He showed Claudia the double-ended split-tail lanyard that confused every beginner. He should have taught her on the ground, but he’d been too eager to get aloft. In under an hour, she was skywalking through the canopy, using the lanyard to move herself through space between major trunks in three dimensions.
After that, it had become a game of tag. He’d lose her in the branches, only to have her surprise him around the next vertical trunk. One time she did a long, controlled descent past him, tantalizingly a mere foot or two out of reach. Tantalizing because she had pulled off her t-shirt and tucked it into her belt. She made a gesture like a fainting damsel in distress as she passed him, then disappeared from view.
And, damn it, he couldn’t do a thing about it because she still had his
