Her instructor didn’t look the part. Farhana obviously couldn’t see very well, though she took off her glasses for practice.

“Whatever you do, know what it is you point at. Know what lies beyond it.”

Leondra knew the one thing she wasn’t going to learn from Farhana was to see. Her hearing and sense of smell wouldn’t be able to match the older woman with close cropped hair and keratin scaling showing down her neck, so she had to focus with her sight.

“You hold too tight. Firm is good. Stiff is bad.”

Leondra practiced until she tired.

“No more concentration? We are done for now.”

With a sigh, Leondra knew this was going to take her a long, long time. Farhana was no nonsense, but patient. She knew what her sister would say. Everything worth doing was worth doing well. Anything worth doing well was worth spending time on.

Leondra took lessons from Farhana for eight years.