The morning was cold and dark, and Valeria was already outside.
Lucius had started waking up before she knocked on the door, which was either progress or his body had simply accepted its new reality and stopped protesting it differently.
He laced his boots, drank water, and went out into the pre-dawn grey where she was standing in the cleared ground east of the cottage with her arms crossed and her eyes on the mountain line.
He stopped in front of her and waited.
She looked at him for a moment. Then she said, "Hit me."
His brow furrowed with confusion. "Huh?"
"It's the usual drill. Just hit me."
He came forward fast, and she moved. His strike found nothing, and he reset. Standard opening to every session since the road.
He had stopped being surprised by the miss and started treating it as useful information, where he aimed, where she'd gone, what the gap between those two things said about his read of her movement.
