748. Humane end, 2
(Temee)
My father was training me as best he could, up to excess. To fight and reinforcing my body mostly, but not only.
He also prepared me to travel, knowing full well this day would come.
Very young he familiarised me with maps, geography, orientation, the effects of altitude, topology and cartography through metrology. Everything he could, even if he himself didn’t know a thing about it, he was teaching me.
Regularly, he brought a notebook or book about these topics and others. Upon the available time or season, him or me were reading them.
In the cautious limits of our domain in the county of Kyameli, I often left into long hikes.
In a direction or another, following trails when I was a child, and through climbing and transversal paths when I was taller.
The regions to the east were quite distant and with low density of population. I therefore had quite a vast mountainous massif mostly desert, where I could travel lengthwise and crosswise without encountering anyone else.
We made various games through the years. When I was very little, I only had to follow the marked trails for hours onward, and pick up the objects he had scattered like treasures along the way.
Then, researches outside the marked paths, to find a spring hidden behind some rocks or some corner rich with mushrooms.
Then races.
Then trials, carrying a bag and sleeping outside.
He learnt at the same time as me how to camp in forests and then high altitude.
In Summer it’s not too much trouble. In winter however it’s challenging. And the further the number of days and nights spent outside increased, the more these trials became harsh.
I rapidly acclimated to sleeping on plain ground just covering myself with shrubs and branches. In Summer it was even pleasant at times.
Seeing the stars. The wind in the trees. The critters rummaging around. I developed a taste for that as I grew.
We had the chance to be living in a peaceful and calm area. No bandits. No wolves nor jackals. No monsters.
A young girl without weapon could live alone in these woods all Summer long without encountering any animal danger.
However I had some bad falls, contusions and grazes, sprains and possible bone fissures. With stinging plants and falls between rocks, I spent my childhood hurting myself.
But I liked a lot these exercises of hiking outside to those purely athletic and martial.
I learnt to enjoy and love my home country. Its valleys, streams, from forests to valleys, plateaus of gravels and steep rocky summits.
When I had only to trot between a few summits, a week alone, I was happy.
I grew up with this happiness of roaming our mountainous lands.
The days of training where all I had to do was hit a tree on the left and on the right, until my arms couldn’t be raised anymore, I didn’t like. But I endured.
Because he had asked or ordered me. Because I had promised to Glasgow.
And when taller, much taller, because I began to understand that nothing is innate.
Whether I was doing with all the intelligence that separates us from beasts, or realising that it would someday raise my chances of surviving.
It was impossible to quantify, but I ended up realising it. It took me a lot of time despite the obviousness of that statement: The stronger I would become, the more chances of survival I would have.
It’s simpler, once being an adult, to accept. It’s only an abstract idea for a child. But I was a good child. I was brave, courageous, tenacious; and loyal to my promises.
So even if I was in pain, I carried on...
I was always in pain...
Every day, from as far as I remember, I always felt some pain somewhere or elsewhere in my body, because of the life I led.
Walking alone and free in lush nature or desert, it pleased me.
Training martially, less, but I obeyed for these previous reasons.
When I was in age to understand more clearly the principles of my sexuality, I began to learn more in details what my father feared for me.
Rape.
Then pregnancy with everything it implied in our days, though that I had already learnt younger.
I learnt sexuality after reproduction. My father taught me as carefully as he could these realities and their implications. And in the end his visceral fear that I would one day be raped by a man or many.
There are days of school I hated to the point of regretting not having more energy to just train.
It was near the end only, that I understood why I was never strong enough to stop training to his eyes.
He wanted me to be able to fight off a man like him.
He would never feel reassured about my lonely future before that.
The human population was growing older. But the youngest and strongest would barely be older than me.
When my father was aging, the possible last generation was maturing.
Some of them would be good people, others bad. Even if I had no secrets to hide, he didn’t want to take that kind of chances.
More exactly, he wanted to give me the maximum chances onward, even if to achieve that I had to suffer my entire youth while.
Because he was seeing our era decaying, even if civilisation endured. He was fearing the worst, and passed on to me this anxiety.
I had to become and be the strongest.
So if one day the worst of encounters should happen, it would be for me to survive.
~
My father taught me many of his fears, of brutal defences against the worst of scenarios. But he also did his best teaching me what was beautiful too.
He too was feeling very uneasy, telling me about the sexuality of my mother. But he told me about their love and relationship to teach me to hope.
I was condemned to solitude, without love nor sexuality.
It was difficult to teach me to judge people from purely theoretical standpoint, but we tried. And games of theatres often made us laugh.
He didn’t want me to lose hope someday to know love, and a beautiful relationship with someone.
It remained an idea in a far corner of my mind and my sex.
But it remained so far away from my daily activities and worries...
I only had the winter nights to dream or daydream about it.
~
