Finally, heading to the cafeteria for dinner, she took the book with her to read while she ate. It would no longer matter that her table was empty, and no one spoke to her. She had the world at her fingertips and no one to bother her, and that was just the way she wanted it.
Keeping Fit
Now that she had physical exercise, Tori did not feel like such an outsider in her new home. She woke up by 5:00 am each day and headed to the gym. In the early hours of morning, she seldom had to share it with anyone else. A small room, only about 25’ x 25’, the amount of equipment had been kept minimal, with only one of most everything.
When she stepped inside, a mirror that covered floor to ceiling ran down the wall immediately on her right. Tori hated mirrors. She would rather not see the scars of her life staring back at her, so she would keep her head down or her back to it as much as possible.
To the left of the door stood the treadmill, and next to it a stair-climber. She would have rather run in the garden, but it clearly had not been designed for such activity, so the stationary equipment would have to do. Between them and the left corner lay a two inch thick foam mat and a set of hooks positioned on the wall with elastic bands and four jumping ropes of different lengths hanging from them. She had become quite skilled with the jumping rope, doing double and triple-unders with ease. She shuddered, recalling some of the more gruesome skills she had learned for short pieces of rope.
Half way between the two corners of the wall, a climbing rope hung from the extra tall ceiling. Tori felt a jolt of excitement as she looked up to see the room extended a full two stories high, allowing for more strenuous climbs. She used to push herself at climbing when she was young, always wanting to be faster than the time before, and would enjoy the challenge here.
Still gazing upwards, she noticed the two fans that ran to efficiently cool the air below during her workouts, positioned on the opposite end of the ceiling as the climbing rope. Looking up at them, their breeze on her face took her back into the bush, the warm moist air pushing in on her from all sides.
Along the far wall, in the opposite corner of the padded mat, there stood a small lifting area. There were only a few free weights with a single bar, but it could be set up to three-hundred pounds, which was more than enough. She did not see a bench, but Tori had never gotten used to using one anyways.
In the center of the far wall stood a large metal shelving unit that held a good variety of kettlebells and medicine ball weights, along with three different sized boxes for jumping. Memories of how to train using those pieces came flooding back to her, almost bringing a smile to her lips. Almost.
Tori felt most pleased with the overhead bar and the set of rings that stood straight in front of the door. They faced the entrance and out into the room so that she could avoid the mirror, and she could do a variety of leg lifting routines, as well as dip, pull up, and hanging exercises. The space was small, but well thought out, and she quickly realized how grateful she would be to have a place to call her own.
As she worked, she recalled her first training days and how hard Brian Turner had pushed her as she grew up in the wild of South America. He had been in charge of her physical training, and he took that job very seriously.
Brian would wake her every morning at first light for a run, Tori's least favorite part of their routine. They would follow paths through the tall trees, winding around their small camp like a maze. She learned to keep her footing, even on slick or rocky terrain.
In time, she grew strong and bound easily over the patches of uneven ground that rose and fell, allowing her small and agile frame to scoot quickly up the slope and slide down the other side with ease. By the time they hit the road, she beat her mentor around the loop regularly and took pride in her speed and strength.
Tori almost felt wistful as the memories danced around her. After the run, it would be sit-ups, squats and lunges. He changed their routine often to keep it fresh, and the movements became second nature to her. She never became bulky or overly muscular, but rather strong over all of her muscle groups, with lightening quick speed and reflexes.
He taught her about pull ups and push-ups, which strengthened her shoulders and chest. This allowed her to easily climb the trees that hid their small camp, and she gained a certain zeal for doing so. Many a hot afternoon, she would climb into a tall tree and look down and out at the world around her.
Her favorite, a Tabebuia impetiginosa, or pink trumpet tree, which would sprout bright pink flowers that glittered about her, stood at the edge of the territory the Dragons called their own. She would climb that tree, and sit in the boughs, staring out across the tops of the ones that grew on the slopes below it, and wonder about the world outside of their jungle home.
Brian had made her do hundreds upon hundreds of leg raises, bringing her toes to the bar from which she hung, giving her a strong stomach and core. They seldom used weights, except for a small range of kettlebells and medicine balls that made the exercise more difficult. Tori often felt exhausted afterwards, as Brian never seemed to have a set plan and would go on endlessly. He simply pushed her to the point of exhaustion, and then pushed her some more.
Thinking back while she worked, Tori was grateful for what Brian had given her, and used those old familiar exercises to regain her strength and feel relaxed in such a strange place. She had since learned that he had been training her for a terrible purpose, but vowed to herself that one day she would make it right.
After about an hour of physical fitness in the tiny gym, Tori would scramble back to her room for a shower before breakfast. The time beneath the waves of warm water soothed her spirit, and she cherished it deeply. She only wished the water could remove the stains she could see on her hands; the ones she could see through her mind's eye. She could scrub them, but the blemishes were always present when she looked, even though no one else could see them.
Standing in the shower, she would will herself not to see the marks, and sometimes they seemed to fade. Most of the time, they remained, a crimson blotch that caused her heart to ache; something she was loathe to share with anyone, especially the good doctor and his endlessly prying ways.
As a result of the testing, Tori became concerned about her education. Having never attended school, she really did not know how much she had missed, and did not want to be left behind. However, after evaluating her scores, Dr. Carlisle seemed very pleased with her range of knowledge and told her higher education might be in her future, but at the moment she was in a good place, whatever that meant. So, she continued to educate herself as she had always done, content checking out books from the library that would give her new knowledge about the world.
Tori always took her reading material with her to the cafeteria, sitting alone and turning the pages while she ate. The other patients in the facility had become accustomed to her presence, so the stares had all but died away. She had even met several in group sessions, but they did not go out of their way to speak to her, and she felt no need to push the issue.
Instead, she would go through the line, choosing her fruits, vegetables and meats, then head to her corner table, always taking the same chair so that the room lay to her left, and she would be ready should anyone ever approach her. No one ever did.
Henry had taught Tori to never stop learning, never stop growing. Her mentor, he had given her a taste for philosophy and history and a love of art and music. He had encouraged her to wonder why things are the way they are. He sparked in her a desire to always be more than she was, and she felt that she honored his memory by pushing herself to follow what meant the most to him, and to educate herself as he would have wanted it.
As a young girl, she had learned to speak every language he spoke, and would spend hours listening to his stories. He never grew tired of her endless questions, and seemed to enjoy imparting his wisdom to her.
As a precaution in this new place, Tori had purposely not mentioned to anyone that she spoke and read French, German, Spanish and Russian,
as well as she did English. The Dragons used a variety of languages to keep their affairs private in the company of outsiders, and she had learned them all when not even old enough to know the difference.
Now that the Dragons were gone, she kept her linguistic knowledge hidden. She knew most people only spoke one language, or maybe two, and realized it gave her an advantage, and better not to reveal everything about herself if she could avoid it.
However, about a week after her arrival, Eli surprised her with a collection of fairy tales written in German. She had suffered a visit from Warren La Buff the day before, which had sent her into an angry tirade. The man had purposely goaded her into a fight, and she ended up losing her temper during the meeting. She had sprayed him with a plethora of German insults and curses as he departed, then later regretted giving up that piece of herself.
At the time Eli presented his gift, she had remained stone faced at the offering; but inside she felt ecstatic, first because of the book itself, and second because it had come from him. No one would ever take Henry's place, but Eli had begun carving out his own spot in her heart, bit by bit. In a shy voice, she managed to suppress her grin while she admitted that she could, in fact, read the small tome, and offered a small thank you through the forced calm she projected.
After that, Tori completed a set of language tests, and she reluctantly demonstrated her skills as a polyglot. Eli seemed thrilled, and adopted French as their private language, fluent in it as well. This brought her a small amount of recompense; she loved sharing something private with her new friend, and they used the language often thereafter.
Tori's afternoons were spent in a variety of therapy sessions. During private meetings with Dr. Carlisle, he would probe her with questions about her life. At first, she was very averse to sharing any details with him, not wanting to talk about all the things that had happened to her—things she wanted to forget rather than face, like fear and shame.
Right away, he stumbled upon the name Henry and noticed she had a fondness for the man. Grasping it like a desperate straw, he kept returning to her most tender topic until she caved and began to share more about the man who had been most like a father to her.
Henry Morgan was not an exceedingly tall man, only standing a tad over six foot, and a lean two-hundred-twenty pounds. He had a muscular build and kept himself fit for his age, often joining Brian and Tori in their morning regimen. He never interfered in Brian's directives, as that was the younger man’s role to play, but he seemed to enjoy watching as their young charge learned and grew strong in her physical fitness routines.
Henry had sandy brown hair, at least the parts of it that had not gone grey were, and honey brown eyes. His complexion held a deep tan from years in the sun, which had caused the delicate skin around his eyes to grow thin and wrinkled too soon. He also had a warm smile that always made her feel cared for, even in the darkest times she would face, at least for as long as he lived.
As she described him to the doctor, Tori felt a heavy ache deep in her chest. Henry had a strong voice, which he kept low when he spoke to her. His hands were large and leathery, but soft when he placed them on her. She would never have said that she loved him; he was her friend and her mentor. However, even she had to admit, he had stirred feelings within her no other man ever had, and she doubted ever would again.
Raising a Dragon
Tori had been with the Dragons for many years; longer than she could remember. They had educated her as a child; giving her the basics and knowledge she would need to function as a member of their team. During that time, Henry and three others were her caretakers and teachers. They remained at the camp with her full time, while the rest of the group came and went with the seasons.
Eddie, the leader of the traveling portion of their small society, treated the girl harshly. Tori admitted quietly, that she felt pleasure each time they rolled out of the camp, leaving her to her favorites.
As her primary guardian, Henry had been responsible for Tori’s daily needs. He saw to it that she ate, bathed, and had clean clothes to wear. Because of this, she felt safe in his arms, and would often sneak out of her bed to curl up next to him during the night. A few times, she went so far as to call him her ‘real daddy,’ which he emphatically denied and warned her not to say in front of any of the others.
Most of the time, he would send her back to her own hammock, but sometimes he would hold her in his arms and allow her to sleep there. The feel of his breath rising and falling comforted her as he blew warm air across the side of her head and the top of her ear, and she cherished the memory fondly for ever after.
While sharing Henry’s hammock, Tori would sleep with her back to his chest, and he would often drape his arm around her, his hand rubbing her stomach through the cloth or his thumb gently lifting her shirt to rub a small circle around her belly button to give a small tickle. She felt completely safe and accepted in that place.
It was a feeling that never carried over to any of the others, and she never cared to be that close to any of them, especially the man who claimed to be her father. As she grew older, she became aware that the group of men were playing a kind of tug of war, only Tori acted as the rope, being pulled in all directions as each man in the camp, especially Henry and Eddie, wanted to garner the lion’s share of her time and affection.
Each time the traveling portion of their group returned to the camp, Eddie grew more impatient and demanding of her time. She could see his brooding, evidently disappointed that she had grown taller, but still had not undergone any other changes. He intended to wait until she looked like a woman, and her body matched her age, before they promoted her to her next role within the group. Only then would they finalize her training and take her out of the camp.
The group seemed anxious because her maturity was so late in coming; late enough to become a cause for real concern. At one point, a heated discussion had taken place as to what should be done if it did not begin soon. With a fair amount of convincing and no alternative, Eddie had reluctantly agreed they would leave her in Henry’s charge one last time.
Visibly angry and disgusted things weren’t going as smoothly as he had planned, he drank himself into a stupor, and in a fit of drunken rage beat her soundly before leaving her that last time. This fact only made her all the more happy to see them roll out before the rainy season started, and to secretly hope he would never return.
Sadly, Eddie did return to the camp, and he seemed quite relieved, as did they all, to find she had finally begun to grow curves. Their bikes were stored for the last time, and the traveling group chose to remain in the camp. Soon, she would be ready to leave with them, after her skills were polished. Tori’s final training commenced, and her lessons bore down heavily upon her as Eddie taught her tactics for fighting, and schooled her in the use of a variety of weapons.
The camp filled of the men she mostly chose to avoid, and her training including things she did not understand or want to learn, Tori pushed to share the hammock with Henry more and more. She craved his company and the peace it gave her to be close to him, which he tried to deny her. Giving him her best wide-eyed gazes, her soft blue orbs enticed him to relent, and eventually his hammock became theirs.
For some time, she slept there to avoid the others, but eventually she began to have strange feelings and thoughts that made her question her own motives. Tori could feel her body changing, and loved the excited flutter that it gave her when Henry would lay his arm across her belly as he always had.
Now when Henry would stroke the line of her front, it caused her breath to quicken and become ragged. She had discovered two knots that had formed in her chest before the group had reunited, and they had grown into large mounds that required larger garments to hide. At the same time, a thin mat of hair sprang up to cover her delicate female folds of flesh.
Tori was becoming a woman, and her rush of hormones brought new challenges for her to face. She felt completely disgusted to discover exactly what being a woman e
ntailed, and mortified that she had to ask Henry for help with the issue. He took the news calmly and provided her with a book that explained all the details she needed to know. She became relieved that none of the others mentioned the occurrences, although she knew they were aware of her condition.
Of course, it was no wonder they had noticed the changes that had been taking place. Her swollen chest had forced her to take to wearing some of the men’s shirts to cover herself fully. They allowed her to do so as they seemed to enjoy her new look, albeit from a distance more or less. Of course, as everyone became accustomed to her shapeliness, things brewed below the surface, and everyone could tell their days in the camp were coming to an end.
Tori had begun to feel uncomfortable with the way the rest of the group watched her. Several times, she sensed being spied upon when she moved about the camp, especially when she bathed. She also became aware that the other men seemed to be looking for occasions to touch her, or press their bodies against her. This caused her a great deal of distress, and she found the new and unwanted advances almost frightening. She longed for things to be as they had always been, and yet as affected by the changes as the rest of the group.
At the time, Tori had been unaware that Eddie had forbidden any of the group to touch her, and Henry had no intention of going against the command. However, her lying with him in the darkness took its toll on them, as she often became anxiously aware of his hardened state as it pressed against her while he slept. The situation caused new and strange thoughts to rage inside her confused mind, and she loved the idea of his touching her, longing for him to explore her forbidden places.
The nights and days ran together for her, filled with yearning she could not understand and Henry refused to acknowledge. She felt tormented by his unwillingness to do anything more than provide her with books. Although they explained the process of her changing body, and despite the fact that she poured over them endlessly, they left her with more questions than they answered.
A New Life Series - Starter Kit Page 4