My immediate response was to shove her off of me, angrily. "Get the hell off me!! If it weren't for your knowledge of the forests I would've let you get eaten! Listen, if this whole me having to save your damsel in distress ass crap is going to be a normal thing, then I'm teaching you how to fight!" She blinked in confusion. "But I don't want to learn how to fight. Violence is never the answer."
I wanted to strangle her after hearing her say that. "I literally just saved you using violence." She had a look of guilt on her face as she responded. "You also took many lives in the process. They were just following their instinct and they got killed for it. I appreciate you saving me, but you could've done it without hurting anyone." I seriously thought I was going to strangle her. "Look. There is no argument here. You're teaching me something I don't want to learn, so I get to do the same to you. So shut up and go to bed before I regret saving you more than I already do!"
I then laid down and turned away from her, hoping that she wouldn't try and continue our conversation. Luckily she didn't, and we were silent for the rest of the time before falling asleep. The next morning I woke up next to the fireplace that was now burned out, and May was already awake and sitting up a few feet away. She hadn't realized that I was awake yet and was focusing on wrapping the scratch marks on her arms with leaves.
I had forgotten that those monsters roughed her up a bit before I saved her. I didn't think of it any more than that, and she noticed me as I stood up. "Let's go." I started walking without waiting for her to respond, and she flew up next to me with her usual smile. "Good morning!" I ignored her greeting and remembered what I said I was going to do last night. After a while of walking, we entered a clearer part of the forest and I decided to speak. "Today I will teach you how to punch correctly."
May came up to me from where she had wandered off to smell some flowers with surprise on her face. I turned to pick a fruit the size of a melon off a vine on the ground and placed it on a short boulder to the side of us. There was a river next to us as well that turned into a waterfall as it fell off of a shorter cliff behind the boulder, and the river continued to wind further into the landscape after it. I turned to her again and crossed my arms. "Punch it." She looked at me blankly for a moment. "Like with my fists?" I rolled my eyes. "No, with your tentacles, what the hell do you think I mean by that? Just punch it!"
She approached the boulder hesitantly, and she turned to me again before she did anything else. "But it's a perfectly good fruit, and I can't use what you teach me anyway because I have no desire to hurt any other living thing." I stayed silent and frozen waiting for her to become uncomfortable enough to do as I asked. She looked away nervously, and she cringed a little as she raised an arm to hit the fruit.
It was like I was watching her in slow motion as she slowly tapped the fruit with her knuckles, causing it to move back and forth a little. She then pulled her hand away quickly with guilt. "I'm so sorry!" I raised an eyebrow. "Did you just apologize to a melon?" She turned to me with a sad expression and pouted. "I'm practicing!"
I couldn't be more confused with what I just witnessed. "That was not a punch. You used the force it takes for a butterfly to land on a leaf. This is what a punch looks like." I then moved in front of her and struck the fruit with my fist. The rind of it burst open, and the yellow insides splattered in every direction as the rest of it flew off the cliff behind it. I shook my hand to get rid of the juice that now dripped from it, and May gave me a look of admiration. "Wow! You're so strong!"
I then bent down to pick another fruit and place it where the last one was. "Hit it harder." Despite my example, she continued to try and punch it with as little force as possible. After an hour I was pissed. "What is wrong with you?! It's literally so simple! You make a fist, and you throw it as hard as you can using the rage inside you!" She gave me a confused look. "But I don't have any rage inside me." I was surprised to hear this. "What are you talking about? Everyone has rage inside them." She shook her head. "I don't."
I then stepped toward her and pinched her arm hard where the leaves covered the scratches from before. "Ow!" She held her arm in pain and I stepped back again. "How about now?" She shrugged. "No. I've already forgiven you." I shook my head in annoyance. "You're fucking hopeless." Her face became surprised. "Rin, remember lesson number four? Profanity can hurt someone's feelings!"
After how annoyed I was, that was the last thing I wanted to hear. "Well fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck fuck fuck!" Her mouth dropped in shock and I turned away from her, kind of satisfied with her reaction. For a second I had forgotten that there was a cliff behind me, and quickly stopped myself from stepping off of it. A second later, the dirt I was standing on slipped out from underneath me and I fell off the edge. "Ah!" May shouted, "Rin!" as I failed to grab hold of anything before going down further.
I cringed expecting the pain of being stabbed by all the jagged rocks that were at the base of the cliff, but something stopped me from falling right away. The jolt from stopping made my helmet fling off, and the sudden flash of light made me close my eyes. I was confused for a split second as to what had stopped me, then looked up to realize that May had caught my arm after I fell. She was flapping her wings to help keep her balance and carry my weight as she kneeled over the drop-off.
I then put some of my weight on the side of the cliff and climbed as she pulled me back up. Once she pulled us to our feet again safely, her expression became shocked as our eyes met. I realized that she could now see my face, and she started to shake. "You're-! You're-! The-! The-! The-! The-! The-!..." She continued saying 'The' like a broken record until I slapped her arm, making her continue her sentence. "The prince!!"
I crossed my arms and she raised her hands to her face in excited disbelief. "Oh my gosh!! You're the human prince!! You're Prince Dedrin!! Wait a minute!! I've been in the presence of royalty this whole time??!!"