When I woke up, I was already feeling much better. I looked around in the cabin, made extra mysterious by the shadows of twilight and glowing embers in a small fireplace on one wall. I noticed that there was very little furniture. Notably, I was in lying in the only bed. I spotted the elf sitting in a corner of the room, legs crossed.

I intended to ask him something along the lines of "Don't you ever sleep?", but only managed a barely audible croak. Someone had sneakily turned my throat to sandstone. The elf seemed to catch my attempt at communication, however, because he got up, went to the fireplace, did something to dark objects lurking next to it and came to me with a bowl of warm broth.

I was on my way to gratefully accepting it, but apparently my arms, which were clearly all too tightly bandaged and loaded down with unseen weights to boot, would not move quickly enough to his infuriatingly demanding tastes. He opted to lift the bowl to my mouth. I drank without comment; it would not have made sense to complain, what with my vocal cords being parched dry and all.

When the bowl was empty, he set it aside. I worked on something simple and brief to test my voice with, and came up with a plain "Thanks." It didn't turn out half bad. There are good things to be said of the benefits of drinking before talking.

"Don't mention it." He touched my forehead with a cool hand, and peered under my blanket on the pretence of checking on my bandages. I rolled my eyes furiously at the gesture, and he grinned at me wolfishly.

I didn't ask how long I had been out, and he didn't offer it. When I unconsciously shifted my position slightly and didn't wince, he nodded to himself approvingly.

"You'll be fine in a day or few. The poison's out of your system, and the cuts didn't go too deep. Might want to sleep some more before trying to get up though."

That sounded like an excellent idea. I followed up on it.

The next day passed lazily. I was basically able to feed myself, but after a while my arms were shaking enough that I allowed myself to be pampered like a babe. I spent most of the day drifting in and out of sleep, and ruminating on life.

We didn't talk much; I already knew the elf had an extensive repertoire of quiet ways to keep himself entertained, and he had been known to successfully make use of them in the past. I still was a bit baffled: he showed unusual restraint in consistently not throwing around flippant remarks about my unsuccessful quest or the embarrassment of having to be rescued. This had to be cleared up.

"Have you noticed how you're unusually quiet?"

I could see him raising a single eyebrow in the other end of the small room. Then he snickered. "Oh, I wouldn't want you reopening those wounds of yours after all that bandaging. Why, knowing your temper, I could just innocently comment on the weather and send you flailing into a hissy fit."

I dropped into the familiar flow of conversation without even giving it a second thought. "Yes, yes, bandaging a poor helpless woman, I'm sure that was a dreadful ordeal for you."

Smiling sweetly, he moved for the kill. "While it was difficult, I'm confident that the experience brought us closer together, dear." His stretched emphasis on "closer" and "dear" left the space gracefully open for all the dirty implications my imagination could possibly cook up. I couldn't help grinning broadly; he had already gotten my mind off failures and near death experiences, and replaced it with quite another type of disturbing imagery.

Even with an occasional snide remark passing between us, boredom still kept luring me towards brooding, so I was relieved by all interruptions to my half-dozing. At some point, the elf firmly announced it was time to change my bandages. This time I was stable enough to sit up during the operation, so I did.

Quite uninvited, the mental imagery from our earlier exchange came to my mind just when the mage's fingers were expertly prying off the bandages and leaving my upper body bare. I felt the mending skin on my back rise on goose bumps at his touch, and blood crept traitorously to my cheeks. I was almost desperately hoping he'd comment on it to break the tension, but he never even paused, as if oblivious to my discomfort. Since he stood behind me, I couldn't see his face either, but I knew there were few things he missed.

He spread some tingling salve to strategic places of his choosing, and then started wrapping me in new bandages. When he reached under my arms, I could feel his breath on my skin. It was completely unbearable; the inactivity of my convalescence, with a single soul to keep me company, and the sudden intimate physical proximity were all conspiring to drive me crazy. They were being all too successful at it.

When he was finishing the last wrap, I could take no more. I turned around, the muscles on my sides groaning at the offence, and took his hands in mine to pause them.

"Would you mind..." I began, but faltered slightly when continuing my movement should have me turn my head, to look at him in the eye. I decided not to stretch my processing capabilities too much. I finished the sentence with a "...if I kissed you right now?", then closed my eyes, lifted my head, granted him half a heartbeat in case he would insist on protesting, and then kissed him on the mouth.

He kissed me back gently, and rested his hands on the sides of my upper arms. The touch nudged me back to reality, and I opened my eyes and pulled back slightly to re-evaluate the situation - just in case his hands were deliberately placed to break the kiss after a moment.

He was wearing a pleasantly surprised smile, but I saw a glint of strain in the corners of his eyes - carefully masked but just visible. I'd seen him involuntarily make a face at a particularly nasty blow in combat several times, and knew exactly where to look for the minuscule signs of his very elvishly hidden discomfort. He was forcing himself for the sake of politeness; but for the most other people I know, it was the equivalent of squirming, looking away and possibly screaming for help.

My cheeks were probably going from red to purple already when I had to look the other way myself. If I hadn't given in to the full impact of embarrassment, I could have salvaged at least scraps by turning the entire thing into a mocking challenge, but that opportunity was lost now. I breathed a sigh of utter defeat. I was now officially done for.

He touched my neck just below the hairline, and said softly, "I'll go fetch some more water." With that, he left me to readjust to the new reality I had plunged into head-first - only to hit the hard bottom.

When he came back in, I had managed to recompose myself for the most part. We both smiled apologetically, and the matter was left at that. He didn't tease me about it even once, and on some occasions, I was even able to forget that anything had happened.

The moments were all too brief, though. I slept fitfully or not at all the next night, and the night after that. The elf's image haunted me whenever I closed my eyes. Our entire shared past turned to underline how I had been caught by his easy charms and quick wit from the start, but how we had both danced in circles around my heart all along. How our constant barb-throwing actually had possibly been the only thing to keep me on my guard against falling for him, and even it had failed in the end.

These girlish fantasies were not helping at all. I rebelled against myself, reminded myself a thousand times that I was being foolish and caught on an impossible dream. I knew all too many stories of people who failed to get over their impractical or impossible feelings, and as a result went on to ruin their lives, fawning after the unreachable.

I refused to go down that path. The elf might not love me back, but he was still a good and loyal friend. I swore to myself I would pull myself out of this hole and grow from the experience. I would not lock the feeling within myself to gnaw away at my heart and our friendship for the rest of my life. Words, and only words could release me! Who knows, I decided, he might even help me mourn, help me get me started on the way to becoming whole again. Yes, I would talk to him about this first thing in the morning.

After this resolution, I could finally sleep again.

In the morning, the moment was not right, however. I had a headache from not sleeping enough and felt cranky. I napped through the day, sleeping half of the time, generating good ways to start talking the other, and abandoning a thousand unacceptable openings, especially ones indicating that I had been spending any amount of time on this kind of analysis.

The next evening, however, I had had it with waiting and gathering up my courage. I watched him sitting on a mat by the fireplace for a moment, then got up and went to sit next to him. He smiled, but did not say anything. I suppose he figured out there was something I needed to get out my system.

Despite all my careful mental rehearsals, I found myself stumbling over words. The silence stretched on to unbearable lengths, of dozens of heartbeats at the very least.

"Back when..."

My throat constricted; I couldn't say it out loud. "We kissed?" Was it really we or just me? "I kissed you?" That at least sounded like he was not even there. No, this was a bad start.

"I mean, I've been wondering..."

Alright, here we go wondering again. I had been determined to avoid explicitly pointing out that I'd been brooding over this matter ever since, and went and said it anyway. I stingily congratulated myself on being hopeless. I noticed I had raised a hand to fidget with my lips; another gesture for generally burning away my overall credibility from both ends.

By then something within me had reached its boiling point. My hands were cold, my heart choking on itself, and I knew that if I had tried to stand up, my muscles would have turned to rock and I'd topple over like a statue. I was trapped in a hostile reality that currently was limited to the area of a single sitting mat; nothing outside it existed to me, nor could help me. Before I managed to finish thinking about exact words, I opened my mouth and blushed violently, but the sound was already on its way:

"Don't you want me?"

Up this close, I could see him tense ever so slightly, even though he of course hid it well. The smile that followed was warm, though, and rose all the way to his eyes. He lifted a hand to caress my cheek. I had of course completely forgotten we had any sort of limbs by now, so it took me a moment to process this gesture. Then I realized he managed to not look sad, horrified or resigned at all. A part of me was a bit disappointed, given that I was putting a lot of effort in spotting the first sign of negative emotion on his face.

He spoke softly. "How could I not want you?"

There I saw it again, a flash of strain in the corners of his eyes. But it was after he spoke the words, not before, and I could not help but believe that he did honestly mean what he said. It only confused me further. I grabbed his hand on my cheek, probably more tightly than I intended.

"But... why won't you just have me then?"

He hesitated for three heartbeats. I counted. Then it was as if the icy shard of pain melted from him, and he exhaled away his tension.

"I want to be certain that it is your heart that wants it, not your wounds or your fears. That is the only reason."

He let it sink in for a moment, and I was almost horrifyingly aware of how intensely he was watching me. It felt as if he could see through all and any layers of shields or protection I could raise around me. A cold shiver ran down my spine, and I realized very acutely that pointy ears were not by far the most alien characteristic of his kind. He was a full-blooded elf; his kind remembered history vividly because they had actually lived it themselves. He had been already fully grown on the day I was born, and he'd still have innumerable good years left after I succumbed to old age.

I had seen courters compete to awaken desire in their targets, looking for a weak moment to help catch the more difficult prey. And all this while, the man sitting next to me had been calmly waiting for my potential weakness to pass before even hinting that he might have dinner plans which included me on the menu. As if just accidentally leaving the kitchen door open would be enough to have a deer walk in and cook itself for the hunter! I blinked when I realized it was not too far from the truth in this case, either. I was already picking a spit for myself.

When he spoke again, there was an unfamiliar new rumble to his voice, a touch of huskiness I had never witnessed in him. The warm smile had never left his face, but it had a touch of wicked amusement now.

"See, if I enjoy you once, I'm afraid there will be no going back. I may not be able to avoid following my pleasure many, many times." He cocked his head and moved the fingers touching my cheek slightly. "It would be terribly sad if I were forced to hold you here against your will during that while."

I could tell he was lying. Right now, he did not look particularly sad at all at the prospect. I felt my stomach tense from a confounding mixture of desire and nervous excitement. When he turned his head to kiss me, I found I was already quite comfortable with the thought of being at his mercy.