"What were you thinking, Claude?" Ingrid lands as the crowd begins to thin, the curves of her frown complemented by the windswept strands of her hair. "Trying something like that on Caspar?" Her hands sit on her hips for a second before she reaches into her pouch for something, an old clay pot. "If you want to prove something, do it with a moving target. In the air. It'll be better for all of us - you can't put a vase in the infirmary, anyways."
There was a collective gasp from those gathered around in the training area. Those cheers that had steadily grown in volume as claude nocked his arrow, and slowly pulled the bowstring back, made an ever-growing smile grow across claude’s lips.
It was always so serious out here, the students trained like they had a thundercloud hanging above their heads every day. Why not lighten things up a bit? Break the mold, do something out of the ordinary.
Claude’s teeth flashed in his trademark can-be-doing-no-good smile. His eyes met Caspar’s, who was standing just about thirty or so feet away from him, and Caspar flashed a smile back that seemed to be even wider than Claude’s.
Caspar, the arrow-catcher. Eh, that doesn’t sound too great, they can work on a nickname for afterwards.
Claude narrowed his eyes, aimed at the wooden target just an inch or so beneath Caspar’s hand, and he let it go. There was a whistle in the wind as the arrow traveled through the air, then a resounding thud. a handful of seconds passed in complete silence, before blood began to blossom out of the back of Caspar’s hand. Caspar was helped and led away, Claude received the stink-eye from a number of students, and he very quickly began to backpedal away.
And I just thought of a better name. Caspar quick-hands.
That was before he heard the loud snort of a wyvren exhaling through their nostrils, and an irritated Ingrid approaching him.
“ It’s really not what it looks like , ” Claude said as he shouldered his bow and raised both his hands up before him. He tried to skirt around past Ingrid, but her wyvren seemed to be watching his every move.
“ It may be hard to believe but – ” Claude paused a breath, “ Well maybe not that hard to believe , but Caspar wanted to try and catch my arrow . I would’ve been a bad sport if I didn’t let him try . ”
Claude eyed the pot in her hands and he gave Ingrid a sheepish smile, “ we can break some pots another day . I feel like if I try and shoot anything else today Jeritza will attack me . ” Claude leapt over the wyvren’s tail, and began to jog off, “ oh and if you see any of the other instructors, don’t tell them i shot Caspar!”
