Past-Midnight Exercise (Open)

When you can't sleep, exercise. One physical education teacher who had not been paid nearly enough for how well he did his job had drilled that bit of advice into her head as a child, and she'd long taken it to heart. Of course, he'd probably meant something more like running laps at the time than what she was doing right now, but the concept still applied.

It was approaching 2 AM, and Kiva was sitting there in the living room, weight lifting. The television was on, volume low and on a 'radio' channel, acting as the source of her work-out music--not that country tunes were really 'work-out music,' but it's not like anyone else was here right now to hear it and complain--and the source of a bit of light in the room. That bit of light danced across her bronze scales and the silver-coloured dumbbell in her clawed hand as she sat on the couch doing bicep curls.

The adjustable dumbell had on its maximum amount of weight, the spinlock wide open to make room for as many plates as the thing could hold. She curled and uncurled her arm over and over, breathing in and out in time with her movements, losing herself in the familiar rhythm.

Some people looked at her and figured her musculature was part of her mutation. It wasn't. It was something she had worked to gain, and continued to work to maintain. It was something she was very proud of. So, if she couldn't sleep, why not incorporate weight training into the solution?

In fact, it seemed to be working already, as the comforting familiarity of the motions started to lull her into something close to a doze, making her steadily less aware of her surroundings, even though her movements didn't slow at all.