She set the form on the desk. "I'm eligible?"
"I had the registrar verify it this afternoon," Foss said. "You've been enrolled for 7 days. The minimum is 5."
Mia looked at her. "You checked before I came to you."
"Yes."
"You were waiting."
Foss didn't apologize for that. "Your mother won this competition in 2003," she said. "In this gym. On those mats out there."
Mia was quiet.
"I was there," Foss said. "I coached her through it. She was a first-year student who no one thought would make it past the second round." She paused. "She won every round."
The afternoon light was coming through the small office window. Mia could hear the sounds of students arriving in the studio behind her. Mats being shifted. The low percussion of a training space waking up.
"She never told me about that," Mia said.
"She wouldn't have," Foss said. "Sandra wasn't a person who talked about things she'd done. She was a person who did things and moved on." She looked at Mia steadily. "Sound familiar?"
Mia picked up the registration form. She took a breath.
She signed it.
The first week of training was an excavation.
That was the only way to describe it. Like digging something out of the ground after a long time. You didn't know exactly what shape it would be when you found it. You didn't know what the time in the earth had done to it. You just dug.
Foss gave her the first session alone. No other students. Just the two of them in Studio B, after the regular practice had ended. She wanted to see where Mia was without the pressure of being watched.
She had Mia move through basics. Stance, footwork, combinations. No contact. Just the movement. Just the shapes of things.
It came back in pieces.
Some of it was immediate. Muscle memory so deep it didn't need to be recalled, just released. Some of it was stiff. Seven months of non-use, showing in small hesitations, in places where the sequence didn't flow the way it should.
Foss watched without saying much, taking notes on the clipboard she always carried.
After 40 minutes, she said, "Stop."
Mia stopped. She was breathing harder than she should have been for the work she'd done. Not physical fatigue. The other kind.
"Where are you right now?" Foss asked.
Mia thought about that honestly. "Somewhere between here and somewhere else."
Foss nodded. "That's what I thought." She made a note. "We'll work with that."
"What does that mean?"
"It means the body's mostly there. The mind is catching up." She looked at Mia. "You know what your grandmother used to say? Feelings are information."