One of the things that had irritated me beyond belief was that in spite of all the progress we had made in the more esoteric arts of meditation and mind communication, I still could not get water heated up to have a decent bath or shower. I had spent three weeks bathing every day in an ice-cold stream, and I was sick of it. Every time I queried Finger Roberts on the issue, he just grinned at me and told me that it was still an important lesson for me to learn.

As we walked away from the infirmary, I decided to ask Lorraine about it.

She burst out laughing. “I cannot believe that they are still doing that,” she gasped out.

“Doing what?”

“It's a game. The Finger Leaders who act as instructors during first phase training always pick up on something practical and say it is only possible to do it using ‘magic’ of some sort. They have learnt that it introduces a wild-card element. If you think that it must be possible, then you will strive to get it right and often find you can do some other things that others haven't thought possible. Obviously it worked with you.”

“Damn! You mean you can't heat water?”

“Nope. If you think about it, you will realise that everything you can do is bound up in how you can affect your own body and mind. There is nothing external that you can do. No telekinesis, no levitation. Although, that jump and twist thing you did in your first fight today almost looked like it.”

“Dammit. That's true. I guess if I had thought about it properly, I would have realised that! How do I get a hot shower or bath then?”

“You mean you haven't been shown? Follow me.”

I turned to give Desrae a rueful grin as we walked along with Lorraine. She knew how much I had bitched about the lack of hot water. She just shrugged at me and smiled.

“Oh, by the way, there is something that you can do about the cold now that I think of it,” said Lorraine.

“What's that?”

“It is possible to raise the temperature of your skin slightly if you have enough control. If you are in still water, that does have the effect of warming a tiny layer of water close to your skin, sort of like a wetsuit. It also works for water trapped in your clothing. It doesn't help much for bathing, but if you are hiding in a wet, muddy marsh or something, you can stop yourself freezing to death.”

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“Excellent. That is something I will definitely practice. Thanks Lorraine.”

“No problem. You should know that once you have joined the Fight, and been accepted by the veterans, you will pick up a lot of the little tricks like that…”

“Yeah, sounds like the art of soldiering in general; experience counts for a lot.”

“Yup. Here we are.”

We were standing outside one of the doors in the main base building. Lorraine pushed open the door and we followed her inside. As I walked through the door, I could feel that we were in some sort of of ‘bath-house’. There were long lines of wire lockers with place to keep your clothes.

“Pick a spot,” Lorraine said as she started to strip out of her clothes. “You are going to enjoy this.”

I wasted no time and was soon joined by the rest of the Finger. We picked up towels from a stack on a table and walked through another door. I walked behind Lorraine and couldn't help admiring the view. She turned her head to talk to me and smiled slightly as she told me. “There are showers here to get the bulk of the muck off you. The hot baths are in the next room.”

I blushed when I realised she had caught me looking.

Lorraine laughed, “I don't mind you looking. I think you need some education in the more private aspects of life in a combat Hand though. We can chat about that later, maybe tonight?”

I mumbled a faint affirmative and climbed under a shower, grateful both for the warm water and for the fact that I could hide my embarrassment.

The water felt glorious on my skin. I looked down and saw that the water was running red from the blood I had gotten all over me in the battles. There was a dispenser on the wall that I figured out was liquid soap from watching Lorraine use it. I turned to check on the other members of my Finger and saw that they were also luxurating under the hot water. Desrae had a funny smile on her face when I looked at her, but she just shrugged and shook her head when I raised an eyebrow at her in query. I wanted to ask her what she was thinking, but I was still unsure about just how private the mental communication was, so I decided to leave that discussion for later.

After we had all showered, Lorraine took us through another set of doors to the bathing room. There we found a series of pools filled with water. Lorraine explained that they started at the one end with extremely hot water and then the water got progressively colder from pool to pool. The idea was to start in the hottest pool and work your way, by floating, from pool to pool until you got to the cold one and got out. The pools were arranged in a circle and you ended back where you started.

We all eased ourselves into the hottest pool and then spent the next hour or so soaking ourselves as we moved around.

Once we were finished with that, we got dressed and went looking for food.