Just what does the enchanting, indolent and sociopath-in-training Brigid, the daughter of mad Fiona of Emerald, do when she’s at Castle Emerald? Be alternately indolent and industrious, enchanting and introspective, and most certainly unconcerned with any thoughts except her own pleasure and her own interests, Its more than just her nature, its her way of surviving her mother’s mad Court and her mother’s mad plans for her.
5:30 AM
Brigid drew back the silken sheets of her bed. The sunlight brightened her room through the Eastern windows, and she rose to greet the sun.
She slipped on a loose silk gi that hung on a stand next to the bed, reveling in the sensual sensation of the cool slippery softness of the fabric rippling across her naked body. The gi was a gift from an admirer, made of deep emerald green silk with intricate knotwork designs in bright gold thread along the front and sides.
Stepping to an open area of her bedroom, she began a series of warm-up exercises, limbering and stretching her tall, supple body.
After thirty minutes, she began the next phase of her morning exercise. She swept her arms together before her, crossing them at the wrist. Standing perfectly straight and still, balancing perfectly on the balls of her feet; eyes closed, mind at rest, breathing slowly and deeply, she held the pose for several seconds.
Brigid believed that to perfect the discipline of the mind, it was necessary to perfect the discipline of the body. She had so mastered the application of several diverse mental and physical disciplines that she could and did astonish the incredulous (and exclusively male) yogis who had thought that a mere female was incapable of mastering such disciplines. Many of the disciplines she learned involved such unpleasant aspects as personal denial and even physical pain, but she found the gentle aspects of the “soft” martial arts to be far more in tune with her personality, and far more pleasurable than the other disciplines she had learned.
When she had reached the stillness of her center, she began the next segment of her exercises. She began with the form of Flower Opening to the Sun, her body slowly moving through the forms with a fluid grace, never hesitating between one form and the next, always in motion, yet projecting a stillness that transcended the motion. For over thirty minutes she moved gracefully, transforming the martial arts forms into dance, transforming the dance into art. She turned and swayed, struck and blocked, attacked and defended, moving to a music that only she could hear. At last, she finished with the form of Water Flowing into the Cup, returning to the position that she had started in.
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