Arrows through Her Heart
Chapter One: Wheels, Tar, Stabilizer
by EntrancedCat
Daria and related characters and situations are the property of Viacom / MTV Networks. This work is strictly for the entertainment of Daria fans and not for any monetary or material gain whatsoever.
Many thanks to the meticulous beta-reader, northtreker, without whose help this story would be much weaker. Any errors of commission or omission, or passages you just plain don't like are strictly and solely the fault of the author.
"Guess we're going back about a thousand years now." Daria heard the jibe heartily spoken from behind her as she descended the wooden steps to Lawndale's archery range. She turned with an easy retort on her lips, "Get off the training wheels and have more fun."
She had a quiver-full of barbs to throw but the sight of her opponent brought her up short: a rare event for Daria Morgendorffer who had retained her sanity in the halls of Lawndale High by always having a ready and searing riposte on her tongue.
The man behind her was not the usual middle-aged duffer practicing for hunting season. He was youngish, about twenty-five and his thick blonde hair curled tightly. Languid Alice-blue eyes regarded her mildly. Daria thought that the semi-dazed look was deceptive: intelligence and quick wit lurked ready to observe and pounce. Muscles rippled beneath a light camouflage tee-shirt. Daria had to admit that on him the camo did not look pretentious at a suburban archery range about three months before anything worth hunting was in season. The man was well over six feet tall. Daria, at 5'2'', was standing two steps below him forcing her to gaze up at him.
"If you're planning on hunting in the middle of Lawndale," Daria suggested. "I propose you help my dad rid our pleasant, respectable neighborhood of those disreputable squirrel gangs."
"You can never get in too much practice. Excuse me, ma'am," he said. "I think we both want to get to the range." He touched the bill of his Browning baseball cap as he brushed past her, fake or real deference she could not tell.
Carrying a compound bow case, he strode to a twenty-yard lane. A couple of the aforesaid middle-aged duffers greeted him, calling him 'Jason' and 'Jace' and coming over to watch him open his bow case.
Daria ignored them, stepping up to a ten-yard station to warm up. She set her own tackle case down on one of the picnic tables which Lawndale conveniently provided. She effortlessly strung her short, Hungarian-style bow. She ran fingers along the string and decided another application of wax was not needed to protect the string from the elements.
She carefully hung her bow on the peg attached to the station's high 4x4 wooden post. She put five wooden arrows in the length of wide, bottom-closed PVC pipe which was bolted to the post to serve as a stationary quiver. Daria warmed up with stretching exercises.
The wind had been kicking up dust in the parking lot. In the depression where Lawndale had built the range the only sign of the wind was the green tops of the high, mature trees swaying on all four sides of the flat grassy range.
In a rare display of eco-awareness, Lawndale had nurtured dragonflies to keep the place from becoming mosquito hell. Several species gracefully darted and dipped for their prey. Daria doubted this eco-friendliness would have happened if the previous mayor had not been indicted for buying and applying cut-rate DDT.
She glanced over at the muted hubbub two stations over. Jason had extracted the skeletal compound bow from its case and was exhibiting it to the two men. She could not tell what they were so excited about, it looked like the usual monstrous assembly of wheels and doohickeys and knobs and string crissing and crossing. The only mildly unusual feature was that the bow was in black, a departure from the more common outdoorsy browns and greens.
Jason handed the black bow to one man who hefted it reverently.
"She sure is a beaut and so light," the bald, skinny man said and passed it on to his heftier friend. "When are you guys gonna market it?"
"Now guys," Jason responded. "You know that's secret intel. I needed to get away from all the computers and spreadsheets back at the office and do some monkey-testing. Get a feel for it outside."
Daria had quickly lost interest in their goings-on. She said, "Clear!" in a loud voice signaling her intention to start shooting her bow. The three barely glanced up, reflexively saying, "Clear. We're good." She arranged four wooden arrows in her right hand and set one shaft on the string. A bit over seven seconds later she again announced, "Clear."
Five arrows were sticking in a tight grouping in the center of the target. Two older men were looking gobsmacked at her and the target. Jason was regarding her with surprise and curiosity and some amusement. Daria looked over and smiled her inscrutable Mona Lisa smile, "Do that with a wheel bow."
In response, Jason moved a couple lanes over to the forty-yard butt. He nocked an arrow in the mysterious black bow and set his wrist release clip on the string. Jason gave an initial heaving pull and held the compound bow steady as he sighted his long shot. He hooked index finger over the wrist release trigger and fired. A heartbeat later the arrow was quivering in the center of the butt. Jason turned and gave Daria a lazy grin, "Do that with a paleo bow."
Jason looked over Daria's head and announced, "And speaking of paleo, now we are going back 100,000 years."
Daria heard someone walking lightly down the steps. The man descending the steps was carrying a beautifully finished longbow. Judging from the grain and soft, honey-blonde color, Daria guessed it was made of osage orange. Over his shoulders was slung a grey leather case. Under one arm, he carried a small deer-shaped target, the kind she had seen people use to practice shooting with broadhead arrows.
Unlike Jason's developed physique, this man was wiry and rangy. He stood over six feet but not quite as tall as Jason. He moved smoothly but in peculiar fast-response twitches. In a fight she was not sure whom she would take the Vegas odds on: him or Jason. "A fight?" Daria thought. "Am I turning into Quinn...thinking about guys fighting over...uh...in front of me?"
He wore a plain black tee and his jeans were tucked into Doc Martens. His black eyes reminded her of the hematite necklace sister Quinn wore during a particularly vicious Lawndale High popularity putsch because someone had told her that hematite would protect her against the evil thoughts of the envious. He looked at her arrows and Daria saw in his eyes the pure, beautiful, sharp obsidian she had handled in introductory geology class at Raft. He wore his straight black hair longish, held in a rubber-binder.
"Tight grouping," he nodded appreciatively at her arrows and bow.
"Thanks," Daria stammered.
Jason greeted the newcomer, "Hey, Trent. You finished another bow? Great. It's beautiful."
"Trent!? Eep." Daria continued to stammer. What? She'd stopped crushing on a different Trent a long time ago.
"Yeah, Trent," Jason continued as both men turned to her. "I have a feeling Trent and I are missing something. Like your name, for instance. But to start, I'm Jason Koenig and this guy with the beautiful, though obsolete, bow is Trent Lockher."
Daria had the feeling that some sort of social convention was required of her, maybe her name? "Daria Morgendorffer," she got out.
Trent stuck out a long-fingered hand and shook. Jason laughed utterly without guile. "'Daria Morgendorffer','' he repeated. "That's enough name for the three of us. Trent, you've got to see her shoot. Daria, you've got to show Trent what you just showed me and the guys?"
"I wasn't really out to 'show' you anything, but, sure, I can be the performing monkey." Daria checked that the two other archers were just watching the show playing out in front of them, then retrieved her arrows. She again cleared her mind, held four arrows fanned out in her right hand, one on the string and snapped all five into a tight pattern in a shade over seven seconds.
"Bravo, bravo," Trent applauded sincerely. "That's amazing, I heard of fast shooting like that but never seen it nor had any idea how it was done. How did you learn to do that?"
"Brava," she corrected drily. "You cheer a woman with 'Brava'." She ignored Trent's crestfallen look.
"A tall, goofy-looking Asian guy taught me." Daria smiled as she remembered Tom Zhang and how he once described himself. "He's on the Crestmore archery team and, really, I am slow at it. Tom's much faster than me and he says his teacher is even quicker. I don't practice often enough because your hand hurts like hell to hold arrows like that."
Daria caught a sweet, piney scent as Trent swung up one flap and another sideways to open his case. It was a quiver as she guessed. He took out several homemade arrows, fletched beautifully with heads of colored glass, obsidian and flint. She had seen photos of primitive arrows but nothing like these. The arrow heads were held in place by whitish cord she thought was sinew and small dabs of a black substance.
"You made all this?" she asked.
"Except for the bow string," Trent said sheepishly as though having a modern Dacron string took away credit for all the skill and effort he had put in. "Haven't quite got that part down yet but working on it. I sell bows and arrows to folks who appreciate good, traditional workmanship but don't have time to do it themselves. I need to give this bow a final test before handing her off."
He showed her the glass-headed arrows. "These are tipped with special high-quality glass I got from the trash outside Lawndale U's art department. The best I've knapped so far; I'm still perfecting that skill too. I bet you know what sinew is and I cooked down birch bark to get the tar for adhesion."
"Trent's too modest," Jason put in. "He's one of the best archers in Lawndale and makes these beautiful bows for people who don't want to join the twenty-first century."
Daria was not sure what to make of Jason's back-handed compliments but Trent was apparently used to it. "Jace, if archery is to get popular again we gotta go back to the traditional equipment. Not saying everyone has to make their own gear but people can get more involved than just tinkering with their Allen wrenches on their wheel bows." He nodded at the black machine hanging on the post.
"But you have to agree these are superior hunting weapons," Jason asserted stroking the black bow.
Trent shook his head, "Might as well just carry a 12-gauge or .30-06. Plenty of people take deer or bigger game with these bows. You just gotta learn to stalk and take careful shots you know you can make, not pot shots from fifty yards."
Just then Jason again looked up and announced, "Hold on, now we have the four best archers in Lawndale—if not the state—here all at once."
Daria barely noted his compliment to her as she heard an even lighter tread than Trent's. She knew she might regret turning around to be tongue-tied again if previous trends were any indication of future performance. But she turned and beheld a tall woman, slightly older than herself descending the steps.
The newcomer looked at the three of them with mild curiosity. Blue eyes, black eyes and now eyes that were…blue? Yes, blue and a blue that defied her writer's powers of description. Daria's best friend Jane had alarmingly blue eyes, fiery blue-hot blue, blue as a Crayola blue crayon straight from the box blue eyes. This woman's eyes made Daria want to lie in prairies of wild-flowers to find blues to hold up against her cheek for comparison.
The newcomer's long straw-colored hair was gathered in a ponytail and secured with two sets of blue and white love-in-Tokyo hair beads. A comfortable light-grey track suit hung on a slender body.
She was carrying two big tackle bags, more equipment than most archers took to the range. She nodded at Trent and Jason giving Daria a bit more of a smile. Setting her sights on the far lane she strode past everyone.
The newcomer opened her bags on a picnic table. She assembled a three-legged stand and then carefully put together a red-limbed Hoyt recurve bow with a sight and long red aluminum stabilizer. "She's a competitive archer?" Daria wondered. Was she trying for the Olympics?
The new-comer stretched herself and was soon taking well-aimed shots at the 70-meter Olympic butt. Daria was entranced by her form. She admired the archer's fluid draw, firm anchoring and her sure release. The round red stabilizer dipped gracefully in the her follow-through.
Everyone got back to the business of being at the range. Daria was shooting at a twenty-yard station drawing one arrow at a time from her hip-quiver. Trent was meditatively shooting an arrow or two at his deer-target. Jason was shooting at different yardages and making notes.
Jason noticed the woman was taking a break and called, "Kat, come over and meet Daria. She has something to show you."
Daria reluctantly hung up her bow and turned as the archer called, 'Kat' came over. Jason attempted the introductions, "Daria Morgendorf this is Kat Timmyse…vich…vic, ahhh?"
"Ekaterina Timofeyeva," the women pronounced in a slight accent which Daria figured was Russian. She shook hands and looked deep into Daria's hazel eyes, "Call me 'Kat' although I bet you could remember my name better than Jason and these other bums."
"Daria Morgendorffer," Daria said loudly glancing at Jason and forcing herself to not pull another Trent-induced stammer.
"Cool name!" Kat exclaimed. "What's Jason so excited about you showing me?"
For an answer Daria again placed five arrows in the butt with a speed which still amazed everyone watching.
"Wonderful!" Kat exclaimed and hugged her tightly. Daria was suddenly aware the taller woman was not wearing a bra beneath her thin track suit and tee.
She felt her face getting red. Kat held her at arm's length. "Oh, don't be so modest, Daria. That's some of the best shooting I've ever seen."
"Um…thanks," Daria gently broke away but not before getting caught again in Kat's blue eyes. Kat's eyes canted like her sister's Vietnamese friend Tiffany.
"I really like to watch you shot," she told Kat. "Are you aiming for an Olympic berth?" "Aiming? Berth? My God that sounded stupid," she berated herself.
Kat turned her eyes to the blue sky. "Yes, Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker help me. Next month I have big competition to see if I can go on to US Olympic team qualifier. Hey, you'll find me here most every day from now on when I'm not at my boring data entry job. Come, let's shoot together, Daria! With Trent and Jason and every other guy there is way too much testosterone around here. I need another girl with me."
"That would be great," Daria tried to maintain a conversation flow. "Speaking of boring jobs, I have to go get ready for mine." She stood on tiptoe and hugged Kat. Kat gave her a big smile then returned to her practice.
As Daria was packing up Trent came over. "Hey, I'll see you around. I'd love to have you teach me your fast technique."
"Sure, Trent. I'm sure I'll see you again here," Daria returned a goodbye wave from Jason and quickly made her way up the steps.
She walked slowly along the tree-shaded, woodchip-strewn path to the parking lot. Sitting in her car she pondered just what was going on. She was usually the most confident person within any ten-mile radius, but meeting these three today had unsettled her.
"They're just archers," she told herself, "Kat even wears a bucket hat. But Jason's muscles, Trent's hands, Kat's eyes...Kat?! Why am I thinking about her? I've seen plenty of women go braless. And they're all only a few years older than me and who cares if they're all so much taller. Is it just because I'm been without a boyfriend for a year?"
Somehow Daria pushed it all from her mind. She always gave driving her utmost concentration to avoid hitting any dogs and driving was a welcome diversion that afternoon. Her job on the closing shift at the mall's "It's a Nutty, Nut World" took her mind off the archery range and its denizens.
She got into bed that night fearful of whatever dreams would come, sure of a
restless time before falling asleep. Daria, however, fell into a deep sleep immediately. For a moment only tar, wheels, glass arrows, bows, love-in-Tokyos, hands, faces, and most of all eyes rolled through her dreamscape, then she sank into dreamless slumber. She woke up the next morning refreshed and satisfied that the past day was a fluke in her otherwise boring summer at home after freshman year.
