Basic Archery: Gareth Gruven

[O'Brien]

With Gareth already standing in one of the archer's circles, Sal nodded in satisfaction. "Alright then, Gareth," he said with a clap of his hands, "welcome to basic archery training. It's not often I say that to a Fae. Anyway, I want to begin by learning how much you know of archery. Tell me everything you know, regardless of if you know it's right or not. I'll correct you if you say something wrong, right now I just want to have an idea of where you stand." Sal still struggled to keep his eyes off of Gruven's ridiculous orange bow. Anyone besides a sprite would probably break the thing trying competitive archery with it. Even so, it just made Sal more appreciative of his precious Crescent.

[Gareth Gruven]

Gareth laughed aloud as he saw Sal's eyes stray unmovingly to the ridiculous orange bow. "Yea, it's an awful color I know. I'll get it repainted to a brown later though," the Sprite piped up in a bit of embarassment, though nothing seemed to dampen his mood. Eventually, the Sprite would be shooting from midair, and not the ground. That would be where the real fun began. But for now, he had to learn to crawl before he could walk. Jump before he could leap, shoot before he could...shoot. Gareth shrugged and began to spill out all the information he knew of archery, half of which he had picked up on from Trader's who had come to visit his Grandfather.

"Well, I think the right stance would be having the target on your left, if you'r right handed of course. Feet spread apart shoulder length, like this," at this, the Sprite began to assume the proper position, lifting up his bow in his left hand. "Shoulders slightly relaxed, but chest facing in the direction your feet are, only moving your head to look at the target..." he spoke cheerfully, but thought about it afterwords. So far it made logical sense on what he was saying, why would you want your body to face the enemy openly when you could be shot or killed yourself? "Your hand on the bow should be with the hand your not familiar with, for me it's my left, since I'm right-handed-" he helf up the bow in his left hand. "Then, you would simply take the arrow with your other hand, my right, then notch it in the string. Hold the bow firmly yet not too tight, and make sure to keep good posture while you shoot so you're not sure to miss. Aim the bow with your eyes, then release the arrow," he said, pretending to fire an imaginery arrow. Settling down from his vivid description, he turned around and faced Sal normally again. "Was I correct? That's mostly what I've heard in tales from Traders and Adventurers. However it often varies. I think I've managed to push aside the opinions and put in a few facts here and there," he spoke sheepishly. His eyes looked hopefully up to Sal, searching to see if he was right or wrong.

[O'Brien]

"Minotaur droppings," Sal practically yelled, "tales from traders and adventurers indeed! You've been spying on some of my lessons, haven't you, sprite?" The words themselves could have been mistaken for an angry accusation, but it was easy to tell from Sal's mannerisms that he was merely teasing the Fae.

"Very good indeed, Gareth," he commended the sprite, "you're off to an excellent start. You've got the stance down perfectly. Needless to say if you want to be able to shoot higher, to not have to aim up when going for these targets, feel free to flutter above the circle, maintaining your stance as though your legs reached the ground. Ah to have the freedom of wings, to be able to soar like my arrows do." Never one to be lost in fantasy, Sal shook his head as if waking up before continuing.

He took an arrow and pointed out the cut indentation on the blunt end of the projectile. "Now I'm going to show you how to knock an arrow, how to prepare it to be fired," he said, "basically you're just going to secure the bowstring about halfway through into this notch in the arrow, holding it there in between your index and middle fingers."

Sal grasped the arrow near the end with his two fingers and put the arrow snugly on the bow, waiting for Gareth to do the same. Perhaps Fae could make decent archers after all, if the sprite's performance matched his knowledge.

[Gareth Gruven]

Gareth was scared at the man's outburst. He had been honest though, he had heard the lessons through traders and travellers, and the terrified expression on his face when he was accused was more than he could stand for. However, as soon as he was clear that Sal was only teasing, he bursted out laughing at his own stupidity. He beamed as the words flew from Sal's mouth. He had the facts down correctly, the stance was perfect. As soon as the permission to fly left Sal's mouth, Gareth was up in the air zooming around in a type of backflip circle, which brought him back close to the ground, but hovering at about Sal's chest height. Nodding his head to show that he understood, he mirrored what Sal was doing.

Though in midair, it was easy to assume a stance of thinking you were on the ground. He turned his body to the right so that the target would be on the left, feet and chest both facing outwards towarsd the right. Holding the bow in a firm but not too tight grip in his left hand, he tilted his head and turned his neck to see the bow, and out of the corner of his left eye, Sal. Bringing his bow to face the target, bot not particulary aiming for the bullseye, he drew out an arrow from the quiver, his foresty green wings beating slowly so that he could stay at a certain height without moving up or down. Holding the end of the arrow between his right index finger and the middle finger, he rested the tip of it along the bow, while he meanwhile slid the bow into the notch of the arrow, hoping for a snug fit. With the arrow's front part resting on the bow, he did not have to worry about balancing it until Sal gave him the approval to shoot.

[O'Brien]

Lightly Sal chuckled at Gareth's midair acrobatics, but fortunately did not lose himself this time in daydreaming about flight. He wasn't used to teaching someone whose feet weren't actually on the ground, but Gareth seemed to have positioned himself well enough that the adjustment would not be difficult. Carefully, Sal moved his head a bit around the poised sprite, observing every little detail of how the arrow was knocked, how it was held, and how he was preparing for the actual shot. Everything seemed well enough.

"Good, good," the human muttered quietly, "at least you're not awfully impatient like this half-elf I'm teaching. Thank you for waiting, Gareth. I know I haven't instructed you any on this yet, but let that arrow fly." Sal stepped back into an adjacent archer's circle and focused on the shooting sprite. There was no reason to be preoccupied this time with how the actual arrow went - firing or no, this was still a very basic step and the privelige to shoot was at this point just granted for fun.

[Gareth Gruven]

The sprite grinned as he heard the human's praising words. "Yes sir," he spoke in answer to the command, and he quickly proceeded to try and line the arrow up with the target. He didn't try to go directly for the bullseye, that would be foolish for a beginner's first shot, but he did line it up with the bullseye, hoping that it would at least hit somewhere within the target's rings nearby. After his aiming calculations were secured, he slowly and cautiously pulled back the bow string to an adequate amount, at least he thought it was the same distance Sal had pulled his own back when Gareth arrived. Repeating the steps through memory, he silently let go of the arrow with his index and middle finger. If all went well, which he hoped for, he would be granted the satisfying sound of the arrow sinking itself into the target...if he was correct in his aim of course.

The Sprite would continue to watch and see where his arrow went, then turned to Sal for approval or for corrections. One of the two was to be made...

[O'Brien]

The arrow shot out from Gareth's little bow, which was more than one might have expected from it. The arrow actually continued through the air nicely, making the distance downrange and hitting the wooden square down there. It wasn't a bull's eye; far from it, the arrow was not actually on the painted target, but off to the bottom left-hand side of the piece of wood. From that shot alone it was hard to say how Sal would react to the shot.

Sal was, however, largely understanding and not critical of the result. He nodded instead. "Not bad," he remarked, "not bad for your first shot. Go flutter on downrange and bring the arrow back - make sure you take note of how firmly it's stuck in there, because I want to make sure you're firing with enough strength." Sal seemed to examine Crescent as part of a regular checkup as he waited for Gareth to return.

Upon his arrival downrange, Gareth would find that the arrow was slanted a bit downward, implying that the arrow had begun to drop towards the end of its flight. It was firm in the board but did not require much effort to remove.

[Gareth Gruven]

Nodding his head Gareth turned to face his arrow, glad that Sal was acting slightly sympathetic, but clearly depressed that his arrow didn't even hit the target. 'At least it didn't go over or fall short' he thought silently to himself as he took the bow back into his right hand and began to fly towards the target over the dirt path.

However, his depressed state was met with his will of trying harder, as he found that the arrow was slanted slightly downwards. This obviously ment that the arrow was descending when it hit the wood, but it also showed him another thing. His small tiny wooden bow, though colored in a ridiculous color, could reach the target from a good number of feet away. Smiling at this thought, he silently tugged the arrow free and began zooming back to Sal.

Upon his arrival, he spoke in a casual voice, "The arrow was pretty firmly stuck, but it didn't require too much of a tug to pull out," His eyes searched through Sal's to see what this information would mean. His eyes then gazed downwards at Sal's marvelous bow, and he smiled wondering if Sal would ever be able to modify his own bow into that sort.

[O'Brien]

As Sal nodded, it seemed very likely that he knew perfectly well just how the arrow had gone, and with his expert skills it was definitely not beyond his ability to judge an arrow's path based solely on the actions of its firer. "I figured as much," he said with a shrug. Sal walked over to the shed and opened it. He brought back with him two wooden chairs. The chairs had gaps in between the planks making up their seats, and some screws or bolts made them hinged so that the chairs could fold up for easy storage - they were pretty expensive. Sal unfolded the chairs a bit behind the archer's circles and had a seat in one, gesturing to Gareth that he could do likewise.

"Now then," he said in a professor-like tone, "I want you to tell me what conclusions you can come to based on how and where that arrow stuck. Tell me what you think you did wrong and how you could improve on that."

[Gareth Gruven]

Gareth smiled and nodded, before taking a seat in the foldable expensive chair. He looked up at Sal, (for he was under two feet tall and found that when he sat, his height was cut in half), and began to explain how he thought the arrow came to stick where it had. "I think that the arrow kind of lobbed it's way through the air at the end, it probably reached it's peak and began to descend when it stuck into the target's leg..the wooded part," he spoke in a casual tone, treating Sal more like a friend more than an instructor- for the moment. Pausing a brief moment to think, he continued to speak. "I believe I fired the arrow too low to hit the target. Even though I think I had it leveled out just right, which is probably wrong, I didn't gauge the distance far enough. An arrow can only go so far y'know, and my bow is so small...perhaps I should be aiming higher so that when the arrow descends it hits where I want it to? Or...if I wanted a straight shot, I should be pulling the string back more?" he suggested weakly, these two solutions being the only ones that came to his mind.

[O'Brien]

Sal nodded as the sprite spoke. "Right," he replied, "you've got the main idea. The arrow was slanted a bit downwards because you fired with too much of an arc." Generally a foreign concept to non-archers, the reference to an arc was accompanied by hand gestures.

"Try to aim more alligned with target in the future," he continued, "and you'll hit it straight-on, which is always an impressive shot. Focus on shooting more straight and with more tension. They key to shooting with power is to gain plenty of tension in the bowstring before releasing."

Sal stood up and walked around his chair, resting his hands on it as he spoke. "You're off to a good start, Gareth. I want you to go home and practice your shooting a bit. Come back tomorrow and I'll be teaching you along with another who's just as far along as you, but he...well, you'll see tomorrow. It was nice shooting with you." Sal shook the sprite's little hand. He wouldn't see the Fae again until class the next brightening.