Excerpt: The Raspaka Renaissance

What the students said threw me even more. They didn’t even try to argue the things he was yelling at them for. They defended themselves. They were proud of themselves. That besides, they chose the worst, most cutting words to use on this guy. They yelled at him and they cursed Malt and everything Malt was about. ‘Stupid’ is the best thing they called it.
I wondered so many things. I wanted to ask the guy what church he was from. I wanted to ask him if he ever actually read his own Book of Malt, the one he waved around with such a force. I wanted to ask the students if they were joking or serious. Lots of sarcasm from them, it’s hard to tell. I just stood and listened, half wanting to give the guy a hug and half wanting to punch him in the face. Same with everyone else.

I was angry. I decided the perfect way to calm myself down and get some nerves out was to try out some of these sports. Any other day I would have put it off some more.
The sport grounds were big cleared out fields. They sat right at the edge of campus so you could see the city on the other side. They put a lot of time into creating and maintaining these things. The grass was neat and cut. But I couldn’t spot a single swimmer nalvot. They were probably all practicing out by the pools. But I didn’t want to swim. I wanted to try something different.
There was throwing. As sort of a tribute to the war efforts of the swimmers a few centuries back, there was throwing. What do you throw in throwing? Just about anything. There’s usually the damaging stuff, or just replicas of them, like spears. There’s also ones that involve throwing stuff with a sling. But since the focus was on distance and aim rather than hurting capability, and because nobody really cared about throwing (Jatvo was right), so much that the rules were so loose, you really could throw just about anything you want. Even birds, if you could manage to capture one. Yep; throwing the bird is a nalvotian sport.