fandomhighdorms | The Salle, Wednesday Late Afternoon

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The Salle, Wednesday Late Afternoon

Look, this time Tahiri had made it back to the school grounds perfectly conscious of where she was and why she was going there, thanks. Someone had a belated birthday present to receive. She'd ~~handwavily~~ called Dinah to meet her up here, then stopped by the weapons locker to retrieve the two gaderffii she'd spent the past couple of weeks' spare time building (and wondering if it was cheating that the junkyard had plenty of scrap metal for such a project when it was much harder to scrounge up the right kind of metal back on Tatooine). One of them was a traditional style Tusken gaderffii, and the other, the one she'd made for Dinah, had been much more heavily modified with blunted fins and a rounded tip where the blades and spearhead should be, and no sharp spike protruding from the cudgel end (which had been shaped into more of a hook).

She propped that one up against the wall and went through a few basic moves with her own, re-acquainting herself with the heft and balance of the weapon. She'd learned to fight with one when she was five, but it had been years since she'd had to use one and it took some remembering.

Still, Tahiri couldn't help grinning. This was familiar, and reassuring.

[OOC: For Dinah, but open like a salle.]

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Dinah had been jogging around the island, thinking about ways to map it after Criminal Justice, until she got Tahiri's call. So she was already plenty warmed up when she arrived. She stopped at the entrance to the salle, and watched Tahiri go through a few moves before saying, "Hi! Wow, is that it? You made it yourself?"

Tahiri set the gaderfii down and nodded. "There you are. Yeah, this is it. Well, mine, anyway. Yours is over -- hang on." She jogged over to retrieve it and held it out to Dinah with both hands and an almost formal cast to her posture. "Happy belated birthday. Like I told you, I changed up the design a lot for you."

Considering her own looked like it could poke you in about seven ways and draw blood, that was an understatement.

"Thank you!" Dinah said gratefully, both for the weapon and the changes. Bouncing on her toes, she made a couple experimental staff passes, and started grinning. "I like the weight. And the balance is good." A swipe upward, then down. "And yeah, I don't know that I would've been comfortable wielding one like yours."

"I didn't think so." Tahiri stood back -- well back, just in case -- and watched for a moment or two. "You can still do a pretty good bit of damage with that one, though. No, you want to hold it a little more like this," she added, demonstrating.

Dinah readjusted her grip, hands farther apart, then nodded thoughtfully as the swing got easier to complete. "More stabby and sticky, less whappy?" she asked, smile teasing.

"Yeah." Tahiri, who was taking this a little more seriously, went through a couple of moves at quarter speed to illustrate what she meant. "Even with the way I made that one, it's the ends that do the real damage. And don't be afraid to shift your grip down toward one end if you need the extra leverage. They're not just weapons for the Sand People -- they're used to dig, or climb, or whatever you need to use them for, really."

"Walking stick as well as stalking stick," Dinah said, examining it again, and thinking of at least two or three ways it could be useful out in the Preserve. "Awesome." She imitated the moves, putting aside glee in favor of learning the weapon, and then frowned at it, thinking. "Does it work well when thrown, or is it the wrong balance for that?"

"I wouldn't, if I were you," Tahiri said, "but if you really had to I guess you could do that. Well, you could TK it at somebody if you had to. The Tuskens don't part easily with their gaderfii, though. It's hard to scrounge up enough metal for them in the Jundland Wastes."

"How did you learn how to make one?" Dinah asked, curious. Tahiri usually never talked about Tatooine except to say some variation of 'hate sand, hate shoes, never going back, can't make me.' "Did everyone learn how?"

Tahiri nodded. "The first rule of life in the desert is survival. And the Tuskens take their traditions seriously, and this is one of them. Sliven made me my first one, and taught me how to use it . . . like he taught my father," she added almost as an afterthought.

She cracked a grin. "Plus I did some extra research."

"Yeah?" Dinah grinned back, and started experimenting with her gaderffii again, swinging it like a bat, then using it in a way that might block a sword or knife. "And who's Sliven?"

"My adoptive father. He's the one who took me into the tribe after my parents died." Tahiri almost felt like she should amend that with 'the first one,' but decided not to complicate matters, no matter how much Han and Leia seemed to fill that role these days. She watched critically as Dinah experimented, then nodded. "Yeah, that's more like it. Just remember you can't use it exactly like a staff."

"Got it," Dinah said, nodding. It was a simpler weapon than a sword, but a lot easier to carry around than a full-sized staff. She could probably even get some decent use out of it in New Gotham, or use it like she would an eskrima stick if she had to, even though it was a little heavy for that. "Is this steel and aluminum?" She stopped experimenting to look at the seams of the thing. "Did you weld this? It's really cool."

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