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Post by Noa on May 29, 2020 19:36:28 GMT -6
After working on those riding signals, one of the other things Aster had Avander working on during these sessions was his flight skills in general. For this, Aster didn’t ask that Avander carry him. It wasn’t precisely that he was concerned about mishaps, though to be honest, that was a little of it. Still, he trusted Avander enough that it wasn’t his chief concern. Avander was bigger now, and even when he had been a Sarane, he had been capable of carrying a rider without discomfort. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t a tiring thing to do at length. And since Aster didn’t need to be on board for these, so to speak, he elected to stay on the ground for this portion of the sessions, just to give Avander a break from lugging him around.
“Now let’s work on your hover,” Aster said.
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Post by Noa on May 29, 2020 19:37:26 GMT -6
“I know it sounds kind of useless, but just trust me. Being able to stay in one place in the air without going in little circles comes in real handy,” Aster said, heading off any comments about it being unnecessary.
Avander didn’t refute the statement, but the Wiurn inclined his head. {And how do I do that?} he said. {I mean, I could try it, but…} That he hadn’t managed to do it on his own meant he didn’t intuitively know how. Aster figured as much, which was why he was making a formal thing of it. But then, that wasn’t uncommon, and the both of them were used enough to Aster showing him how to do something he otherwise might not have figured out for himself.
“You’d need to change how you beat your wings,” Aster said. “Think of it like how you use a different gait for running versus walking."
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Post by Noa on May 29, 2020 19:37:46 GMT -6
Aster gently held onto one of Avander’s wings, and the Wiurn obliged by unfolding it, allowing Aster to manipulate it how he liked. “If you want to stay in place, you can’t just beat down and back. You have to alternate that with a back-angled downbeat, like this.” Aster physically worked the wing through the motion he was describing, so that Avander could feel it for himself.
“How is it?” Aster said. “It doesn’t hurt, does it?” He didn’t want to contort Avander’s limb into a position that the Wiurn wouldn’t be able to comfortably replicate himself.
{It feels a bit odd, but no, it doesn’t hurt,} Avander said. {Hmm. I think it’ll take some practicing. I’m not used to having to move them like that.} Experimentally, Avander unfurled both wings and attempted to move them in the way that Aster had indicated.
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Post by Noa on May 29, 2020 19:38:02 GMT -6
“Close. Not quite,” Aster said, and corrected his wing positions by hand again. “Now, try it on the ground first. Hover.” Avander beat his wings again, first forward in the way he was used to, then backwards the way Aster had shown him. This cycle, he had gotten it right. Aster nodded, and Avander sustained it a little longer, before folding his wings back up.
{That’s very strange,} Avander said.
“Keep practicing on the ground then,” Aster said. “I feel like maybe the muscle isn’t all there anyway, so you might have trouble if you try it from aloft right now. It’ll be just like when you were first learning to fly; you’ll have to build up the strength to do it first.”
{Wing exercises again, hmm? It feels almost shameful, at my age,} Avander said.
Aster rolled his eyes. “You’re not that old,” he said.
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Post by Noa on May 29, 2020 19:38:20 GMT -6
Though something about what Avander had said did bother him. He had no idea how long these lab creatures lived, though clearly certain species had already had die-offs, the first iteration of Wiurn being among this number. Aster didn’t like the thought that Avander’s date of death was fast approaching.
{Well, I’m no fledgeling either,} Avander pointed out, which was true enough. {But you’re probably right. Well, here I go.}
The first session of practicing the hover was, therefore, not very exciting. Avander stood on the ground and flapped his wings at an odd angle for some time, then broke off to do other things before repeating another rep of the wing exercises.
This went on for a couple of weeks before Aster was ready to have Avander try the maneuver in the air. The day did come, however, and Avander took off without issue when Aster gave the signal.
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Post by Noa on May 29, 2020 19:38:41 GMT -6
He really wasn’t a fledgeling; the straightforward, normal act of flying came naturally to him now, as much as walking came naturally to Aster. It was only this new thing that was tricky. “Ready?” said Aster. “Hover.”
Avander did. Or at least he tried, anyway. The first attempt was distinctly wobbly, and Avander himself realized immediately that he had flown too high. Something distracted him a moment, and he faltered, and there was a flurry of furious wingbeats as he tried to recover. Instinct kicked in, and in the end he managed to stay aloft, but he had reverted to his old habit of going in circles to stay in place.
“You had it for a second there,” Aster said. The muscle power ought to be there by now, so it was just a matter of Avander getting used to actually doing it. Aster couldn’t really help him there, beyond forcing the Wiurn to practice.
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Post by Noa on May 29, 2020 19:39:02 GMT -6
In the interest of that, Aster asked, “You think you can go again?”
Avander lowered himself a bit first, then said, {Guess I might as well.}
“Alright, hover,” Aster said.
The second attempt was a bit better, if only because Avander had learned the importance of keeping his concentration. Or maybe the shorter distance to fall was one less concern for him, and so he could concentrate on what he was doing. Whatever it was, Avander managed a shaky but serviceable hover for a few minutes.
“Okay, you can stop,” Aster said. Better to quit while they were ahead for now, and leave Avander with the success. Avander landed, folding his wings. “How was it? You got a feel for it now?”
{A little,} Avander said. {You aren’t going to be asking me to do a lot of this, are you?}
“Maybe not, but we’re going to practice until you can do it without having to think about it,” Aster said.
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Post by Noa on May 29, 2020 19:39:15 GMT -6
{Ugh,} Avander replied, with a great deal of feeling. Aster wasn’t unsympathetic, but the issue at hand was that eventually Avander would have to be concentrating on other things while he was hovering; at some point Aster had been hoping to teach the Wiurn to hunt, for one.
“It’ll come,” Aster said. “And if you get bored, we’ll play music. I hear Rabbit’s been doing that when she takes that big half breed to the gym.”
{Pass,} Avander said. {Let’s just get it over with.}
“Alright,” Aster said, a smile tugging at his lips. “Hover, then.”
It took less time than either Aster or Avander thought it would to get to the point where Avander could hover naturally. Which wasn’t to say it didn’t take a good deal of time, but from their initial efforts, both of them had more or less resigned themselves to the idea of it taking forever.
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Post by Noa on May 29, 2020 19:40:35 GMT -6
But to their pleasant surprise, a couple of weeks of persistent practice paid off, and at length Avander was able to stay aloft while hovering without any issues, even holding an unrelated conversation with Aster through the ribbon.
At which point both of them happily moved on from the intensive practice sessions, into doing something else. Neither were disappointed to see the end of that, since hover practice generally hadn’t been terribly interesting.
"Let's do something on the ground this time," Aster said. They'd been doing a lot of work in the air, and even this much of a change of pace was probably a good thing at this point. "How do you feel about running?"
{Why do I feel like you've just brought our gym routine home?} Avander replied. He wasn't keen on it, since a lot of what they had been doing was exercise, and this seemed no different.
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Post by Noa on May 30, 2020 12:09:38 GMT -6
“We could go to the gym for real,” Aster said, but even he grimaced as he said it. He had more than enough memories of the gym to last him a lifetime. Avander hadn’t been there as often as Aster had, but he had been the one doing the work when he had gone, so the amount of distaste they both had for the place was honestly about the same.
{No, no, let’s just do whatever it is you wanted,} said Avander quickly. {What is it, anyway?}
“I’d like to practice your sprinting,” Aster said. “Not as agility training, but as a way of dodging attacks. Just a short burst of speed, enough to throw you out of range of an oncoming attacker.” It wouldn't work against attacks of a long-ranged or elemental nature, but it was great against creatures that relied more on physical means to fight.
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Post by Noa on May 30, 2020 12:09:51 GMT -6
Aster had seen it used to great effect a couple of tournaments ago by Grunty, and it had left enough of an impression on him that he was slowly teaching it to several of his own pets. Now it was Avander’s turn.
The Wiurn’s ears went flat, but Aster pressed on. “It’s not so bad,” Aster said. “It’s just sprinting. How hard can it be?”
Avander looked as though he might have liked to say something to that, but ultimately didn’t; and with that, Aster began setting up for what he wanted Avander to do. It was a similar set up as he had done with Grunty, two markers set a certain distance apart, so that Avander could get a feel for the rough distance that Aster wanted him to travel. Avander had combat experience enough that he ought to have been able to get the measure of ‘out of range’ from an attacker more intuitively, but this made things easier.
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Post by Noa on May 30, 2020 12:10:16 GMT -6
“When I say ‘dash’, I want you to run from this marker to that one,” Aster said, indicating the two markers that he had just set up. “You start with your whole body behind the first one, and you end with your whole body past the second one, alright? No ‘I touched my nose to it, it’s done’ or anything.” Grunty wasn’t clever enough to think of that kind of shirking, but Aster didn’t quite put it past Avander, and he figured they would waste less time if Aster got that out of the way now.
{You wound me,} said Avander. The Wiurn made his way to the first marker under Aster’s watchful eye. {Let’s just get this over with,} Avander said.
“Alright,” Aster said. He had a similar sentiment, truth be told. “Dash.”
Avander sprinted. The first one was easy for him, and pretty good.
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Post by Noa on May 30, 2020 12:10:36 GMT -6
Aster could tell that Avander was putting his full effort in here, and after the sheer amount of agility training he had done, the full speed sprint he managed was pretty impressive. It was a far cry from their practice sessions with poor Grunty, who hadn’t been built for speed and never would be.
“That’s good,” Aster said, raising his brows at the Wiurn. Avander preened a bit. “Think you can do it again?”
{If you insist,} said Avander, readying himself.
“Dash,” Aster said.
The second one was worse. It wasn’t for a lack of trying, Aster could see, but the same problem had a tendency to arise whenever he first started this with one of his creatures. They just didn’t have the stamina, at first, to keep it up if Aster asked them to do it multiple times. Rhys had gone through it, and so had Grunty.
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Post by Noa on May 30, 2020 12:10:50 GMT -6
And the training Avander had had, it was all agility, no endurance just yet.
They’d need to fix that sometime. But gym training could wait for another time; for now, they had this to work on.
Avander was breathing hard, out of breath and tired. The second dash hadn’t been passable either, but that wasn’t really his fault. Aster had known it would happen, but there was no building up the endurance that Avander would need unless they pushed his limits at least a little. Now that they had, Aster eased off. He wasn’t trying to kill Avander, after all.
“Take a break,” Aster said. “We’ll try again after you catch your breath.”
Avander said nothing in reply. Through their link, Aster could sense a little of the Wiurn’s frustration, not at Aster but at his own limitations. He felt, in all likelihood, as though he ought to be capable of more.
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Post by Noa on May 30, 2020 12:11:35 GMT -6
“You’ll get there,” Aster said, placing a hand on Avander’s side. “It just takes time.”
{Is there anything that doesn’t?} Avander replied. He turned to regard Aster with a sharp gold eye. Aster could only give him a wry smile in reply.
When Avander had caught his breath, they repeated the process again. Avander could only really manage the single dash at all the first session, but Aster had him attempt a second one anyway, just to get him moving. After a few iterations, Aster called that session to an end. It was a delicate balance, how much to push and where to stop, but Aster had done this enough by now that he felt comfortable in his assessment of the situation.
The next day, they repeated it anew. There was already some improvement; the second dash was shaping up. It was still not sufficient, but it was beginning to approach that standard.
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