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A few other principal characters will feature with him - students, associates and assorted bipedal plot devices", "count": "4", "submission_left_submission_id": "1155154", "submission_left_file_name": "1604936_daveb63_slowfist-prologue.doc", "submission_right_submission_id": "1179590", "submission_right_file_name": "1641261_daveb63_slowfist-toofast.doc" } ], "description": "Eon makes more progress with Brianne than with Sifu Slo Li", "description_bbcode_parsed": "Eon makes more progress with Brianne than with Sifu Slo Li", "writing": "[center][b]Slow Fist - A Rocky Beginning[/b][/center]\n\n“Welcome to my humble school, Mr Volker. The males changing rooms are to your right. Please change into light clothing without shoes and join me on the floor.”\n\n“Yes, Sir.”\n\nAs the young cheetah disappeared into the changing rooms, Slo Li watched him, the sloth’s face showing no emotion whatsoever. As the younger man got changed the older one slowly sank into a comfortable posture in the center of the mat and let his mind wander. \n\nAll too soon the young cheetah was emerging onto the floor. Slo unfurled the claws of one paw, indicating a space on the mat.\n\n“Sit. Be still. Relax.”\n\n“Yes, Sir.”\n\nIt was too bad really. The young man’s muscles were tense, he couldn’t even keep his tail from twitching. He wasn’t still, far from it.\n\n“Master Li….”\n\n“I asked you to be still, young man.”\n\n“I’m sorry, Master Li. I thought this was an interview?”\n\n“How is it not? I am watching you. I have asked you to be still for me and you are not succeeding well at that test.”\n\n“Wait.. it’s a….”\n\n“I have been assessing you since you entered the school’s front door, Mr. Volker. I will continue to do so until you leave it. Every moment one of my students spends within these walls is a test. If you aspire to join their number, so it is for you too.”\n\nEon swallowed the reply that rose to the tip of his tongue and concentrated on sitting still. It was hard, his mind was busy with a million thoughts. He felt his tail twitch as unbidden, an image of Brianne, the barista at the coffee shop, rose in his mind. The more he tried to banish it, the more his mind rebelled. Oh, God.. now he was wondering what she’d look like naked, and his tail was twitching even worse. Just to put the cherry on the top of it all he had an itch at the base of his left ear, It was going to twitch and flick any moment… Damn it, damn cat ears. Into the chaos his mind was creating for him came the slow voice of the sloth that was testing him.\n\n“You’re a long way from home, Mr. Volker. Studying here?”\n\n“Yes, Sir. Architecture and Engineering. I guess the Johannesburg accent was a bit of a giveaway.”\n\n“Among other things. Why do you wish to study Kung Fu?”\n\n“For the mental discipline, Sir. For the control.”\n\n“Mr. Volker. The patience and the stillness are not in you to take the Way of the Slow Fist. Your path would be a lot easier if you were to simply leave now.”\n\n“Are you ordering me to leave, Sir?”\n\n“No, that would be rude and you are a guest in my house. However, I am refusing your application to this school.”\n\n“Is there anything I can say or do to change your mind, Sir?”\n\n“All things are possible, Mr Volker. It is just that some are extremely unlikely.”\n\n----------------------------------\n\nThe door to the coffee-shop slammed open. Brianne took a step back, barely avoiding it hitting her in the face. She opened her mouth to yell at the person standing in the doorway but stopped. It was the cute cheetah boy from earlier in the day, dressed in sweats and with a horrible look on his face.\n\n“Sorry, Brianne. I need a quad ‘spro really bad right now.”\n\n“Eon, I’m sorry. I’m closing up. I already cleaned down the machines. I was about to lock the door. What’s up?”\n\n“That fucking sloth!”\n\n“Master Li? I mean, he never comes in here but his students absolutely love him. I hear them talking about him all the time. What did he do?”\n\n“Threw me out. Didn’t let me join his school.”\n\n“Eon, don’t get me wrong here but I think you need a beer more than you need espresso. There’s a pretty good bar not far from here, they have all the local microbrews. I wouldn’t mind a cheetah buying me a drink… “\n\n“You know what, Brianne? That sounds like the most wonderful idea I’ve heard all day. My car is right here. I’ll drive.”\n\nExcept it wasn’t.\n\nWhat was there was a meter flashing a big red “Expired” notice and an empty space.\n\n“Fuck. They towed it.”\n\nEon spun around and launched a furious kick at a discarded soda can on the sidewalk, sending it clattering down a nearby alley.\n\n“Fuck! Shit! Damn!”\n\nHe broke off as Brianne grabbed his flailing arm.\n\n“We can walk, it’s not far and I’m guessing that you really need that beer about now, right?”\n\n“Yeah.”\n\n“Deal with this shit tomorrow. Tonight, relax and let it go.”\n\n“Relax. Yeah, right. That’s what that bastard sloth wanted me to do too.”\n\n“Right now, I think that maybe he had a point.”\n\nAs the young pair walked off down the street, Slo Li stood at the window of the luxurious loft above the school in which he lived when he was not traveling for his film career. Idly he ran his polished claws through his long mustache watching the pair depart.\n\n“You are indeed an interesting young man, Eon Volker. I wonder if I will see you again?”\n\n------------------------------------\n\n“Sifu, there is a young man sitting on the steps.”\n\n“I know. He has been there since this morning. What is he doing now?”\n\n“He is reading your book, Sifu.”\n\n“Then he must be extremely bored. Please spread the word amongst the other students to ignore his presence, which is something I am attending to myself.”\n\n“Yes, Sifu.”\n\nIt had been something Brianne had said, the previous night when they were both happily buzzed but far from drunk. Riding the bus home, they’d discovered that they lived in apartment complexes only a couple of blocks apart. Since Eon’s was closest to the bus stop it had been he who had invited Brianne in for a coffee. It had been just a coffee, neither of the pair being the type to do much on a first date and neither of them being exactly sure whether or not it even was a date. Not that Eon would have minded if she’d made any kind of move, he thought Brianne was pretty cute, smart and fun to hang out with. He was just too much of a gentleman to start anything himself at this early stage. For her part, Brianne was thinking along almost similar lines, half happy that Eon didn’t try anything and half wishing he had. She liked the guy, she thought that he was cute in a slightly scruffy way. When he’d walked her home, half way there she’d stopped and just looked at him. “Maybe you just need to show him that you CAN be patient and still?”\n\nRight out of the blue like that.\n\nEon had spent an almost sleepless night thinking about that. So, right after getting his car out of the impound lot as soon as they opened in the morning, there he was sitting on Slo Li’s doorstep. It was hot and it didn’t make it any easier that a girl he really hoped might become his girlfriend was working half a block away, but still he sat there, determined to demonstrate he’d wait as long as needed. He’d been here all day, dusk was only an hour away but he would stay here until night fell. THEN he’d go and meet Brianne when she got off her shift.\n\n-------------------------------------\n\n“Hey, Eon! How are you doing?”\n\n“Hot, and thirsty as fuck. No offense, Brianne, but I’m hoping you haven’t started cleaning down yet, because I really need something cold and wet right now. I ran out of water around three and my mouth is about as dry as the fucking Namib.”\n\n“Eon? What? What were you doing?” Even as she asked him this, Brianne was grabbing a bottle of water out of the chiller. As she passed it over she reflected that he really didn’t look good. His fur was dusty and his eyes a little sunken. She was relieved to see he didn’t chug the water, instead restricting himself to small sips.\n\n“Ah, Gods above, that feels good. Thanks. You got any Gatorade in there or know where the nearest convenience store I can buy some is? My electrolytes have got to be majorly screwed at the moment.”\n\n“Take a left at the lights and go two blocks. What have you been doing?”\n\n“Taking your advice.”\n\n“My advice? What advice?”\n\n“You said I should show Master Li that I could be patient and still, so I sat on his doorstep all day. Dawn tomorrow, I’ll be back and I’ll be sitting there from dawn to dusk every day until he agrees to teach me.”\n\n“You’ve been sitting there all day? What about lunch?”\n\nHe indicated the three empty water bottles hanging from his backpack.\n\n“One of those was lunch.”\n\nAs she worked through her routine to close up the coffee-shop, the doe thought about what Eon had said. Just as she finished cleaning the espresso machine, she looked up, a thoughtful look on her face.\n\n“Hang around until I’ve finished here, Eon. I’ll come with you to the convenience store and then you’re coming back to my place. I’ve an idea that might help.”\n\n“Works for me, Brianne. What’s on your mind?”\n\n“I’ll tell you later. Depends on what we find at the convenience store.”\n\n“Ok. At least my car has aircon and it hasn’t been towed again. I checked on it before coming in here.”\n\n“That’s better than riding the bus, yeah.”\n\n------------------------------------\n\nIn the convenience store, while Eon made a beeline to the case of chilled drinks, Brianne walked over to the freezer. The selection wasn’t anywhere near what you’d find at a major grocery, but she found what she wanted. Meeting Eon at the register she passed him two items.\n\n“Get these too.”\n\nLooking down, Eon saw a can of frozen OJ concentrate and a bag of frozen mixed berries. He shrugged, wondering what Brianne had in mind, but slapped them on the counter with his two bottles of Gatorade anyway.\n\nOne of the bottles of Gatorade was empty by the time the two climbed into Eon’s car. Being in less of a hurry, this time Brianne noticed a few things about the car. It sure wasn’t your average student’s car. Most students she knew drove older models, and not particularly high end ones at that. Eon drove what looked like a fairly recent BMW coupe.\n\n“Not exactly the vehicle I’d expect from a starving student.”\n\n“Yeah, well, that’s because I’m not - Starving, I mean. My folks aren’t exactly rich, but grandpa owned a diamond mine Not a hugely successful one, but diamonds are diamonds. My tuition and stuff all comes out of a trust fund I inherited from him. So next time we hit a bar or a restaurant together, please don’t give me as hard a time about refusing to go Dutch as you did last night. I can afford it, and being an Afrikaner I’m probably Dutch enough for both of us anyway.” \n\n“But your apartment…”\n\n“Yeah, I know. Until I graduate, all I get from the trust fund personally is an allowance. A generous one, really, but it could have set me up with a more upscale place, even at California prices. However, I spent it on the car instead. I like to drive fast, so I got a car that I could do that with.”\n\nBack at Brianne’s apartment she hauled out a blender and used it to turn the mixture of fruits she’d got into a smoothie. Pouring it into one of Eon’s water bottles she stuffed it into the freezer.\n\n“There you go, Eon. By tomorrow morning, that will be frozen solid. You just slowly drink it as it thaws out.”\n\n“Damn, Brianne.. I could kiss you for that.”\n\n“What’s stopping you?”\n\n--------------------------------------\n\nAs first kisses go, Eon thought, he’d bet there are many couples out there that had had worse ones. In fact, he thought, that one had been really intense. There had been no clumsy fumbling, their muzzles had just met, just right, and it had only been natural for their arms to tighten around each other, to pull each others body tighter and closer. They’d taken their time after that, the kiss seeming to last forever and he couldn’t recall when it had actually ended, only that they didn’t let go afterwards, didn’t say anything, only that they’d spent some time afterwards saying nothing but just looking into each others eyes, in no hurry to let go. That had lasted until Brianne turned her face away a little and yawned, then blushed, and confessed that she was really tired and needed to sleep.\n\nEon didn’t remember retrieving the partially frozen smoothie from Brianne’s freezer, but there it was, disappearing into the one in his apartment. He just dumped his clothes in the bathroom and climbed into the shower, letting the hot water ease away the tension in his muscles as it washed away the dust and grime his fur had accumulated over the day.\n\n“Amazing how doing nothing can be so exhausting” was the only thought that crossed his mind as he flopped onto his bed, exchanging the towel he’d wrapped around himself for just a light sheet in the summer heat and drifted off to sleep. He’d have slept far less soundly if he could have seen Brianne, for the doe was also asleep but she was sprawled atop the covers of her bed, a smile on her muzzle and her paw still resting between her shapely thighs as she snored quietly.\n\n---------------------------------------------\n\n“Miss Clark.”\n\n“Yes Sifu?”\n\n“You have observed the young man sitting on our steps here for the last several days?”\n\n“Yes, Master Li.”\n\n“Tell me what you have seen.”\n\nThe most junior student in the class swallowed nervously and thought for a moment.\n\n“He simply sits there, Sifu. Sometimes he reads a book. He does nothing. He is always in the same place and if it were not for the fact his fur is clean every day it would be hard to tell he did not stay there all night as well.”\n\n“Have you spoken to him?”\n\n“No, Sifu. You instructed us to ignore his presence.”\n\n“Go and do so. Ask him why he is here, nothing more than that, then return and tell me his answer.”\n\nWith that, Slo Li returned to teaching his current class. A few minutes later the young woman returned and stopped at the edge of the training mats.\n\n“Miss Clark, what was the young man’s answer?”\n\n“He said he was waiting, Sifu.”\n\n“Thank you. Please rejoin the class. Maybe we will have another question for him later.”\n\n---------------------------------\n\nAnd so passed the days. By the time he was asked that first question, Eon had got it mostly worked out. He’d increased his number of drinking bottles to four and started each day with two filled with water, one with Gatorade and the fourth with a frozen-solid fruit smoothie. He’d signed up for a monthly contract at a nearby parking garage and more often than not the evenings were spent with Brianne.\n\nIt had been over a week since that first question and Master Li was in a thoughtful mood.\n\nThis time, instead of approaching the most junior student in the school he approached Michael, the lead student in his most advanced class who Master Li thought was becoming quite a skilled instructor in his own right.\n\n“Michael.”\n\n“Yes Sifu?”\n\n“Regarding the young gentleman at our door. Last week I asked Miss Clark what she had seen. Now that we know he is ‘waiting” I would like you to tell me what [i]you [/i]have seen.”\n\n“He is becoming more adept at waiting, Sifu.”\n\n“Ah. And you say this, why?”\n\n“He is bringing fewer ‘distractions’ with him. He plays fewer games on his phone or tablet. He reads just as many books though. He seems calmer, at least in the mornings.”\n\n“Your opinion of his spirit, Michael? Has it changed?”\n\n“I don’t know for certain, Sifu. I think so.”\n\n“Go and ask him, Michael, what he is waiting for. This time do not think, just see.”\n\nAfter a short interval, Michael returned.\n\n“His spirit has definitely changed, Sifu. Exactly how I could not see but it definitely has.”\n\n“Yet, because you were thinking about it you could not answer my question for certain the first time, even though you have seen him often. Since you now have answered it, what was the answer to my question for him?”\n\n“An extremely unlikely thing.”\n\n", "writing_bbcode_parsed": "
Slow Fist - A Rocky Beginning


“Welcome to my humble school, Mr Volker. The males changing rooms are to your right. Please change into light clothing without shoes and join me on the floor.”

“Yes, Sir.”

As the young cheetah disappeared into the changing rooms, Slo Li watched him, the sloth’s face showing no emotion whatsoever. As the younger man got changed the older one slowly sank into a comfortable posture in the center of the mat and let his mind wander.

All too soon the young cheetah was emerging onto the floor. Slo unfurled the claws of one paw, indicating a space on the mat.

“Sit. Be still. Relax.”

“Yes, Sir.”

It was too bad really. The young man’s muscles were tense, he couldn’t even keep his tail from twitching. He wasn’t still, far from it.

“Master Li….”

“I asked you to be still, young man.”

“I’m sorry, Master Li. I thought this was an interview?”

“How is it not? I am watching you. I have asked you to be still for me and you are not succeeding well at that test.”

“Wait.. it’s a….”

“I have been assessing you since you entered the school’s front door, Mr. Volker. I will continue to do so until you leave it. Every moment one of my students spends within these walls is a test. If you aspire to join their number, so it is for you too.”

Eon swallowed the reply that rose to the tip of his tongue and concentrated on sitting still. It was hard, his mind was busy with a million thoughts. He felt his tail twitch as unbidden, an image of Brianne, the barista at the coffee shop, rose in his mind. The more he tried to banish it, the more his mind rebelled. Oh, God.. now he was wondering what she’d look like naked, and his tail was twitching even worse. Just to put the cherry on the top of it all he had an itch at the base of his left ear, It was going to twitch and flick any moment… Damn it, damn cat ears. Into the chaos his mind was creating for him came the slow voice of the sloth that was testing him.

“You’re a long way from home, Mr. Volker. Studying here?”

“Yes, Sir. Architecture and Engineering. I guess the Johannesburg accent was a bit of a giveaway.”

“Among other things. Why do you wish to study Kung Fu?”

“For the mental discipline, Sir. For the control.”

“Mr. Volker. The patience and the stillness are not in you to take the Way of the Slow Fist. Your path would be a lot easier if you were to simply leave now.”

“Are you ordering me to leave, Sir?”

“No, that would be rude and you are a guest in my house. However, I am refusing your application to this school.”

“Is there anything I can say or do to change your mind, Sir?”

“All things are possible, Mr Volker. It is just that some are extremely unlikely.”

----------------------------------

The door to the coffee-shop slammed open. Brianne took a step back, barely avoiding it hitting her in the face. She opened her mouth to yell at the person standing in the doorway but stopped. It was the cute cheetah boy from earlier in the day, dressed in sweats and with a horrible look on his face.

“Sorry, Brianne. I need a quad ‘spro really bad right now.”

“Eon, I’m sorry. I’m closing up. I already cleaned down the machines. I was about to lock the door. What’s up?”

“That fucking sloth!”

“Master Li? I mean, he never comes in here but his students absolutely love him. I hear them talking about him all the time. What did he do?”

“Threw me out. Didn’t let me join his school.”

“Eon, don’t get me wrong here but I think you need a beer more than you need espresso. There’s a pretty good bar not far from here, they have all the local microbrews. I wouldn’t mind a cheetah buying me a drink… “

“You know what, Brianne? That sounds like the most wonderful idea I’ve heard all day. My car is right here. I’ll drive.”

Except it wasn’t.

What was there was a meter flashing a big red “Expired” notice and an empty space.

“Fuck. They towed it.”

Eon spun around and launched a furious kick at a discarded soda can on the sidewalk, sending it clattering down a nearby alley.

“Fuck! Shit! Damn!”

He broke off as Brianne grabbed his flailing arm.

“We can walk, it’s not far and I’m guessing that you really need that beer about now, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Deal with this shit tomorrow. Tonight, relax and let it go.”

“Relax. Yeah, right. That’s what that bastard sloth wanted me to do too.”

“Right now, I think that maybe he had a point.”

As the young pair walked off down the street, Slo Li stood at the window of the luxurious loft above the school in which he lived when he was not traveling for his film career. Idly he ran his polished claws through his long mustache watching the pair depart.

“You are indeed an interesting young man, Eon Volker. I wonder if I will see you again?”

------------------------------------

“Sifu, there is a young man sitting on the steps.”

“I know. He has been there since this morning. What is he doing now?”

“He is reading your book, Sifu.”

“Then he must be extremely bored. Please spread the word amongst the other students to ignore his presence, which is something I am attending to myself.”

“Yes, Sifu.”

It had been something Brianne had said, the previous night when they were both happily buzzed but far from drunk. Riding the bus home, they’d discovered that they lived in apartment complexes only a couple of blocks apart. Since Eon’s was closest to the bus stop it had been he who had invited Brianne in for a coffee. It had been just a coffee, neither of the pair being the type to do much on a first date and neither of them being exactly sure whether or not it even was a date. Not that Eon would have minded if she’d made any kind of move, he thought Brianne was pretty cute, smart and fun to hang out with. He was just too much of a gentleman to start anything himself at this early stage. For her part, Brianne was thinking along almost similar lines, half happy that Eon didn’t try anything and half wishing he had. She liked the guy, she thought that he was cute in a slightly scruffy way. When he’d walked her home, half way there she’d stopped and just looked at him. “Maybe you just need to show him that you CAN be patient and still?”

Right out of the blue like that.

Eon had spent an almost sleepless night thinking about that. So, right after getting his car out of the impound lot as soon as they opened in the morning, there he was sitting on Slo Li’s doorstep. It was hot and it didn’t make it any easier that a girl he really hoped might become his girlfriend was working half a block away, but still he sat there, determined to demonstrate he’d wait as long as needed. He’d been here all day, dusk was only an hour away but he would stay here until night fell. THEN he’d go and meet Brianne when she got off her shift.

-------------------------------------

“Hey, Eon! How are you doing?”

“Hot, and thirsty as fuck. No offense, Brianne, but I’m hoping you haven’t started cleaning down yet, because I really need something cold and wet right now. I ran out of water around three and my mouth is about as dry as the fucking Namib.”

“Eon? What? What were you doing?” Even as she asked him this, Brianne was grabbing a bottle of water out of the chiller. As she passed it over she reflected that he really didn’t look good. His fur was dusty and his eyes a little sunken. She was relieved to see he didn’t chug the water, instead restricting himself to small sips.

“Ah, Gods above, that feels good. Thanks. You got any Gatorade in there or know where the nearest convenience store I can buy some is? My electrolytes have got to be majorly screwed at the moment.”

“Take a left at the lights and go two blocks. What have you been doing?”

“Taking your advice.”

“My advice? What advice?”

“You said I should show Master Li that I could be patient and still, so I sat on his doorstep all day. Dawn tomorrow, I’ll be back and I’ll be sitting there from dawn to dusk every day until he agrees to teach me.”

“You’ve been sitting there all day? What about lunch?”

He indicated the three empty water bottles hanging from his backpack.

“One of those was lunch.”

As she worked through her routine to close up the coffee-shop, the doe thought about what Eon had said. Just as she finished cleaning the espresso machine, she looked up, a thoughtful look on her face.

“Hang around until I’ve finished here, Eon. I’ll come with you to the convenience store and then you’re coming back to my place. I’ve an idea that might help.”

“Works for me, Brianne. What’s on your mind?”

“I’ll tell you later. Depends on what we find at the convenience store.”

“Ok. At least my car has aircon and it hasn’t been towed again. I checked on it before coming in here.”

“That’s better than riding the bus, yeah.”

------------------------------------

In the convenience store, while Eon made a beeline to the case of chilled drinks, Brianne walked over to the freezer. The selection wasn’t anywhere near what you’d find at a major grocery, but she found what she wanted. Meeting Eon at the register she passed him two items.

“Get these too.”

Looking down, Eon saw a can of frozen OJ concentrate and a bag of frozen mixed berries. He shrugged, wondering what Brianne had in mind, but slapped them on the counter with his two bottles of Gatorade anyway.

One of the bottles of Gatorade was empty by the time the two climbed into Eon’s car. Being in less of a hurry, this time Brianne noticed a few things about the car. It sure wasn’t your average student’s car. Most students she knew drove older models, and not particularly high end ones at that. Eon drove what looked like a fairly recent BMW coupe.

“Not exactly the vehicle I’d expect from a starving student.”

“Yeah, well, that’s because I’m not - Starving, I mean. My folks aren’t exactly rich, but grandpa owned a diamond mine Not a hugely successful one, but diamonds are diamonds. My tuition and stuff all comes out of a trust fund I inherited from him. So next time we hit a bar or a restaurant together, please don’t give me as hard a time about refusing to go Dutch as you did last night. I can afford it, and being an Afrikaner I’m probably Dutch enough for both of us anyway.”

“But your apartment…”

“Yeah, I know. Until I graduate, all I get from the trust fund personally is an allowance. A generous one, really, but it could have set me up with a more upscale place, even at California prices. However, I spent it on the car instead. I like to drive fast, so I got a car that I could do that with.”

Back at Brianne’s apartment she hauled out a blender and used it to turn the mixture of fruits she’d got into a smoothie. Pouring it into one of Eon’s water bottles she stuffed it into the freezer.

“There you go, Eon. By tomorrow morning, that will be frozen solid. You just slowly drink it as it thaws out.”

“Damn, Brianne..  I could kiss you for that.”

“What’s stopping you?”

--------------------------------------

As first kisses go, Eon thought, he’d bet there are many couples out there that had had worse ones. In fact, he thought, that one had been really intense. There had been no clumsy fumbling, their muzzles had just met, just right, and it had only been natural for their arms to tighten around each other, to pull each others body tighter and closer. They’d taken their time after that, the kiss seeming to last forever and he couldn’t recall when it had actually ended, only that they didn’t let go afterwards, didn’t say anything, only that they’d spent some time afterwards saying nothing but just looking into each others eyes, in no hurry to let go. That had lasted until Brianne turned her face away a little and yawned, then blushed, and confessed that she was really tired and needed to sleep.

Eon didn’t remember retrieving the partially frozen smoothie from Brianne’s freezer, but there it was, disappearing into the one in his apartment. He just dumped his clothes in the bathroom and climbed into the shower, letting the hot water ease away the tension in his muscles as it washed away the dust and grime his fur had accumulated over the day.

“Amazing how doing nothing can be so exhausting” was the only thought that crossed his mind as he flopped onto his bed, exchanging the towel he’d wrapped around himself for just a light sheet in the summer heat and drifted off to sleep. He’d have slept far less soundly if he could have seen Brianne, for the doe was also asleep but she was sprawled atop the covers of her bed, a smile on her muzzle and her paw still resting between her shapely thighs as she snored quietly.

---------------------------------------------

“Miss Clark.”

“Yes Sifu?”

“You have observed the young man sitting on our steps here for the last several days?”

“Yes, Master Li.”

“Tell me what you have seen.”

The most junior student in the class swallowed nervously and thought for a moment.

“He simply sits there, Sifu. Sometimes he reads a book. He does nothing. He is always in the same place and if it were not for the fact his fur is clean every day it would be hard to tell he did not stay there all night as well.”

“Have you spoken to him?”

“No, Sifu. You instructed us to ignore his presence.”

“Go and do so. Ask him why he is here, nothing more than that, then return and tell me his answer.”

With that, Slo Li returned to teaching his current class. A few minutes later the young woman returned and stopped at the edge of the training mats.

“Miss Clark, what was the young man’s answer?”

“He said he was waiting, Sifu.”

“Thank you. Please rejoin the class. Maybe we will have another question for him later.”

---------------------------------

And so passed the days. By the time he was asked that first question, Eon had got it mostly worked out. He’d increased his number of drinking bottles to four and started each day with two filled with water, one with Gatorade and the fourth with a frozen-solid fruit smoothie. He’d signed up for a monthly contract at a nearby parking garage and more often than not the evenings were spent with Brianne.

It had been over a week since that first question and Master Li was in a thoughtful mood.

This time, instead of approaching the most junior student in the school he approached Michael, the lead student in his most advanced class who Master Li thought was becoming quite a skilled instructor in his own right.

“Michael.”

“Yes Sifu?”

“Regarding the young gentleman at our door. Last week I asked Miss Clark what she had seen. Now that we know he is ‘waiting” I would like you to tell me what you have seen.”

“He is becoming more adept at waiting, Sifu.”

“Ah. And you say this, why?”

“He is bringing fewer ‘distractions’ with him. He plays fewer games on his phone or tablet. He reads just as many books though. He seems calmer, at least in the mornings.”

“Your opinion of his spirit, Michael? Has it changed?”

“I don’t know for certain, Sifu. I think so.”

“Go and ask him, Michael, what he is waiting for. This time do not think, just see.”

After a short interval, Michael returned.

“His spirit has definitely changed, Sifu. Exactly how I could not see but it definitely has.”

“Yet, because you were thinking about it you could not answer my question for certain the first time, even though you have seen him often. Since you now have answered it, what was the answer to my question for him?”

“An extremely unlikely thing.”

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