Training

Strength. It was becoming an increasingly large issue for Angela. She needed it to fight, to forge, even her fitness was lacking. She would have to start a training regime; only issue was that she had no idea how. The training she did in gym class at school could hardly be called strenuous and she hadn't really watched anything about it, other than maybe rocky.

For now she would create a basic workout routine and then step it up once she knows what to do. First comes the cardio: running, hurdles, burpees. Next she would move on to her arm strength: push-ups and arm curls; she could make some basic weights out of stone. Then moving on to core strength: stuff like sit-ups and planking.

The most difficult part of training like this is making sure not to injure the muscles, naturally they would have to be strained and stretched but if it goes to far she could be bed-bound for several weeks if not longer. With this in mind Angela decided to start out small before slowly working her way up.

With a solid plan in mind Angela could finally sleep happy, her worries about being weak suppressed for now. She quickly dropped off to sleep, her body clock once again showing incredible accuracy

Waking up, Angela goes outside and is greeted with a visitor, Lenara had come to visit her and was sitting outside, blushing. Neither are able to be the first one to speak so the two just stare at each other for a bit, standing in awkward silence.

Finally the quiet is broken by Lenara who stutters a little before managing to get a complete sentence out; completely reverse of what her personality was like before. "Y-you were always coming to see me so thought I should come see you for once... i-is that ok?"

Finally the gears in Angela's mind start turning again and the words start coming out in a jumble.

"Yes, yes of course. You are welcome to come round any time, its just that i was about to start training... i dont know if you will be bored."

Frankly, their conversation is painfully awkward; it is clear that neither of them know what to do. In an attempt to relieve the awkwardness Angela decides to start training. She begins to run laps around the area she has and about ten seconds into her run she is surprised to see that Lenara is trying to join in, though she hasn't completely gotten the hang of running, stumbling a little as she tries to keep up.

Angela slows her pace a little (she was getting a little breathless anyway) and pulls alongside Lenara. Now that they were both running the atmosphere from before had dissipated slightly and the two were a lot more relaxed, occasionally chatting a little when they have the breath to spare.

The stamina of both Angela and Lenara is rather atrocious and, after 1km of running, they are both collapsed of the floor, panting like dogs. After she has finally recovered Angela already feels like giving up but she slaps her knees and forces herself to continue. Skipping the burpees Angela goes straight to the push-ups, she had been taught how to do them properly in order to make them work as many of her muscles as possible but it also increases the difficulty.

With Angela's skinny arms she barely manages to complete 5 pushups before her arms wobble and she faceplants into the floor. Lenara's result is slightly better, she manages to do 7, though the last two were with great difficulty.

Finally they were onto the core strength, for this they would have to partner up in order to properly do it. Angela held Lenara's legs down as she did the sit-ups. Naturally she had partnered up with other girls before but it had never been this awkward, she had never been so conscious of the feeling of holding someone's legs; the warmth of another person.

After what felt like ages to angela, Lenara was done with her situps and they swapped places. Lenara even more scarlet than Angela. Normally Angela could do at least 50 situps with ease but now she could barely do 20, her form is completely off and she was wobbling as she did them.

Both exhausted despite the relatively light load they just did, the two lie there for a bit before Angela decides to openly speak her mind. "I dont like how awkward this is. I dont know what this feeling is and im not sure what to do but you are my valuable friend and i dont want it to be so strange when we are together."

Another pause takes over the conversation as Lenara's brow furrows while she triesto come up with a response. "I... I'm just as lost as you are, in fact, my race isn't even supposed to feel emotions like others do, all this is rather new to me and i am completely overwhelmed, all i know is that i have an overwhelming desire to be with you"

Angela dispairs at her lack of experience, she has no idea how to respond or even what she herself wants. For now she decides to just treat Lenara like she has been so far, like a close friend. From there she can take her time to figure out what she wanted.

Now that their thoughts were out in the open the two went through a sort of cathartic experience which proved to be very benifitial to their interactions, they had loosened up a lot and were able to part ways naturally, promising to meet up to work out once a day.

Other than increasing her strength, Angela had very few plans other than improving her mastery of runes, the recent incident had left her with many questions about what her purpose here was and she was certain that it had something to do with runes. Alas that would have to wait untill she was capable of the basic structures that, despite their usefullness in improving her capabilities, had no actual use.