Babble
"Never point a gun at anything you aren't willing to shoot," Julia held Julius' arms up while he pointed a derringer at a metal target, "breathe in, and fire just before you breathe out. Fill the empty space with your bullet."
Julius took a deep breath, aimed with one eye down the derringer's barrel, and pulled the trigger. The hollow chamber clicked.
"Did I do it?" he looked back at Julia expectantly. Julia smiled.
"You let your breath go a little too soon. You want to hold it in just a little longer," she told him. He frowned, "You'll get it eventually," she smiled warmly. He smiled back at her.
Julius was five years old, nearly six. He still took his asthma medication on a daily basis, which was interfering with his combat drills in class. The young boys and girls of Hecate's school trained to fight with simple weapons, mostly sticks of varying length. Facsimiles of swords and daggers and spears. Julia thought it was old-fashioned, but a good place to start. Older children who showed proficiency with simple melee weapons would go on to train with firearms, but because of Julius' respiratory problems it was unlikely he would receive firearm training.
Since the night Atia had come to Julia for help with her son, Julia had taken a personal interest in helping Julius. She had become something of a second mother to him. She babysat for Atia, took Julius to class in the mornings, asked him about his day in the afternoon, and fed him. She was there when he first learned to walk, and she taught him his first word. She was pissed he wouldn't get the chance to learn how to fire a gun, so she was going to teach him herself.
Every training session began with the same phrase. "Never point a gun at anything you aren't willing to shoot." So far they hadn't trained with live ammunition, to lessen the risk of injury. Julia just wanted him to grow comfortable with guns.
"It's heavy," Julius complained about the derringer when Julia stopped holding his arms up.
"Life is heavy," Julia responded automatically. Julia found herself often just repeating what Julius said back to him in nonsensical ways. She speculated very little of what she actually said to Julius meant anything at all, and fleetingly wondered if he thought everything she said to him was meaningless, but didn't dwell on it much. She decided maybe everything she said really was meaningless. In this way he humbled her. Even if he considered all her nonsense profound she knew better. Her wisdom was meaningless and her orders pointless. All the same she felt it was her duty to try and instill in him values she found attractive and moral. So she continued to babble, hoping it would have a positive effect on her young charge.
"Practice a couple more times without my help. Just hold it up," Julia lifted his arms again when he dropped them, keeping both hands firmly wrapped around the grip, "and pretend like you're shooting a gecko, okay? Breathe in, shoot, breathe out."
Nothing was more precious and valuable than young innocent life, as nothing was more rare in the wasteland. Julia held a fragile gem in her hands and she had no idea what to do with it, eternally scared her scarred and calloused hands would mangle it beyond all beauty. She was so hard and jagged, all sharp angles and hard steel that she struggled to be soft for her surrogate son. The wasteland is cruel enough, she figured. She might as well try to be kind and caring. To her, kind and caring was teaching Julius to fire a pistol, but not loading it until she felt he was ready.
It made perfect sense to her. She and her brother had been taught to use weapons as toddlers. The wasteland was a dangerous place, and learning good weapons skills was necessary. Atia, however, had a different opinion.
Julia saw Atia furiously march through the training yard towards her and Julius. Atia was angrier than she'd ever been in her life. She marched quickly towards Julia and her son and snatched Julius away lightning-fast, so that Julius dropped the derringer on the ground.
"Just what do you think you're doing with my son?" she yelled at Julia. Julia recoiled and blinked. She answered before fully understanding what was happening.
"Teaching him proper weapon handling," she said. Atia's eyebrows danced in surprise at her bluntness. Julia composed herself a little more and offered a weak excuse, "Everyone needs to learn proper weapon handling."
Atia realized the gulf between her and Julia's lives and expectations. Her expression slackened and she released a deep sigh. "Julia, you can't teach my son to fire a pistol."
"Why?" Julia asked uncharacteristically innocent, "I learned to wield a knife at that age. A derringer isn't much more dangerous. Besides, it's unloaded," she said churlishly.
"You can't teach my son to fire a pistol," Atia repeated, much more slowly and firmly, "He's just a young boy. This," she picked up the derringer in her hand, waving the barrel at Julia, "he probably thinks this is a toy. What happens when he wants to play with a toy that's loaded, and fires it at his friends?"
"S'not a toy," Julius muttered grumpily into his mother's ear.
"Proper weapon safety means proper respect for the weapon," now it was Julia's turn to be angry. She pulled the derringer out of Atia's hand by the barrel, "I'm teaching your son to respect and fear pistols. Would you rather he be sheltered and incapable of wielding a pistol safely like you?"
"What is wrong with you? Don't teach my son to use guns," Atia reiterated. Julia became scared. Teaching Julius weapon handling was one of the few things she felt capable of. Julia was often much busier and less nurturing than Atia, and teaching Julius to use a gun was one of the few opportunities that Julia had to bond with him.
"Look, Atia, they're already teaching him how to use knives and spears and clubs in class. You can't shelter him forever, it just isn't how things are done. I promise I won't teach him anymore firearms, but please let me give him some extra knife training. I promise he'll be safe," Julia pleaded.
Atia considered her proposal. She could see the need and the fear behind Julia's desire to train her son in combat, and acknowledged that she would rather have Julia do it than anyone else. She trusted Julia, and wanted her to have a hand in raising Julius. She relented.
"Alright, no guns, but knives and spears are alright," she told Julia, "I trust you."
They looked into each other's eyes for awhile, Julia resting her hand on Atia's shoulder. Atia set Julius down and they embraced, then took him home together.