Chapter 23: A missed shot means you die. Or I die
The faint, approving smile on Nate's face was gone as quickly as it appeared, replaced by his usual mask of detached observation. He watched Skylar not with pride, but with the analytical focus of a mechanic watching a repaired engine turn over for the first time. The shift in her was subtle but significant. The frantic, embarrassed slaps had ceased. Now, each strike was a deliberate experiment. She was changing the angle of her palm, the tightness of her fingers, the point of impact.
Slap. A controlled, flat-handed strike. A small, predictable splash. Slap.A cupped hand, trying to contain the water. A messy failure. Slap.Fingers held tight together, a rigid blade. A cleaner cut through the surface.
She was thinking. She was, as he'd commanded, using her mind.
For nearly an hour, the only sounds were the rhythmic, wet impacts, the soft rustle of Nate's textbook pages, and the crackle of the fire. The initial frustration and humiliation she'd felt began to morph into a different kind of fatigue, a deep, muscular exhaustion. A strange, dull ache began to bloom from her wrist up through her forearm, a sensation she'd never associated with such a seemingly simple task.
Finally, she paused, her right hand hovering over the bowl. She flexed her fingers slowly. They felt… different. Stiff. Unfamiliar. There was a deep, satisfying soreness in the muscles of her palm and a peculiar sensation of hardness, as if her hand itself had become denser, more solid. She made a fist, then tried to open it fully. The last two fingers of her hand, the pinky and ring finger, felt weak, a bit limp, slow to respond compared to the others. They'd been bearing the brunt of her awkward, untrained strikes.
She stared at her own hand as if seeing it for the first time. It was red, pruned from the water, but it was the internal feeling that captivated her. This wasn't just about obedience. This was physical. This was… change.
Her eyes, wide with dawning comprehension, flicked from her trembling hand to the bow leaning against the wall. The smooth, polished wood. The taut bowstring. The act of drawing it back, holding it steady, the immense pressure on the fingers and the wrist…
Then her gaze snapped to Nate.
He was watching her, having closed his book. He saw the journey of realization on her face, from confusion, to physical sensation, to the connection being made. He saw the moment her mind arrived at the destination he'd silently laid out for her.
He didn't smile this time. But his eyes held a glint of something that wasn't coldness. It was acknowledgment.
"The draw weight of your bow is forty-five pounds," he said, his voice calm and matter-of-fact, breaking the long silence. "To hold it steady, to aim under stress, to release without plucking the string… it starts here." He gestured with his chin toward the bowl of water. "Not with the arrow. Not with the target. It starts with the strength in your hands and the control in your wrist. Strength you don't have. Control you've never needed."
Skylar looked back at her hand, the soreness now feeling like a badge of progress, not a punishment. "The slapping… it was to…"
"To build the muscles you use to draw and hold," he finished for her. "To teach your hand to become a weapon, not just a… decoration." He paused, letting the word hang in the air, a deliberate echo of her past life. "A weak grip means a wavering bow. A wavering bow means a missed shot. A missed shot means you die. Or I die."
The simplicity of the logic was brutal and beautiful. Every action, no matter how seemingly pointless, was a thread in the tapestry of their survival. He wasn't just teaching her to shoot; he was rebuilding her from the ground up, starting with the very foundation of her physical being.
"My… my fingers feel strange," she admitted, flexing them again, fascinated by the new weakness, because it highlighted the specific muscles that were now being taxed. "The last two. They're weak."
"Good," Nate said, a single word of pure, unvarnished praise that sent an unexpected thrill through her. "That means you're using them. You're isolating the muscles. That's where the strength will come from." He stood up and walked over to her. "Enough for tonight. Your muscles need to rest and rebuild. Do this again tomorrow. And the next day. Until there is no weakness. Until your hand is as hard as the wood of your bow."
He took the bowl and emptied it into the sink. The lesson was over.
Skylar sat there, cradling her sore, strange-feeling hand. The cabin was the same, but she felt fundamentally altered. The transaction, her body for his protection was still there, a cold, hard fact at the core of their arrangement. But something new was being woven around it. He was investing in her. Not just as a companion, but as a tool he was sharpening, a asset he was improving. And in this world, that was a form of respect she had never received from any man, before or after the apocalypse.
She looked at him as he began cleaning up, his back to her. The silent, competent, infuriatingly pragmatic man who saw her not just as a woman, but as a project. A student. A potential equal in the relentless arithmetic of survival. And for the first time, Skylar didn't feel like a victim or a trophy. She felt, strangely and powerfully, like an apprentice. And she knew, with a certainty that settled deep in her bones, that she would slap that water until her hands were raw if it meant earning another one of those rare, gleaming nods of approval.