Cultivating Plants

A few days had passed since Aloe's 'meeting' with Rani. Even when the scribe of commoners hadn't uttered a single word of it – not even to Lulu, who had obviously clued in what had unfolded on the emir's bedchamber – the palace knew of the events the next day.

The details the snake-tongues muttered were scamp, but they were juicy enough to be uttered, nonetheless. The plot, of course, talked about how the scribe of commoners had gifted herself to her liege – for lack of better words - instead of how she had sacrificed herself for her maid.

After some subterfuge, Aloe discovered that most rumors were started by a maid who had seen her with Nesrine and Lulu in the bath, with her body wet not by water but by sex, many hickeys across the body, and an inflamed breast with teeth marks.

It would have been easy not only to send the maid to the street but also to enforce some sort of punishment for spreading rumors that could affect the emir.

So easy it would have been, but Aloe decided against it. Word would get out at some point or another as this was, unfortunately, not a one-night fling. And dismissing a maid would only bring the events to the public eye.

The scribe could only find relief that the emir had yet to call her again to her bedchamber.

If there had to be rumors, Aloe preferred to be the prostitute than the rapist people could make out of her if she 'admitted' to reaping.

Prostitutes were, in her opinion, people needlessly repudiated. If there was a need for a certain service and people actively sought it, then who were they to shun the workers who provided it?

More than once, Lulu had asked for details, but Aloe shut her down every instance. Surprisingly enough, the people who insisted the most weren't her personal guard and maid, but her assistant scribes. Fayruz and Idris showed their bewilderment and worry at the snake-tongues whispers in plenty.

"Are you alright?" The female assistant asked yet again.

"No matter how many times you ask, my answer will not change, Fayruz." Aloe voiced out impassively. "I will not talk about it."

"I just want to know if you are fine, Aloe." Such had been the following days, with Fayruz acting like a concerned mother.

I hope Mirah doesn't hear of this… What could she do? Aloe was aware that the housewife wasn't exactly sound of mind with sultanzade-related issues. Oh heavens, if Aya ever hears it… The scribe felt her heart fracture ever-so-slightly.

"Leave her alone, Fayruz," Idris interjected. "You are only making her remember it."

Aloe gritted her teeth at the words of the male assistant. Not because the memories pained her, but quite the opposite. The remembrance was warm and pleasant, which made it hate herself even more. There was one positive outcome, though, and that was that the memories were so potent and recent that overshadowed what she had experimented with at the hands of the princess' mother.

Much like alcohol, Aloe had, unknowingly, drowned her dark fears. And also, much like the wine, she wasn't sure if continuing to indulge in it was a good idea.

She had traded a curse for another.

"But I must inquire about this, if you allow me." Idris turned to face Aloe, and the scribe nodded at him. "Has the… Her Highness called for you again."

"No, she has not." Aloe sternly added. "Now, I do not want any further que-"

The door of the office swung wide open, cutting the scribe's words with the clatter. At the doorframe, one Naila Asina stood with a pissed expression.

"Everyone out." She commanded. "Now!"

Fayruz and Idris didn't question the young princess' orders and complied without a fuss. Lulu staggered for a moment, but an attentive gaze of the sultanzade was enough to make her aware that she shouldn't stay in the office. The maid apologized as she left the room and closed the door behind her.

"May I ask what this ruckus is about, scribe Naila?" Aloe questioned her with a pleasant smile without raising her voice.

"Why the fuck must I use my time on you?" The sultanzade sputtered with a thunderous slap on the desk.

"Excuse me?" The scribe tilted her head in perplexity.

"Your deal with Rani." She clarified. "She has sent ME to train YOU."

"I see… and what is the issue?"

"Why should dealings between you two affect me?" Naila pouted and Aloe was abruptly reminded of the princess' age.

"You should voice out your complaints to the emir, not me. I am not the one who has specified your help."

"No, you have done it." Her amber eyes shone in irritation. "You have requested training in Nurture, and there is no way in heaven that useless woman could ever train you, so obviously the task befalls onto me."

Rani had been the one who had proposed the training, but Aloe couldn't say that. Mainly because she could already tell Naila would have none of it.

"I apologize that you feel that way, but it is not my right to correct such a decision, but Rani's."

The sultanzade was smoldering by now, but instead of combusting, she rolled her eyes and sat on the armchair in front of the desk.

"Let us get started," Naila said. "The longer we take to begin, the more time we will waste."

Aloe nodded. "So what will we train, tutor Naila?"

The muscled princess buffed at the title but presented no verbal complaint.

"Speed." She taciturnly responded.

"Uh…" The scribe presented her doubts. "I mean not to offend you, but how will I be able to train speed in my current state?"

"At what point in history has a person stated that one requires legs to train speed?" Naila stated matter-of-factly.

The commoner didn't enjoy much her smugness but didn't contest the claim. The sultanzade took a trio of cups and a wooden ball out of seemingly nowhere. Aloe was wise enough to not inquire about that.

"This is how you will train." Naila placed the cups on the desk, leaving the ball on top of the middle one.

"Cups?" Aloe frowned. "I am sure that there are better ways to train speed than… cups."

"I see." The cultivator dedicated her a dead stare. "You are too good for cups, I see. I get it."

Then she took out a knife and stabbed the desk with it. Aloe jumped on her seat at the impact, intimidated by the edged weapon. Before the scribe could utter a word, Naila grabbed the knife and extended her palm on the desk. What the sultanzade did next drained the blood out of the petite woman.

With outstanding viciousness, Naila started stabbing her hand in quick succession. A closer inspection showed her that the princess was actually stabbing the gaps between her fingers, shifting between them without even looking. Naila just stabbed and stabbed as she locked her eyes with Aloe's.

The scribe of commoners recognized the game as one that soldiers and drunkards played, one that more than not ended with lost digits. Yet such a game could truly be considered just that, a game, in contrast to the movements of the sultanzade.

Her knife-wielding hand moved so fast that it became a blur, clearly boasting the speed stance. But in that maelstrom of danger and angst, no cuts reached Naila's fingers.

In fact, the one who seemed to be suffering the most was Aloe at the sight. She almost wanted to puke from her dismay.

"What is your opinion on the cups?" Naila said with a flat tone, her voice mostly drowned by the furious stabbings that didn't cease.

"Cups? I love cups!" Aloe raised her hands defensively. "There is nothing that I hate about them! Please bring them to me! Please." She added at the end.

The sultanzade's intimidation was more than successful, for Aloe knew that if she tried that game, the danger wasn't another person, but herself. And trust in herself was something that she very much lacked.

"Let us begin then." Without hesitation, the princess slapped the desk and stacked the cups together. The gesture was lighting fast, in a single blink, the line of cups had become a tower. "In which one is the ball?"

"Uhhh, I do not believe the game is played like that." The commoner pointed at the tower.

"In which cup is the ball at?" Nonplussed, Naila reiterated.

"Middle one?" Aloe replied with not a spec of certainty in her voice.

"Wrong." The sultanzade gutturally and powerfully answered. For a moment the scribe expected the girl to hit her or something, but she only removed her hands from the tower. "It has never been inside." And revealed the ball in her hands.

That's very much how the game isn't played. Aloe didn't voice out her retort this time.

"May I plead on how this is supposed to activity to help me train the speed stance?" Confusion and cheap tricks were the name of the game, and the scribe was tired of calling out names.

"As I have said before, no one said legs are needed to train speed." With a swoop of hands, Naila collapsed the tower and left the cups once more assembled in a line. "And to expand on that further, what we are training here is not the stances – not many stances can be trained, to begin with – but your body."

"So with this exercise… I am supposed to grow used to the cadence of the speed stance?"

"Yes." Aloe was actually jesting and hadn't expected such a taciturn affirmation from the girl. "The only challenge with the speed stance is that once the cultivator has too much vitality, it becomes virtually impossible to move without eating sand. You need to acclimatize your body to such speeds, and of course, the earlier you begin, the less sand-eating you will do. It does not need mention that if you forgo constant training in the speed stance, it will become a useless one as it will kill you faster than you can blink."

"I… can imagine that." Even with a vitality deposit twice as big as an adult, Aloe had eaten a lot of sand on the oasis. She feared what would happen now that her vitality was twice of that.

"Fifty percent of that training is making your body survive that speed if you ever trip. The other fifty percent is making your mind process such speeds."

The previously moronic exercise now seemed genius in comparison. Not only there was quick wit involved in shuffling cups, but a sleight of hand that became more and more complex the higher one's vitality was.

"So what am I to do?" Aloe inquired.

"We are going to shuffle cups in turns," Naila explained. "During mine, you will need to concentrate and guess the correct cup. During yours, you will need to shuffle the cups as fast as possible without tumbling a cup or losing the ball."

"That is all?" Even then, the scribe had expected more nuisance.

"You think it will be easy?" The buff girl pushed the cups onto her alongside the ball. "Please, be my guest and shuffle these cups with speed on."

Aloe hesitated to pick up the cups with the smugness that the princess was displaying, but they were nothing more than normal wood cups. Ball too.

"One moment, please." The scribe apologized. "I have not trained much in my speed stance, so it takes me a few minutes to get it active."

Naila chuckled at the admission, more than amused at the fact that she needed so much time to don a stance. Or so was what her expression betrayed.

The commoner didn't let herself be affected by the princess' antics and with a heavy inspiration, she started shifting her flow of vitality to activate her haste internal infusion.

They spent the next minutes in silence.

The moment Aloe was done, her hands trembled with giddiness. Her body suddenly infused with artificially hyperactivity.

She wouldn't let herself be played by the technically-still-sixteen-year-old girl and placed her hands on her cups. The scribe started slow, shuffling cups next to one another. Easy. Not the first time I've done it. She decided to pick up the speed and shuffle like those con artists that sat on the bazaar that promised to double your coin if you guessed the right cup.

Three shuffles later, as her hands became a blur to herself, a piece of wood was shot from her desk at the speed of an arrow.

"Oops?" Aloe mumbled with petrified hands in place as the launched cup still clattered on the ground.

"Now you know why the cups are made out of wood." If Naila was amused by the scribe's blunder, she didn't show it off.

What followed were two grueling hours of cup shuffling. Aloe's arms became puddles of ooze by the end, wet noodles that were incapable of shuffling anymore. Only half of the time did she manage to guess Naila's cups – which was only slightly better than the one in three from guessing randomly – but the sultanzade hadn't failed once in her predictions.

Whether it was out of her passion for growing stronger, or just the spite of losing this badly to the little sultanzade, Aloe started shuffling cups every day since then.