more.

After perhaps an hour of practice, with Bougin offering frustrating commentary, he heard another familiar voice behind him. "Interesting. This is not quite what I expected to find you doing."

Climber turned, careful to point his bow at the ground. He really didn't want to hurt anyone that wasn't attacking him, after all. Much as he expected, the snail Sodium was standing there, in all of their slimy glory. They nodded in welcome, slowly. Climber inwardly screamed. He was trying to spend his time wisely, not get bombarded by all of the folks he had met so far in this land! First the strange sweater bird, and now the snail was here, too. "I need to learn. This is the best place for me to try it out."

"Hmm." Sodium slithered forwards, careful to avoid the pile of arrows. "Well, your form isn't bad. I can't offer many tips, as I don't have the limbs to fire such a thing, but your focus is quite good."

"...Thank you," Climber said at last, and he returned to his stack of arrows, picked one up, and began the familiar motion of knocking it on the bow. As he prepared to fire, Sodium turned their head to Bougin.

"Would you like to help me test his ability to focus through distractions?" the snail asked. Bougin nodded eagerly, at once. The two began jabbering on loudly about all sorts of things, Bougin holding up most of the conversation. It was loud, and very annoying, and his shots were far more off when he had other sounds going on in the background.

Still, Climber supposed it was good practice to see how well he did while two fools were talking behind him. For another hour or so, he practiced his archery until he felt decent at it. Nowhere near perfect yet - he knew it would take a while to truly hone his craft - but it was a start.

He politely excused himself from the two strange folks, and after collecting his things, he walked back through the garden towards home. It was a start - and if he needed to use the bow, he felt that he would do a decent job of it now. Certainly, it would be better compared to earlier.