She squirmed harder, trying to wrest him away with her leg. Then she tried to smash him in the nose with her head.

He jerked back in time, but kept her pinned. “Now you are trying to kiss me! Shameless, Hettie.”

“I could really hurt you right now, if I chose,” she said back through gnashing teeth.

He pressed his thumb at a spot near her wrist.

“Owww!” she groaned, wincing with pain.

“I’ll wait you out. How long have your fingers been tingling?”

“How long has your brain been tingling?” she said, bucking harshly on the grass. Her fingers shot up to his face, hooked like talons.

“Tsk, tsk,” he clucked, forcing his elbow around to intercept the strike and used his weight to push her arm back down. Now both of her arms were above her head. She tried to lash out again, but it was pointless. He could see her chest heaving with lack of air. Her fingers opened and the dagger thumped to the grass.

Submission.

Paedrin inhaled, smelling her sweat and the wonderful scent of the dried prairie grass cushioning them.

He lifted off her slowly, hovering in the air, and gazed down at her, hair sticking to her face, her black tunic slivered with grass. His heart ached with suppressed emotions. He would not give in to them though. Their friendship had expanded since leaving Kenatos with a whirlwind of seek and chase.

“You tend to slip back into insults when you realize I’ve won,” he mentioned.

She stared at him, eyes narrowing with thought. “It’s the anger of the moment. Sometimes you just aggravate me.”

He nodded, satisfied. “Back to the mistake,” he said, brushing his hands. “Your leg was trapped over here.”

She stared at his face with a look impossible to decipher. Women were too complex to understand. He dared not even try. She snatched the dagger in the grass and rolled up to the crouching position. He set himself on her leg again, caught her arm as it plunged toward his back and gripped her wrist.

“What were you trying to do?” he asked her.

“Use your grip on me to pull you off balance,” she answered. It was important that they were always communicating the thoughts behind the actions. “I wanted to throw you.”

“I was on your leg,” he stated, motioning down with his chin. During this part, they always moved very slowly, reenacting the previous combat. “Where is your leverage?”

She thought a moment. “Ah!” she said. “I was trying to pull you toward me. You flopped on top of me. I should have used the Unbreakable Arm and pulled you this way.” Her arm went rigid as she twisted, pulling him backward. Paedrin felt the shift in his posture and the momentum carried him over onto his back, pulling her on top of him, knife blade still caught by his wrist, but now she was on top.

Her hair tickled his face.

“Correct,” he praised. “That would have worked better.”

She gazed down at him, her eyes narrowing slowly, her expression shifting into another of her mercurial moods.

“I’m getting closer now,” she said softly. “Closer to cutting you. I don’t think we should practice with the dagger.”

“You weren’t that close.”

“Part of me still holds back though,” she said, shaking her head. The tips of her hair were vastly annoying on his cheek. “I don’t want to cut you.”

“If I get cut, I deserve to be cut,” he answered. “You are getting better though. I will admit that. Your hand forms need some work still. Practice your stretches for a while. There is still daylight left.”

She nodded, tickling his face one more time with a smirk, then pushed up to her feet. She sheathed the dagger in her belt then extended one leg in front and curled the other leg behind. Leaning forward, she stretched, clutching her bare foot with her hands and pulled herself as low as she could. Paedrin’s flexibility had been instilled since childhood. Hers improved vastly day by day. She never complained about the pain of the stretching. She threw herself into it, as if the knotting feeling in her stomach was a joy instead of agony. Pain is a teacher. She seemed to relish being a student.

Paedrin stood and brushed the grass from his Bhikhu robes and scanned the land ahead. They were well outside the range of the pack dogs of Kenatos, in the grassy hillocks south of Silvandom and north of Stonehollow. Another day of traveling would bring them inside the forests of Lydi. But even from the great distance where they were, they could see the flat blue line of the ocean. He had always imagined what that would be like. The vastness of it was beyond his previous imagination. The horizon stretched as far as he could see, nothing but a flat, gray-blue line. They were still several leagues away from it, high in the hills. A broad forest stretched out in front of them. But the port city of Lydi was clearly visible in the horizon to the south. There were easily thousands of ships anchored there, clotting the port like beetles.