Welcome to the Arztenritter

[baldrshand]

Who: Ethlyn + anyone interested in healing + anyone else
Where: A clinic near the edge of town
What: Arztenritter healing brigade training! Feel free to put up your own toplevels too.
Warnings: None


The Willow Clinic wasn't the one nearest the center of town in Aldrip--more towards the fields, and crucially, near a horse paddock as well. It was where Ethlyn had found employment as one of the clinic's standing healers and where she'd first proposed the idea of what she now liked to call the Arztenritter--"doctor-knight" in old Jugdrali--who could ride out all over town and beyond it in case of emergency medical needs.

After starting on the idea with people she already knew and putting up flyers around town for a general interest-and-training day, Ethlyn made her way to the clinic bright and early in the morning to get things set up for a day of medical and horsemanship training combined.

Comments

[wishupona]

[Fortunately, the extreme basics were already covered. She's familiar enough with animals that approaching them isn't hard. Or even feeding them. Thankfully, Rinoa's read enough and already met enough horses to know all of that.

Which leaves the actual riding part. Which no amount of book reading can truly prepare you for. At Ethlyn's question, Rinoa manages a smile.]

Pretty sure he's managing a lot better than I am.

[True to word, the bay she's riding seems to be doing just fine.]

I know you said I'll find the rhythm eventually, but it still feels really weird.

[baldrshand]

[Ethlyn giggles. It is a lot to get used to--it's not at all like a cart, which only bumps when the road does.]

It will for a while. Right now you still have to think about all the ways that your muscles have to work so that you can keep in time with someone who already has the rhythm and doesn't need to think about it. [Meaning the horse, as Ethlyn indicates with a little gesture.] And you have to use a lot of muscles to do it.

[She remembers when she first started learning on ponies as a little girl and woke up the next day not just with a sore behind, but all of her abdomen and leg muscles too.]

[wishupona]

Yeah, I can kind of tell already. You make it look so smooth and easy!

[But there's... So. Many. Bumps. She's going to be feeling bumps when she's trying to sleep tonight.]

This is going to be one of those "I hurt in places I didn't know I had" situations isn't it?

[This isn't the first new physical skill she's picked up in her life, after all. What with all the combat and stuff she's seen, even ranged like she is you learn things. Have to adapt physically to different things in a way that's not like you normally would.]

[baldrshand]

Well, I have been doing it since I was six. That helps a little.

...But unfortunately, it is. [It's said cheerfully, but not unsympathetically--the manner of someone who knows exactly how it'll feel because she's been through it already, albeit quite some time ago.] Taken in that light, it's going to be quite useful knowledge for a healer to have. But I also recommend a hot bath, and some aspirin.

[wishupona]

I guess you're right...

[Ugh. This is another one of those situations where she's woefully behind everyone else because they've been doing it for ages. Just like how she'd been tagging along behind the members of SeeD in combat ability. Gross.]


Ugh, I knew it. [She makes a face, but laughs very shortly after.] Oh yeah. A nice, long soak is definitely in my future tonight.

[baldrshand]

[Ethlyn laughs along with Rinoa. She understands how it is to learn a new skill. Even if the memories are over a decade old, she still knows how it felt when she first began riding a pony and found how hard its shoulders could hit her backside, and then how hard her stomach muscles had to work keeping her balance when she began lifting herself in the saddle. And then the blisters that formed when she began training with a sword, and how draining it was to pull her natural magic through the focus of a healing staff.

But it all made it the more satisfying when she began to grow strong enough to do these things without a second thought.]

You'll get used to it. If you keep practicing regularly, it will become second nature. And as that happens, your horse will start to get more respect for you, and adjust himself to your rhythm instead of fighting you or ignoring your rhythm. There's really nothing quite like going out to the stable and your horse being happy to see you.