LARP: 18

"Well, we can't sit here celebrating too long," Kalim said, grabbing me by the shoulder and pulling me along, breaking me out of my momentary 'freeze' in the wake of Fook's kiss. "I don't know that we've fully won until we've cleared that mine."

I followed along, dumbly, glancing over at Fook who refused to make eye contact with me and seemed to be pointedly staring into the middle distance.

"Are we not going to talk about what just happened?" Moon asked, following quickly along. "Eimi are you okay?" he asked.

I glanced back, still too embarrassed to say anything. Why did I feel so embarrassed? Shouldn't I be angry? Somehow the mere fact that he could do that to me had left me feeling flustered more than anything else. I should go slap him!

It's not like I liked it... right? My racing heart, that was just from the adrenaline of the surprise.

"We need to clear the mine," I said, hoping my voice wasn't breaking, and avoiding eye contact with everyone except Kalim, who was so focused on the mine she wasn't looking at me anyway.

Then, a very strange thing happened.

 I could remember another kiss. It was with a man... not Fook, but an elf man, blonde-haired. But rather than just being kissed, I could remember kissing him.

But, this was... a core memory, but a long repressed memory. I could feel it bubbling up, riding through my mind--even though, this is not something that happened to me, this is something that happened to Eimi. But I could remember my heart racing as I embraced him.

But, jarringly, I knew that this kiss had been... twenty years ago!

I was an elf! That was on the continent, before the war, and --

"There's definitely signs that the kobolds have been going in and out of the mine," Kalim said. "And not only that, but I see some larger footprints too. I think there's something else in there. Fook, take point."

"Right, right," Fook said, hurrying ahead--still not looking me in the eye, and not even saying anything about the stab wounds on his thigh and side.

"Wait, I'll heal you now, Fook," I said. "I'm not going to let you go into that mine on the brink of death."

"You fought valiantly," I said, feeling the first words that were needed coming to mind. Even so, they felt odd saying them in this moment.

I reached out my hand as I spoke the words, I watched as--in real time--the wound on Fook's side began to close up. The one on his thigh didn't fully close over, but he looked a lot better.

"Thank you," he said, looking at me--really looking at me for a moment, and in his eyes I saw a nervous vulnerability I hadn't expected to see. As soon as I met his gaze, though, he broke away and turned back toward the mine.

Moon rushed past me, following Fook in, turning only briefly to give me a glance over his shoulder.

"Excellent," Kalim said, and pushed me forward on the back, urging me forward into the mine.

 Even looking at the mine, I was shocked at how close the entrance was to the lake. The water of the river was practically right up along the tracks near the entrance. Sure, I supposed, the goal was to load the iron onto the river as quickly as possible--but it still felt jarringly risky. What were they going to do during a storm if the river rose even a little bit?

Even so, the sky was clear today--no risk of rain.

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust as we entered the cave. Up ahead, I saw that Moon had lit up one of his magical sticks, giving us some faint light as we made our descent.

And yet, almost as soon as he did so, from deeper inside the mine, there was a feminine hiss.

Moon turned back to us and waved us forward, and Kalim nodded. Together, we began to run forward to catch up to Fook, who once again had pushed on further ahead faster than we'd expected.

As we went running through the dark, cold, mine, the light of Moon's magical rod caught the light of--tattoos?

Up ahead in the darkness there was a woman with long white hair, and like Kalim, cobalt blue skin. Unlike Kalim, though, this woman had her skin covered with glowing light-blue tattoos.

She was a dark elf! And as she raised a hand to cast a spell, Fook cried out gleefully, "Yes! Even more skulls to crack!"