"You came to the first two."
"I know how many I came to."
"So what's another?"
She moves first — a good opener, she's been improving the tells, I nearly miss the weight shift — and I sidestep and get my arm around and she drives an elbow back before I can complete the hold and I let her turn out of it because that's a correct counter and she's earned the reset.
"The events are your shaman's project," she says, breathing only slightly harder. "Not mine."
"You had fun. I saw you have fun. You liked arguing with me while painting your eggs. You enjoyed picking apart the obstacle course. I watched you, Aislin."
Iknowyou I want to tell her.
"That isn't fun, that's?—"
"You weredelighted."
She opens her mouth. Closes it. Comes at me from the right and I redirect and she uses the redirect like she planned it and nearly gets me, which — honestly, I'm proud, she's going to be terrifying in three months — and we end up at the reset again.
"I'll think about it," she says.
"I'll take it."
It's not a yes. I know it's not a yes. But it's not the flatnoshe'd started with, and that's a foothold, and I know how to work with footholds.
She doesn't look at the birch grove on the way out.
The next four mornings,I ask.
Not the same way each time — that's not how you get somewhere with Aislin, who can identify a pattern and lock a door against it faster than anyone I've trained. I don't push. I don't build pressure. I just find the angle that fits the morning and I put it there and I let it sit.
The first morning, the day after she'd come and not looked at me, I mention, "The egg hunt covers the river territory. You haven't been to the river."
"No." Flat. Final. Onto the next sequence.
I let it sit.
The second morning, she's warmer, only slightly, the way temperature changes by a degree and you can't see the difference but you can feel it. I don't mention the event. I work with her on the choke break she's been struggling with and I get theangle wrong twice on purpose so she has to correct me, because nothing loosens her up like being right about something. By the end she's breathing hard and a little flushed and she almost —almost— smiles.
"The hunt's in four days," I say, when she's putting her coat back on.
"Ursik."
"Just noting it."
She gives me a look that would peel bark off a tree and walks out.
I stand in the clearing and note, privately, that she didn't say no with quite the same weight as yesterday.
The third morning, she comes in and she's carrying something, which is new — a wrapped bundle that turns out to be flatbread from the cabin stores, still warm, which she drops near the equipment pile without comment and doesn't explain. It's not an offering, her posture is very clear that it's not an offering, it is simply bread that exists in this location and I can eat it or not eat it as I see fit.
I eat it.
"These are good," I say.
"Pell made them." She starts her warm-up. "She's been experimenting with the spice stores."
"Talented."
