"Don't tell her I brought them. She'll make a thing of it."
I mime a sealed mouth. She looks at me like she's questioning every choice that led to this moment, and then we start, and an hour in she does something I've been waiting two weeks for: she beats me to the counter. Not close, not nearly — she reads the setup correctly and she moves before I've finished the approach and she puts me flat on the cold grass and she looks down at me with two fists in my shirt and a knee on my ribs and her expression is pure electric triumph.
"Ha," she says.
Just the once. But it's very good.
"Don't let it get to your head," I say, from the ground.
"Too late." She releases me and stands and offers me a hand up and I take it and she immediately does something with the leverage that nearly puts me back down, grinning now — actually grinning — and I roar with laughter because I walked directly into it and I deserve everything I got.
This is why I enjoy her. When she lets down those walls, she fits me too well.
"Three days," I say, when I've gotten my balance back.
"You're relentless." But it's not an irritated relentless, it's anexasperatedrelentless, and there's a difference, and she knows I know the difference.
"Famously," I agree. "Don't make me find someone else to partner with."
"You wouldn't win with them." She throws my coat at me and walks out, and I catch it grinning.
On the fourth morning, she's already in the clearing when I arrive. She has her back to the path and she's working through a balance sequence she invented herself — I've never given it to her, it's entirely hers — and she doesn't stop when she hears me coming, just keeps the sequence moving.
I drop my gear.
Start my warm-up without comment.
Let the silence do its work.
Five minutes in, she says, without turning around:
"If we find a token, I'm keeping it."
I stop.
She finishes the sequence. Turns to face me.
Her expression is the one she reserves for things she's decided against her better judgment, practical and clear-eyed and not particularly happy about it, but decided nonetheless.Not a woman who's been worn down. A woman who has looked at something from all available angles and arrived at a conclusion on her own terms, which are the only terms she operates on.
"Deal," I say. I know better than to push, but I had a feeling that Aislin would cave closer to the event.
"One event." She holds up one finger. "The hunt. After that, I'm done."
"Completely reasonable."
"I mean it."
"I believe you."
She looks at me for a moment with the expression that means she's checking for angles, and I let her check. She doesn't find any, because there aren't any, and eventually she puts her hand out and I shake it and she grips firmly, which I expect, and then she releases and sets her feet.
"Stop grinning," she says.
"Can't help it."
"Try harder."
I can't try harder, because I'm still grinning when she swings for the opening hold, and I'm grinning when I block it, and I'm grinning when she gives me a look that contains several words she's chosen not to say, and I'm still grinning twenty minutes later when I take the long route to the food hall.
