Wasn't Worth Mentioning

As Vaylah was busy paying attention to the arrow on the target, Ava took a few steps forward and picked up the arrow that had landed nearby as a result of the string slipping. Picking up the arrow, she once again notched it in a somewhat fluid motion before aiming and shooting again. However, due to her injury, she didn't time the release of the arrow quite right, and it flew forward with about half the force of all the other arrows she had fired.

Biting her lip, Ava withered the soft yelp that wanted to come out at the feeling of the string slapping into her finger.

To the side, Vaylah finally recovered from Ava's successful shot and saw the weak arrow fly out and once again couldn't help but be confused by the girl in front of her. She was undoubtedly talented, but how come she kept making mistakes? Glancing at Ava's form in hopes of figuring out the problem, Vaylah let out a slight gasp as she saw the blood running out from under Ava's protective gear.

Running to the side and grabbing a handkerchief, Vaylah ran back and quickly wrapped Ava's hand, dabbing away the blood with little success. Instead, she simply pushed the blood around and left Ava's hand a more startling red. Confused, Vaylah couldn't help but ask, "What the hell happened? Even if the bow snapped at your hand with the full weight of the string, it shouldn't be enough to cause you an injury."

Gritting her teeth, Ava didn't say anything. Unable to get a response, Vaylah didn't know what to do. What experience did she have dealing with unreasonable young girls? She was typically on the other side of the equation.

Thinking for a moment, Vaylah grabbed Ava's other hand and placed it on the handkerchief, "Keep applying pressure. I'll be back in a moment." Before running towards the supplies building that was a hundred or so meters away.

Holding the handkerchief, Ava didn't bother to apply pressure. She was clear that it was just a small wound that was inconveniently placed. Although the blood seemed like a lot, painting her whole hand red, it was mainly because her hand had been in motion and had smeared the blood all around. As long as she took off the protective glove and wiped it off with water, she would be as good as new.

Instead, she focused on what she had done wrong in the last few shots. The problem was that her hand had cramped, in part due to her injury and in part because she had been taking it slow with the bow. The bow was indeed a small version that didn't have much pressure, but the problem was that Ava wasn't shooting it normally, but instead was taking her time with each shot, which meant that she held the bow in a full position much longer than she normally would have for firing ten arrows.

Unfamiliar with holding a bow and already having small cracks in her skin, the pressure had helped rip them open, as well as giving her a fairly nasty cramp.

Of course, Vaylah couldn't really be planning for this oversight. Ava had her hands covered in finger gloves that were fairly thickly padded, which hid the fact that she was injured, and Ava, despite looking rather tender, hadn't let out a peep about the pain she had been feeling.

Picking up the bow again, Ava pulled the string back again and felt the strain on her fingers before relaxing the bow and thinking for a moment. Shifting the bow into her injured hand, Ava tried pulling it back again and found that while it was exhausting and still rather grating on her fingers, she could once again do it fairly easily, as although her left hand had also experienced the same strain and injury, it had been under much less tension the last few hours as she had simply been gripping the wood, and the majority of the strain was on her arm.

Pulling back on the bowstring a couple of times, Ava confirmed that this could work. It was just as well, really, she had been training with using the sword with Kassidy with both hands and of course, she had done the same when practicing throwing knives. Seeing how much Vaylah had emphasized her muscles earlier, Ava figured that practicing using a bow would also result in some rather serious muscle development. It was for the best if she developed the muscles on both sides of her body fairly evenly, helping her keep her dexterity.

As Ava was thinking, Vaylah ran back with a small bucket of water and a long strip of cloth. Seeing Ava still holding the bow and the blood trickling down the wood, Vaylah couldn't help but want to smack the girl in exasperation. What the hell was she thinking? Not only did she not apply pressure, she had even used her wounded hand to hold onto a bow.

Coming back, Vaylah gave Ava a nasty look before deciding to forget about it. Grabbing the bow, she removed it from Ava's hands before kneeling on the floor with the bucket beside her. She commanded, "Hand!"

Expressionlessly, Ava handed over her injured hand, which Vaylah carefully wiped off with the wet cloth before hesitating for a moment and looking at Ava, "I'm taking off the gloves."

Nodding in response, Ava watched as Vaylah slowly tugged the protective gloves off her right hand before wiping down her hand with the rag and cleaning the injury. After panicking for a while, Vaylah finally realized that the injury didn't look like a single long mark from the bowstring recoiling into Ava's hand but rather was a series of cuts in between her fingers. Confused, Vaylah looked at Ava for a moment before roughly realizing what was going on.

Annoyed then frustrated, Vaylah couldn't help but ask, "If you were hurting, why didn't you tell me? We could have taken a break for a while, and you didn't need to shoot all the arrows at once. Am I that scary or hard to talk to?"

Surprised, Ava looked at Vaylah before shaking her head. Looking at her hand, she examined the enlarged cuts before saying, "It wasn't worth mentioning."