Jocelyn Klaes || Hel (tohelandback) wrote in paxletalelogs, @ 2017-06-08 13:17:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | bastet, hel, loki |
Josie and the Pussycat
Who: Jocelyn and Max, then Jocelyn and Nishka
What: The newest student arrives early to self-defense class.
Where: Pax Letale’s Gym, then Apartment 201
When: backdated to May 22nd
Jocelyn waited in the gym area for the self-defense teacher to arrive. She was early, but that was by design - she wanted to have a chance to speak with the instructor before class started. She wandered around the area for a bit, before finally sitting down on the ground to start stretching.
Her day had started with a bit of a panic, as she realized that none of her old exercise outfits fully covered the scarring on her upper torso and arm. She hadn’t regularly gone to the gym since the attack - and hadn’t thought to replace anything prior to moving to California. A trip to the store had fixed that, and had even located a foundation makeup that wouldn’t run from the sweating she expected to be doing this afternoon.
Max arrived with a duffle bag slung over one shoulder not long after, humming some peppy tune to herself as she headed over to the class area. “Hey!” she greeted the new girl on the floor and doing a few stretches. “I’m Max; are you here for the class? If not, you’re welcome to join,” she added with a smile and a once-over. She was small and young, and immediately triggered the protective ‘you need to learn to defend yourself’ instinct that seemed to be innate in Max. She’d had the same feeling the first time she met Isobel, and now the woman was a regular.
She set her bag down against the wall and then started pulling mats off the pile nearby, laying them over the hard floor to prepare for class.
“Actually, I am,” Jocelyn replied with a smile as she stood up and moved to help lay out the mats. “Here for class, I mean. My name is Jocelyn - I just moved in a few weeks ago.”
She lifted a mat from the pile, and started to walk it over towards Max. “Actually, I came a bit early, because I wanted to talk to you before we started.”
Max paused in lifting the next mat, looking up at her instead. “Ohh, okay,” she said with a pleasant smile. She’d have to get Jocelyn to fill out their form for new students, but she’d get to that later. “What can I do for you?” she asked her, looking her over a little more carefully.
“I just wanted to warn you that I’m not sure if I’ll be able to make it through the whole class. I was-” attacked was the word she couldn’t bring herself to say, and so she hesitated, hand moving unconsciously to her neck as she searched for the right word. She took a deep breath and started again. “I was in the hospital for most of the past year, and I’m...well, I guess I’m not sure how good my stamina is these days.”
Max smiled at her, relieved that it seemed to be something relatively simple. “Don’t worry about it,” she assured her, “now that I know I can keep an eye on you in class, we won’t push you beyond what you can handle. I actually have a form you need to fill out before class that asks for details like that, if you have any conditions we need to know about to make sure you’re safe here.” She thought of Nish having to be benched for a few weeks until she got the all clear from her doctor because of her heart - she was back in to things, fully participating again, but Max was still keeping a mothering eye on her all the same.
She moved to unzip her duffel bag and pulled out a clipboard from the bottom, flipping it open and producing a pen for her out of nowhere. “Here you go, I promise we’re not trying to stalk you - we just need contact information in case a class is canceled or moved, emergency contact in case something happens, and medical information because we need to know if you’re gonna pass out on us or not,” she said, trying to keep it light, but not compromising on the rules. She had liability to think about.
Josie smiled at Max. “That’s sorta the reason I wanted to talk to you. So you could keep an eye on me.” She reached for the clipboard and pen. “I just wanted to talk about it before anyone else arrived - I’m not really comfortable with people knowing the details right now…”
Max smiled reassuringly at her, “don’t worry, nobody here needs to know your business except me and my lovely assistant.”
She kicked off her shoes and nudged them out of the way, before sitting down one one of the already placed mats and looking over the paperwork. It seemed reasonably similar to the paperwork she was used to back in Toronto - just a different dialect of legalese, really. She clicked the pen open and started writing in a precise block script, filling out each of the sections in turn. She hesitated when she got to the medical portion of the paperwork - where it asked for her recent medical history. She tapped the pen against the clipboard, the sound shifting from random to rhythmic and back again, before writing: