Better than expected!

So! As I said yesterday, I did try to devote most of today to writing. Worked fine for the most part but inspiration was reluctant to visit me... Actually, I ended up understanding what the problem was: you see, a while back, I had this awesome scene planned out where Ulie got to learn fighting so she wouldn't feel useless anymore should another fight arise! (And also a bit out of jealousy towards Eva who's such a good fighter and so close to Xeres... Grrrr! hihi)
For like three days, I've been pantsing my way between my last scene (the fight against the Cinder) and that scene. I ended up being bored and couldn't bring my word count up because of that... So I just went on with the brackets trick and skipped directly to the scene I wanted to write! Which turned out to be a lot of fun!!! :D
So it'll be my excerpt for today! ^_^ (Well, since it's a very long scene, I'll post half of it today and the other half tomorrow! hihi)

In numbers: I wrote 3 276 words and I *almost* reached my "fake" par of 61k for I am at 60 646 words! (I might write some more tonight... We'll see.) Still! Happy! ^_^

Also, today was a very special day for me as I got to relaunch my official website WITH AN ENGLISH SECTION!!! Woohoo!!! :D Here's the address if you wanna take a peek: www.valerielarouche.com Pretty easy to remember uh? :P

For the occasion, I completely redid my French blog in the image of this English blog because I think it's so pretty! ^_^ And I got to write a French post there where I listed my ongoing projects. I liked it so much (I found it so exciting and rewarding) that I will paste it here too, in the Dreams tab! ^_^ Have a look at if you'd like!

Well, time for an excerpt! ^_^
Happy reading!

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Ulie woke up to a bright morning. Her stomach was empty and complaining so she grabbed a whole cantaloupe out of the icebox and devoured it. She was clearly alone in the hideout but she did not mind. It was nice to have some peace, no pointless morning small talk, no one invading her personal space… It reminded her of her morning routine at the tavern before everything went south. Finishing her breakfast, she took a few steps outside. The air was brisk but the sun was shining in a cloudless blue sky, warming whoever and whatever stood in its path. Ulie stretched with her eyes closed, breathing as much as she could from those last golden rays before winter really kicked in. She felt her blood rush in her veins, waking her body up and bringing energy to it.

She opened her eyes and looked around. The area looked much better in the daylight! The new hideout was standing atop of a grassy hill, overlooking forests on the eastern, southern and northern sides of it, but the western side was gently rolling down to a narrow sandy beach. And beyond that, the ocean was stretching on the horizon from south to west.  

The hideout’s entrance was facing the east and all Ulie could see were forests to a great distance. The trees just down the hill were bare and sad, but the grass still displayed a light shade of green that made the world seem so peaceful.

It was one of those mornings you just found yourself thankful to be alive to witness!

With a lazy smile on her lips, Ulie took a few steps around the hideout when fighting sounds came to her ears! Were they being attacked?! Ulie raced towards the sound, hitting down the southern side of the hill… only to find Hane, Krek, Quinton and Sython’s team sitting around an old picnic table, watching what turned out to be the most horrible sight Ulie had ever seen: Eva and Xeres were training to fight.

OK, to anyone else, it probably was not really that bad to look at, but for the teenager, seeing Eva wearing nothing but pants and a sports bra while Xeres wore nothing but pants… Seeing those two shirtless, sweaty, writhing bodies clutching at each other punched a hole in her stomach.

They were slender and well-built. They were taller than her. They were muscular, agile and strong. He was handsome, she was gorgeous.

They made sense together… and they threw Ulie’s inadequacy right in her face.

Tears of rage climbed to her eyes at great speed as she started to feel nauseous.

“Hey, look who’s up!” exclaimed Hane, noticing the teenager. The sitting gang turned around to greet her. “Want some breakfast?” added the hybrid woman designating what was probably Krek’s morning catch cooked.

“Er, no thanks,” replied Ulie with her stomach on her lips. “I ate some fruits inside. Why are they training?” asked Ulie as casually as possible, trying not to look at the two.

Fortunately, the fighters were far enough (and busy enough) not to hear her conversation.

“It’s Eva,” replied Hane. “She said she felt kinda rusty fighting that Cinder. She’s a thief so she mostly steals stuff and rarely has to fight.”

“Rusty?! She held her ankle by her ear! I saw it!”

Hane shrugged, signifying she did not know any more than that. Ulie gritted her teeth; it was probably one of the Eva’s tactics to get physically close to Xeres! She was cheating!! She knew very well that Ulie could not fight and hence, she took advantage of that situation to earn some higher points in the eyes of the town crier!

As well as pressing her body against his in the process…

Ulie wanted to cry. Giving up on ever “seducing” Xeres was an option (well, as much as a plain girl like myself could seduce anyone, she thought), but Ulie was stubborn. And right there, she balled her fists and took a deep breath, resolved: she was not going to give up without a fight. Literally!

“Teach me how to fight,” she ordered in a grave voice.

“What?” replied Hane who clearly had not heard the teenager’s words.

“I wanna learn how to fight too! I don’t want to spend all my time on the side lines, waitin’ for someone to save my ass! I want to be able to defend myself so teach me how to fight!”

Everyone was looking at her, even the two fighters, panting. Ulie felt kind of embarrassed at all this attention she was getting, but she had enough being pushed aside. She had made up her mind and no one was going to talk her out of it.

Her thoughts were probably obvious to all as they did not even try to convince her to reconsider.

“Alright,” agreed Hane. “Learning how to defend yourself is not a bad idea. Might actually save your life!”

The others seemed to agree with Hane’s reasoning.

“OK,” accepted Quinton. “Here! Take this.”

He handed Ulie his scythe and went to grab Xeres’s blades set aside on the grass with his jacket, his shirt and his vest.

The scythe did not feel all that heavy in Ulie’s hand but looking at the curved blades, she was wondering how to manoeuver such a weapon.

“Attack me,” said Quinton.

“What?”

“We gotta find what kind of fighter you are, which weapon suits you! Let’s try the scythe.”

Ulie obeyed. Lifting her weapon with two hands, she ran towards Quinton, ready to hit him on the head. After all, he probably could defend himself, right?

But when the time came to lower the scythe, it seemed to be caught in a gust of wind or something, slicing on all sides instead of falling straight! Quinton had no trouble evading the attack without a single thrust of the blades he was holding. He simply stepped to the side and let Ulie sort of fly away behind her seemingly uncontrollable weapon.

“This oughta be fun,” smirked Xeres. He climbed and sat on the table itself, tearing a piece of the breakfast animal.

Ulie glared at him but all he did was stretch an even larger smile while chewing at the piece of meat. Don’t mind him, thought the teenager, he’ll only distract you. Concentrate!

 “This drives like a heavy leaf caught in an updraft!” she gave as an excuse. “Couldn’t I try with a sword or something normal at first?”

“Right,” agreed Handersen, giggling. “Here,” he added, unsheathing his weapon and handing it to the teenager who almost fell flat on her face as she grabbed it. This thing was heavier than a barrel of beer! Everyone openly laughed at the situation which only made Ulie madder. Were they ridiculing her on purpose?!

“Give me something I can lift!” she growled.

“Here,” said Kaylia, handing Ulie her long saber.

The weapon was light and sat well in the hand. A few twists of the wrist and Ulie felt in control of it. Perhaps…

“Alright,” chuckled Quinton. “Attack me,” he invited once more after dropping Xeres’s blades on the table. He had removed his long red coat and was holding his mean-looking scythe again with just one hand! Sure, his left shoulder was still a bit injured, rendering his left hand kind of weak, but still! The weapon was heavy and difficult to control; Ulie had just tried it. Two hands were a minimum requirement and yet, Quinton seemed perfectly at ease. In fact, he was even displaying a roguish kind of smile that Ulie had never seen him do before.

He looked purely dangerous!

Ulie suddenly felt doubt… Maybe she was not that much of a fighter after all! What if she really got hurt?

“Look, if you never try, you will never know,” encouraged Quinton. “Come on! Attack me.”

Well, he was right; the teenager could not argue with that. She shrugged and obeyed. After all, with Hane, Kaylia and Nimë around, someone was bound to be able to heal her injuries quickly, right?

Ulie swooshed the weapon down, aiming for Quinton’s head but he lifted his scythe just in time to block the attack. The blades clank loudly and Ulie felt the vibrations all the way up her arm. With a movement of his wrist, Quinton pushed Ulie’s saber away from him which forced the teenager to stumble a bit to the side.

A few of the onlookers giggled. Ulie peeked a quick glance at Xeres from the corner of her eyes and he was still looking rather amused which made her only angrier. Worse: Eva had climbed on the table next to Xeres and was smirking at Ulie too.

She turned to face Quinton again, her blood pulsing to her ears and she charged once more. Quinton blocked the attack like before only, this time, he skillfully moved his wrist, catching the saber’s blade in the curved one of his scythe, twiddled around it a couple of times and with a thrust, pulled the weapon out of Ulie’s hand, sending it flying into the woods.

  “Raah, nice going, jerk-head!” exclaimed Kaylia while heading to find her saber but Quinton did not pay any attention to his cousin.

“So?” he asked Ulie. “How did that weapon feel?”

“Are you humiliating me on purpose?” she yelled in a low voice so only Quinton and her could hear.

“Whoa! Relax. Look, the goal today is to find you a weapon. You won’t defeat any of us right from the start!” he informed.

“Maybe a smaller weapon, like Kaylia’s short saber or Reizu’s daggers…” started Hane.

“Or maybe she’s not a weapon-wielder at all,” suggested the town crier’s voice from behind Ulie. “Maybe she’s a fist fighter. Like Eva!”

Ulie slowly turned around. Xeres jumped down the table and adopted a combat stance a few feet away from Ulie.

“Let’s try that, shall we?”

Ulie suddenly got torn between crying and throwing up her breakfast’s content. How was she supposed to… touch him?!

For the first time ever, seeing as he was kind of drawing all her attention to himself while being shirtless, Ulie allowed herself to really detail him. He had black, wavy, damp hair falling in front of his dark blue eyes, a straight nose with a wide tip standing between high cheeks and just above a mouth made of a sharply-shaped upper lip and a thick bottom one that, for some reason, Ulie suddenly thought would be fun to bite… A strong neck and a stone-chiseled upper body supported that handsome head. Muscles could be seen under his skin at the pectoral, the abdominal and upper arms regions.

And his pants held way too low on his hips…   

The simple idea of fighting Xeres… The simple idea of him hitting her back… The simple idea of his half-naked body pressed against hers…

She could not do it!

Feeling her cheeks blushing violently, Ulie forced her thoughts onto something else, anything else!

“Hey, we got some other things to do sometime today so you’re attacking me or not?” he taunted her.

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(Note: Lately, I watched an old movie and found an actor that pretty much embodied the image I had of Xeres in my head! So here, for those of you who needed a better look at my sultry town crier... Is he yummy or what? ^_^)

Garrett Hedlund as Murtaugh (Eragon)