The Tour Continued

Hey kids. Sorry I haven't posted in a few weeks. I've been really stressed this week. I almost had a panic attack yesterday. It's a long story, one that I won't bore you with right now.
Well, my life's been quite uneventful these past weeks. My school orchestra went the the Region Orchestra Festival on Wednesday. It took an hour to get there by bus. It was a fun bus ride, though. Me and my friends played a very interesting game of Truth or Dare. Actually, it was more just a game of Truth. Anyways, it was fun. When we got to the school that was hosting the festival, my stand partner and I almost didn't have any music. We had left our music at our school, so we had to make copies of my friends music. We played really well, but we didn't qualify for State. Oh, well. There's always next year.
In my last post, Shawn took Anny on a tour. He showed her the dining hall and the training room, where he demonstrated his skill at knife throwing.

“You’re good,” I said, looking over her shoulder at him, impressed.

“I’d better be. If I wasn’t, my students wouldn’t learn anything,” he replied, grinning.

“You teach knife throwing?” I asked, more impressed.

“Yup. I’m one of the best here,” he bragged.

“Who do you teach?” I asked.

Bow Anny uses.
Image courtesy of Amazon

“New trainee’s. In order to become a member of IFPA, you have to go through a special training program. Most kids who live here take a year off school when they’re fifteen for their training. During training, they learn hand fighting, archery, knife throwing, and fairy history. Your training will only be basic physical and mental strength stuff because we’re running short on time. If you decide to stay once this is over, you’ll go through full training once school starts.”

“Ok, sounds fun,” I said sarcastically. It sounded hard and exhausting, anything but fun. I walked over to the bow rack and picked one up. I held it in one hand and slung a full quiver over my shoulder with my other hand. I pulled an arrow out of the quiver and notched it. Taking aim at a target, I pulled back the string and let the arrow fly. It thudded into the edge of the target.

“Not bad,” Shawn said. “Your stance looked good. You just need to work on your aim.”

I put the bow and quiver back where they belonged and walked to the target I had shot. Pulling the arrow out of the target, I asked, “ Doesn’t it worry you to just leave this stuff laying around? What if someone snuck in here and got hurt?”

“Over the summer and on weekends, we keep the door locked unless a teacher is in here. During training, class is from 1 to 4 and I’m usually in here until 7 every night. Nothing could ever happen without us knowing,” he reassured me.

“Why are you here so late?”

“Sometimes my students come after class to get extra help. If no one comes, I practice.” 
Shawn walked over to a door in the far wall that I had failed to notice. “The girl’s locker room is through here,” he said. “We should keep going. There’s still more to see.”

Chapter 5... The Tour

This is my brother's robot and a few of his teammates.
Image courtesy of  The Ladybots

Hello, my lovelies. I'm back! Did you miss me? It's been like two weeks since I talked to you. Has anything interesting happened over those two weeks? I haven't done anything. Wait, thats not quite true. I went the West Super-regionals robotics competition. My brother's team, the Ladybots, was competing. It started out really well, but then their robot started having problems, and it took them almost the whole competition to fix it. It was fixed just in time for their last match, which they won. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to get them into the finals. The whole competition lasted 2 days. It was really cool to be able to watch all the robots competing. Some of them were really complex. Others were pretty simple, but they were still great robots. The winning robot, witch scored a new world record of 877 points, looked like a big pile of metal. It was a really great experience, and I hope my team gets to go next year.

I think the last part I posted was when Anny saw the room that she would be sleeping in. She compared it to her room at home. Shawn offered to take Anny on a tour of the compound. Anny says she want to see everything.
By the way, I wanted to ask you something. I've been thinking of rewriting a few chapters so they're told from Shawn's perspective. The way it is now, you don't really get to know anything that Shawn feels. You only see little glimpses of feeling that he shows Anny. What do you think about that? Please tell me if you think that would be a good idea. I'm still deciding if I'm gonna do it.

Chapter 5

The first place Shawn took me was the dining hall. I thought it looked like a school cafeteria. It was a big, open room. Long rectangular tables and benches ran the length of the room. At one end of the room, there was a counter, presumably where the food was served. A door was in the wall near the counter. I guessed it led to the kitchen.

“On a normal weekday, breakfast is from 7 to 9, lunch is from 12 to 1, and dinner is from 6 to 8. On the weekends, breakfast and lunch are pushed back an hour.” Shawn told her.

“How’s the food?” I asked.  

“Not bad. It’s actually pretty good, especially the desserts. There are a few fairies who work in the kitchen, and they are excellent cooks.”

“There are fairies here? Where? Can I meet them?” I asked excitedly.

“We have a few fairies staying here. War refugee’s, trying to help end it from here. One of the most important refugee’s is Dalen own sister, Shahira. You’ll meet her soon enough. Let’s keep moving. There’s still lots to see.” We walked off, passing more groups of running children.

The next place Shawn took me was the training room. On one side of the room, there was a row of targets. Next to the targets was a rack of bows and another of quivers full of arrows. Next to the bows was a table covered in an array of knives. On the other side of the room was three square padded rings and a line of punching bags.

“This is where I work,” Shawn said proudly. “The training room.” He walked over to the knife table and picked one up. He turned it over in his hand before suddenly throwing it. The knife flew through the air, spinning end over end, until it slammed into a target. I walked over to the target the knife had hit and saw that it was in the exact middle of the target.