Ishka's Training Grounds

The embarrassment of being unable to heft the amount of ferrowood she thought she should (an expectation kept by only herself) in front of so many others (who had either noticed without judgment, or been too busy with their own work to even see her) had so gripped Ishka that she had nearly immediately set to training when the work day was finished. Luckily, B's city was a very decent place to do such a thing, with so many experienced warriors gracing the land now. A blobling did not need a gym (a word that felt real but unfamiliar) to strengthen themselves.

Ferrowood was, of course, the heaviest option for plan material to heft. Ishka lacked the skill to properly mold, break, or compound it without potentially damaging a precious resource. But there were always baskets, and always poff pods. The pods were full of fluid, and thus heavy, and a blobling could simply add another and another to compound the weight.

It would have been an easier task to take on with others; someblobby to toss pods into the basket without having to put the whole thing down again. Ishka's embarrassment was simply too great. One day, when her strength matched the feeling in her blood, she would gladly join the others in exercise. Today, she wanted to be alone.

So Ishka hid.

She put separate pods into small sling nets to lift in either paw. To add more weight, she simply put them down and tumbled in another pod. The basket was hefted to her shoulders, and she lifted it with the full strength of her back and legs, as she had tried and failed with the earlier ferrowood. With each repetition she was forced to stop the basket, to re-load it, and to heft it again. Though it felt tedious, it also felt productive. There being no night and no sleep to meet, Ishak found herself totally at a loss of Numbers in order to slake off the sour embarrassment, and also to train herself to never let it happen again.

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Ishka hadn't eaten much, but a particular urge to try something new struck her one Number. While the whole of Terrea seemed to know how and where to fish, and then how to use their quarry, Ishka had never taken the time to actually try it herself. It would require asking for help, which she hoped wouldn't be all too embarrassing. How could one learn without seeking answers, anyway? So Ishka made her way to the Coasts on this particular Number, and she diligently fished.

She chose a blobling who seemed especially at-home on the beach to question about the edibility of certain fish. Their response was pleasant and direct; that one was tender, this one was almost bitter, and that one tasted like straight-up mud. Ishka thanked the blobling, who tilted their hat in goodwill and turned back to the lake as Ishka left.

It seemed somehow 'wrong' to eat the flesh of a creature so obviously modeled after a deity, but the deity had put it there, hadn't they? Ishka hoped so. She didn't want to draw any ire for a mistake she didn't know she was making.

Ishka had come from Onyxia with a plan. She had taken a plate from a ferrowood tree and a stalk of the oluve oil plants that grew around the city. She extinguished her Ichorfish and removed their scales. The flesh of one marinated in an orange-brown, spicy-sweet liquid. The other bathed in a lavender concoction. They cooked atop the ferrowood plate, set on rocks and over a small fire. The spicy one was her favorite, in the end, but the purple-white filled her with a sort of warm, comfortable feeling she could not put a name to. Either way, the blobling finished her task with a rare smile on her face.

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