This had to be one of Arya's favourite weekends, if not her very favourite. She got to be herself, only different. And not really different, only older
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"What are you doing?" Wednesday asked her, standing very still and watching Arya - and she knew it was Arya, it wasn't hard to tell - move very deliberately over the sand.
Wednesday nodded solemnly, knowing exactly what she meant. She didn't really mind that much, except that it was even harder than usual to find something to wear.
Arya bit her lip for a moment and toyed with her ponytail, which had a rather different look than it usually did, not that Arya noticed. She'd never had the question put exactly like that.
"By being like water," she said, having thought it through. "Instead of hacking and hammering, you flow around the opponents weapons. Because you can't cut water. But water can take down a mountain. It's looking with your eyes, hearing with your eyes, feeling with your skin; being quick as a snake, fierce as a wolverine, swift as a deer. Calm as still water. That's how you water dance."
Arya considered her, then hooked her foot under a piece of driftwood and flipped it into the air, the blade of her sword moving almost too fast to see as she cut it into three pieces on the way up. Then she sheathed the sword and caught them all on the way down.
She may have been showing off a little. "C'mon, I've got some practice swords back at Summerfell, I can show you with them." She headed in that direction, started to juggle her chopped up pieces of driftwood.
It was exactly the sort of display that Wednesday was impressed by, even if she didn't show it. Sometimes this island was full of things for her to learn.
"No," Arya said. "But you can't cut yourself, either, which is why that's what you start learning with one. Plus they're heavier than normal swords, so that way when you actually pick up a real sword, it's even easier to use."
"There's a lot more blade to cut yourself on, with a sword. The balance is all different," Arya pointed out, mostly because she'd had to work her way up from wood and was a bit reluctant about having anyone behind her jump the queue. "Trust me, it's best. And if you've got familiarity with weapons, it might not take that long before you can handle live steel."
"Are Addamses famous warriors, back where you're from?" Arya asked, as they approached the treeline near Summerfell. She absently brushed a hand over Nymeria's fur as the wolf fell into step beside her.
"That's a good thing to be," Arya said, the slightest of shadows passing over her face. The Starks hadn't turned out to be very resilient at all, had they? Generations and generations, and then it only took a couple of years before they were almost all gone. "Did you have a big family?"
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"How do you water dance?"
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"By being like water," she said, having thought it through. "Instead of hacking and hammering, you flow around the opponents weapons. Because you can't cut water. But water can take down a mountain. It's looking with your eyes, hearing with your eyes, feeling with your skin; being quick as a snake, fierce as a wolverine, swift as a deer. Calm as still water. That's how you water dance."
She still missed Syrio Forel a lot, sometimes.
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"Show me," she said, even though she wasn't currently carrying a sword of her own.
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She may have been showing off a little. "C'mon, I've got some practice swords back at Summerfell, I can show you with them." She headed in that direction, started to juggle her chopped up pieces of driftwood.
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"Can you cut things with a practice sword?"
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"I'll see them again sooner or later," she said. "I just need to find a way out of the Bermuda Triangle."
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