twiststheblade | Gym-time

Gym-time

The problem with working ut 'au natural', as it were, is the lack of resistance. Miho isn't much of a one for weights training, and her stretching routine uses nothing other than her own body, but every now and then it's nice to have something that will fight back. And, lacking an opponent, at least something that will resist. She assumes that the gardeners, and some of the other patrons, might have something to say if she started beating up the trees.

The gym, however, has punch bags. So, she's squared up against a heavy hanging bag, and a dull, fast

-thunk-

-thunk-

-thunk-

sounds out round the room. The bag quivers on its ropes, but it isn't going anywhere. She's fast, though, obscenely fast. And accurate. She has to remind herself that, unlike when she is sparring with the air, the bag cannot stand up to repeated hard blows on the excat same square inch of fabric.

It is possible to burst a punch bag. It's difficult, but it can be done. And she thinks that she might find herself rather unpopular if she covered the floor of the gym in stuffing. So she bounces lightly on the balls of her feet as she strikes, moving around the bag.

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Miho knows that she's there, of course, but she's mid-routine. She does flash a smile past the bag towards Goldy, but waits to finish her flurry of blows before saying anything.

The Fable smiles back, naturally enough, and heads over to the pec deck station. She knows better than to distract Miho when she's focused.

Well, if Goldy is going to occupy herslef, Miho might as well finish her set. Better to finish than to stop and start up again, complete with warm-up.

Besides, she's only got a few more reps to go through. So she does, before moving into cool-down stretches on a mat. A mat which is, conventiently, right next to the blonde.

Goldy sets her accoutrements under the apparatus and moves onto the same mat to limber up. Engaging in some simple stretches first, she breaks the silence.

"Hi."

Mio, upside-down, smiles at her.

"Hey."

She slowly moves upright, going into a deep sidebend. So, she's upside-down again when she speaks next.

"How are you?"

Goldy is rolling her head around slowly.

"I'm okay."

"You?"

Pleasantries almost seem necessary, given the fact that she hasn't seen very much of Miho since their last conversation, for one reason or another. Ten days at Milliways is a long time.

"I'm okay."

Then she doesn't say anything for a moment, being engaged in a full back bend, balanced in her stomach, head thrown back, ankles in her hands, feet almost on her shoulders.

Goldy's next position—a groin stretch—is far more sedate. Legs spread, she angles sideways and runs her hands down each calf in turn, holding at the point where the muscles start to burn.

"Good."

When one is as limber as Miho is, it takes some pretty extreme stretches to have any effect at all. Like, for example, vertical splits. Which are also aesthetically pleasing. Coincidentally. . .

. . .

"Been up to anything fun?"

"Mmm. I had another pleasant rendezvous with Eros."

She switches the position of her feet so they are both pointing in the direction of the bend, facilitating calf muscle stretching.

"That's about it."

Eros again, huh?

Miho makes a non-committal noise.

Moves back into a sitting side-split and leans forward so that her elbows are on the floor, resting her chin on lghtly balled fists.

Watching.

Goldy straightens after a few repetitions, and crosses her ankles. She aims the new bend at her toes, and reaches them with a little straining.

"How about you?"

Her demeanor and tone are a little on the cool side. She almost seems a bit cautionary.

"Hooked up with Mary Anne the other day." As is evidenced by the gash on her collarbone, still held together with a butterly suture. Any other cuts are hidden by clothes.

"And then again later - but she was from a few hundred years into the future. It was. . . odd."

"Oh. I missed that."

In actual fact, Goldy doesn't associate the cut with any liaison that might have occured with Mary Anne. She has her own theories, based on the origin of cuts that Miho has previously sustained while they have been together.

Perhaps Goldy has too much faith, but she believes Miho is too good to receive injuries without consent. And knife play is just not up her street—though she accepts that Miho enjoys such activity—so she doesn't tend to inquire about any new wounds when they show up.

"She was her current self when I was with her."

"It was. . . interesting."

Actually, in her own way, Miho is pretty faithful to Goldy. All of her current lovers are people they share between them. This seems to her to make a difference.

"She could probably have told you an interesting thing or two. I'm sure the two of you knew each other - I mean, will know each other - for hundreds of years."

Goldy finishes her warm-up by clasping her hands together and swinging her elbows round each flank.

"That's as may be. But I'm not interested in my future, as you well know."

Oh, she knows.

Suitably warm now, Goldy sets the weights on her machine of choice, and then seats herself at it. She just rests her hands on the grips initially, and then stoops to adjust the seat height a little.

"I am guessing from that look that your time with her hasn't helped with your immortality issues at all."

"I don't really have immortality issues, you know," she says, shifting so that she's sitting in lotus, facing the machine.

"I have mortality issues. And it's not even that I'll die and you won't. It's that one day I'll be sixty. And you'll still be young."

Goldy holds off from use of the apparatus for a few moments.

"So what? If I was mortal then I would probably be dead by that point."

"You can't have it both ways."

"I," she says, again, "will be old. And you will be young."

She just. . . doesn't get it?

"Yes. Okay. That is how it is going to be," Goldy agrees. "And you will still be you."

"Are you afraid that I will stop loving you?"

Admittedly, Goldy doesn't do much to stave off any impressions of shallowness that she may give over. But she still looks a little offended by the implication.

Miho sighs. It's worse than that, almost.

"No. I'm worried that you'll keep loving me. And that you'll feel sorry for me. And. . . Oh, I don't know. It's stupid."

"You are right," Goldy replies curtly.

She tenses herself and brings the pads together, then releases them slowly. The stack of metal clanks gently behind her.

"It is."

—whirrr—

"You know I'm... not the pitying type."

—clank—

Turns out that Miho couldn't have broken one of the punch bags. Because the vicious, spinning kick that she launches at it, from a sitting start, rips the top rope loose of it's ceiling stud, sending the bag thudding into the floor. The rope would have gone before the bag. As indeed it did.

"Pity."

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