The impact was so sudden and violent that she was picked up off her feet and thrown back, her shoulder feeling like it had been cracked with a hammer. She landed a distance away, bouncing and skidding over sharp stones and devilish tree roots that seemed to gain pleasure in battering her along the way.

When she finally came to rest, she stood up, grinning, the pain in her shoulder and the rest of her body already receding. “Should we do it agin?” she asked.

“Why not?” Gruff said. “Except harder this time!”

Laughing, she charged him, winding up, aiming for his chin this time, though it was well-hidden beneath his thick beard.

She was rocked upwards, doing several flips before crashing back down in a bone-jarring collision far more violent than any of her training had been thus far. “Fun!” she declared, jumping back to her feet in a single, seamless motion. “Watch this!”

Pushing off from her back foot, she charged at a nearby tree, leaping up to grab a branch that should’ve been slightly out of reach for her, swinging such that her momentum carried her atop it, then grabbed a knothole in the trunk and clambered up several more branches until her best friend the dwarf looked even smaller than he actually was. “Here I come!” she announced, and then jumped, spreading her arms and legs to either side.

Gruff was laughing and dancing his jig again, arms open wide as if to catch her. Of course, if she’d landed on him, she would’ve flattened him instead, but she never made it that far. Because as soon as she willed it to be so, she stopped, her body frozen in midair just above his outstretched arms. Which came together in a series of claps. “Bravo!” he cheered, still clapping like a little boy watching a puppet show. “Now try to catch me!”

With that, he took off into the forest, stubby legs churning so fast they were hard to track. She released herself and landed in a crouch and then gave chase, her own strides longer, strengthened by that feeling still surging inside her. The feeling that could only be described as The Best Feeling in the World.

She swiftly gained on him, locked him in her sights, and then dove. He turned at the last possible second and she missed him, rolling twice before being carried right back to her feet, cutting hard in the correct direction.

Where she watched him run directly into a tree. That should’ve been the end of the chase, but, of course, it wasn’t. Instead, the blow that should’ve been rendered on Gruff by the tree was delivered upon itself, a weighty CRACK! ringing out. And then an actual crack did appear in the tree’s trunk, branches wavering and leaves rustling as with a slow, ponderous arc it came crashing down like it had been felled by a woodsman’s axe.

“I did that!” Gruff said, jabbing a finger in the air.