Beneath the cliff at the northern edge of the Pixie Field, overlooking the Inland Sea, resided an enormous colony of bees. Millions of workers went every day to collect the nectar and pollen of the pixie flowers, and with them certain chemical effects. The medicinal honey was valuable to the nearby town, where it was used in ceremony as well as for many practical purposes. Those with the job of collecting it were well respected for a contribution not only important to their way of life, but extremely hazardous. They tried every method over the centuries, but for the health of the hive, approaching from beneath with minimal smoke was best, so those with that honored position were the best at climbing.
Sola stretched her long, lean limbs, standing on the rocky shore a hundred and fifty meters below. Already wearing her honey satchels, fitted tight to improve balance with increased weight, she watched the bees move in a shifting cloud, constantly coming and going, but always surrounding their home and the fifteen meter wide complex of combs surrounding it. She took one last glance to make sure no one was around before she started to sing, a song for climbing that she wrote and only ever sung for the bees. They seemed indifferent. She pulled her gloves on, taking a deep breath before she hoisted herself onto the face.
The climb was the easy part. Sola knew this section of wall so well, she barely had to glance at the next handhold, ascending in something like a sprint as the tempo of her song increased to match the speed of her climb. The bees' humming grew louder above, and she paused to fight herself as she did every morning, to keep going into the sting zone. She'd been stung over a hundred times, and that searing pain was her only fear during a climb; the wall was her ally against the bees, and she knew how to stay so close they stuck together.
They called her the Spider, not always as a compliment, and when it came to this cliff face, it would be hard to find an eight-gripped climber better than she was. She pulled the cord from her smoke pack when the bees began to drift down to her level, igniting the grass inside that would smolder for ten minutes, putting the swarm into a docile state where they sought the shelter of the nest.
Sola didn't care for the smell of it either, grimacing as she held her breath when a gust from the sea pushed it back in her face. She climbed alongside the huge hanging structure to a ledge the same width as her foot and turned to face the reason she had come. Drawing her knife, the ceramic blade thirty centimeters long and narrow, she sliced into and back out of the honeycomb so fast it didn't get a chance to fall, adhered by the golden substance that began to leak from the slice in the comb. She grabbed the chunk and held the rubber-coated satchel open to stash it. Using the gap as an entry, she took a second slice, carving a piece twice the size of the first. She placed it in the other side.
She cut another piece to even out the weight, each pouch filled with about ten kilograms of her sticky prize, and wiped her knife beneath the flap before sheathing it. Shifting her foot to turn, she swung one arm to grab hold for the climb down, but there was movement on the rocks below. As she paused a mere second with a startled gasp, smoke blew into her unprepared face, making her sneeze violently, making her fingers slip from the edge of the rock despite the grip of the rubber coated glove. She bent her knees, trying to alter her pivot, but it was already too late. Losing contact with the cliff, she fell back in a slow spin with her head becoming the most likely part of her to impact the stony shoreline.
"Damn it," she said as she fell, her perfect record broken and helpless to prevent her own mortality.
Turning in the air, she saw more movement below, a brief glimpse of a man looking up at her, hurrying his approach. The fall was too far, she thought he would only get himself killed, too, but she met a strange sensation in the air three meters above his upturned hands, slowing as though she'd hit a piece of cloth, she felt little impact in the sudden deceleration. The invisible lifesaving force shattered, and she gasped as she fell fast, and again a second later when she was caught in the man's thick, muscular arms.
Sola's heart pounding in her ears, unable to believe she was alive, she grasped tight around the man's neck in search of solid grounding. He smelled bad, like old sweat warmed with new, but it helped her accept the situation's reality; if she'd imagined being saved by a big, hunky guy, she would surely leave out the detail of him not having bathed in days. It all happened so fast, she couldn't yet process the reason for her fall. Her mind raced to catch up with it, but moving in the immediate situation of being in a man's arms was like swimming through honey instead of water.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"Yeah," she said. "How though? What did I fall through?"
"A shield. I tried to make it flexible to absorb the energy of your fall, did it work? Are you hurt?"
"A shield? You mean a Warrior's Shield?"
"Yeah, exactly."
Sola's mind raced in a new direction as she managed to relax her muscles enough to draw back slightly from his broad chest. Knowledge of Warriors was ubiquitous even in her small town, but being so far from the path to the Tournament meant that she'd never met one. Likewise, the Warrior energy techniques were legendary, she could name them all and their uses in battle, she even used the Strength and Weapon techniques herself while harvesting honey. The Warrior's Shield, not a technique she knew but just became more interested in, was a barrier used to protect yourself from an opponent's sword.
"It never occurred to me that the shield could be used like that," she said, glancing up for a glimpse of him but terrified of him glimpsing too closely back, of dropping her and running away. "Do you think a person could stop their own fall by doing something similar?"
"Maybe," he said, looking up at an angle as though to showcase his perfectly chiseled chin and cheeks. Childish fantasies flooded her head of the brave Warrior saving the maiden and them holding each other forever. She tried to put it aside and nearly succeeded. "It takes a certain amount of focus to form a shield," he continued, his deep voice pensive and indicating wisdom. "It would be difficult while tumbling through the air. There's a lot of power required to absorb the momentum of a fall, too. Maybe if you had enough time, but at that height... I don't think it's impossible that someone could do it, but I wouldn't want to try. What you need is a spotter."
Sola was about to scoff, but the fact was she had needed one today, and she'd been lucky he was there. She still didn't know how, how, how she fell, but she knew what would have happened if he hadn't caught her. "Thank you for saving my life."
"My pleasure." He smiled at her, and he was gorgeous, but she saw more than that; he posed for maximum handsomeness, his head held just so for the best possible angle of his perfect smile. His awareness of how good he looked was as obvious as his appearance, and knowing what she looked like, she became uncomfortable beneath his gaze, paranoia creeping into her pleasant fantasies.
"Will you please put me down?"
"Oh. Sure." He dropped the arm beneath her legs, letting her slide to her feet on the stones, where she reached the height of his armpit. Stepping back, he looked at his hand, smeared with the gooey golden substance that oozed from the squished right satchel, playing with it between his fingers. "What is this stuff?" He looked up toward the hive, then back to his hand as he raised it for a taste.
Sola caught his wrist, his tongue still protruding as he looked at her. "That's dangerous!"
"Why?" he asked, eyebrow raised in playful skepticism. "Isn't it honey?"
"Yes," Sola said. "It's honey made from the nectar of pixie flowers. It could make you very sick, or even kill you."
"Really?" He looked back to the shiny coating on his hand. She released him with a peeling sound when it appeared she'd convinced him. "Well, thanks. I guess you saved me back. Why do you risk your life collecting the honey if it's poisonous?"
"It's dangerous raw, but with filtering and dilution, it can be used to make many different medicines." She began to peel her gloves upward, tugging the fingers one at a time.
"Is one of the uses altering your consciousness, like they say the pixie flowers do?"
"Yes, that's the main one. It has to be purified, though. You'll absorb some through your skin, so I suggest washing it off. Years ago, I had a cousin, a colleague, a mentor..." She swallowed slowly, taking the word 'fiancé' out of the list just before it escaped. Her family's habit of marrying within itself was said to be highly taboo in other places. "He tried to harvest a comb that turned out to be barely connected, and it swung into him as it came loose. He kept his grip but got so disoriented... he was shouting for help, shouting about crazy things. I climbed, hoping to calm him, but he... he jumped off."
"Was he okay?"
Her gloves were finally off, and she set them in her bag, letting the flap hang over as she glanced at him. "No. That's why I said I had a cousin."
The man crouched to put his hands in the ocean water, rubbing them together, and splashing up to where she'd touched him with her sticky fingers. He drew them back as he stood, frowning over the group of striped eels that gathered before him writhing over each other, attracted by the honey. "They say not to swim in the Inland Sea, that everything in there is deadly."
"Most of the things we know of. These eels have a venom that makes you go numb. If it's on a limb, you can recover, but anywhere on your body, it would usually be fatal without treatment. One of the many things this honey is used for. Do you...?" Sola took a deep breath, adjusting the heavy satchels. "Do you want to come to town with me? We can talk on the way."
"Come to town with you?" he said, turning to face her. "What for?"
Sola shrugged, feeling her cheeks heat up beneath his gaze, wondering if she should tell him how much she enjoyed talking to him. She worried it would slip too easily into how lonely and pathetic she was. It wouldn't make it more likely for him to come to town. "I don't know, basic Traveler's Courtesy? A meal? I can tell you more about the area, and I'd love to hear about your journey, what brings you all the way up here. You're not a Warrior, are you?"
