Author's Notes: I'd like to keep this section up here clean for this story so if you'd like a comment reply, please log in! Also posting a day early because I have a busy weekend planned and I don't want to forget. Illustration up on dA.
Although they continued their whirlwind tour of Pandaria with just as much enthusiasm as before, there was definitely something brewing between them. Looks grew longer, touches were more frequent, and each kiss was like a door opening into a maelstrom. Kalibose thought to himself, as they playfully argued with each other over how to reach the apples at the top of a tree in the orchard outside of Dawn's Blossom, that all of those things had been there before. But suddenly, every brush of fingertips against his skin was like electricity.
Mae pushed him, which might have been comical considering their height difference, but she was stronger than she looked and he stumbled back a step.
"Come on, give me a boost up: I can't reach the bottom branch."
He grabbed her arms and made a show of struggling to lift her up dramatically, then dropping his arms in exhaustion. "I can't, you've eaten too many apples already. You're too heavy."
The look on her face was worth any sort of pummeling he might endure for the remark. "What! You carried me halfway across Ashenvale, you can lift me up once to reach that branch there."
She pointed to the nearest branch, which was further than what he could hope to reach. The comment though brought a rush of emotions to him: memories of her rasping breath, how hot her fever had ran, and how she had eventually lost consciousness. All of the humor left his face.
"You were dying, Mae."
She wasn't looking at him, and scoffed as she tried once again to jump up and grab the branch. "So I have to nick a vein to get a boost?"
When she thumped down the ground and turned to look at him, she must have seen the look on his face. She stopped her teasing and reached her hand out for him.
"I'm fine, Kalibose. You saved my life, and I'm just fine now."
He slid one hand up her arm, feeling the raised skin where she was permanently scarred from the harpy's claws. He swallowed hard. More than anything else he had ever done of questionable moral intent, it still bothered him on a profound level how close Mae had come to dying in Stonetalon. Perhaps it was because deep down, he blamed himself entirely for it.
"I'm sorry, Mae."
"Stop." She held one finger to his lips. "That was years ago. We are okay now. I am not going to risk my life to get some apples. Now come help me, I'm hungry."
She pulled him closer to the tree, and they argued about the best way to do it, and finally he turned with his back to the tree and looped his hands together. She stepped into them, and he made a very good effort, he thought, to hoist her up into the tree, but she only went up about halfway until they both lost their balance and they fell backward, her on top of him. He hit the ground hard, knocking the air out of his lungs, and she lay there and laughed as he struggled to breath and laugh at the same time, coughing out weird sounds that only made them laugh harder. Eventually she stopped and kissed him gently on the forehead, "Good try, Kalibose," before rolling off of him and getting to her feet. The pandaren man that offered them a ladder had a long-suffering look on his face, but they only had eyes for each other.
