Maurine and Edmund Interlude 3

Edmund would not stand for that look clouding the interesting, quirky expressions Maurine usually wore. Gently, he tipped her chin up and smiled.

"Come on now. Surely there must be something I can do to get that smile of yours back, hm?"

     

Maurine's eyes were wide for a moment, then she shook her head and smiled. She gingerly pushed his finger away. "Just keep walking, champ."

     

A warm laugh, a tad louder than intended escaped the giant as he lowered Maurine to chest level, keeping her secure against him as he advanced through the streets at a slow pace, eyes kept down to look for any potential humans underfoot.

     

Though she could feel her eardrums ringing, a smile found its way to her lips. It was flattering to know she could elicit that joyful noise from such an intriguing person. She felt rather wimpy still, but she was more relaxed in his hand. He could catch her that way, see her the whole time, notice if she plummeted to her death.  

"Okay, take a right onto the first dirt road!" She called over her shoulder, scooting forward to peer through his curled fingers.

"Taking the right." He reiterated as if to confirm he'd heard her instruction, concrete turning to soil once he'd passed through the main gates. He could see tiny grass growing along the dirt road in question, so small the blades reminded him of green eyelashes. Absentmindedly, Edmund continued to look down towards Maurine, unable to fight the urge to smooth his thumb gently through her blonde locks.

     

"What are you doing?" Maurine abruptly turned around in his hand, arching an accusing eyebrow at the giant carrying her. "Are you... petting me?"

     

Oh bloody hell, he'd been caught in the act. Blushing up a storm upon being discovered, he cleared his throat, removing his finger from her immediately.

"Nothing of the sort. Why would you think I would?"

     

"I dunno. Cause I'm cute and you could get away with it?" She actually wasn't that upset about it. But she couldn't resist giving him a hard way to go about it.

     

Edmund took a moment and hummed in thought, rubbing his lips together once before looking back down at her "Hm. Rather accurate, honestly." He admitted.

The scent of fresh air and soil and moss filled his nostrils immaculately.

     

She debated whether to be insulted or flattered. In the end, she never decided; just sat back down with a dizzy smile on her face. She came this way many times a week. But never from this perspective. She felt like the trees, birds, and grass were all cheering her on, awestruck by her current luck as much as she was.

"Hang on for a sec." She strained to hear the river rushing. "Just a little further. Holy duck sauce, that was fast."

     

"This is beautiful."Edmund breathed, enthralled by the change of scenery. Though he'd aways be in love with old buildings and castles and churches and the like, the forests held a beauty of their own even if they were smaller than the ones back home. It was times like these that he truly felt like a giant, especially with the lovely blonde seated in his palm. He smiled down at her.

"It pays to have a date that walks a little faster than yourself." He gave a goofy wink.

"It does," Maurine said with a goading grin. 

They passed a white marble statue twenty feet tall, one of several memorials for those lost in the Revolution. Edmund fell quiet at the sight of it, glancing back over his shoulder at the names inscribed into the faded stone. Maurine followed his gaze thoughtfully, her own thoughts drifting.      

"Were your parents a part of the Revolution? Mine were lame, living in Switzerland. But my best friend's parents were, like, a really big part." How funny it was, having a casual conversation with a giant like this... Hell, most of her dates with normal guys were disasters. Talking with Edmund was as easy as breathing.

     

Edmund shifted his shoulders a bit, rolling them back in the sockets to work out a bit of the stiffness. "I think that they wish they had been. They heard stories from family friends that were involved but they never saw it first hand." He paused a moment, noting how Maurine's lips would part a bit sometimes to draw a long breath. He doubted she had any clue how tempted that seemingly casual motion was.

     

"Sounds like an exciting time, doesn't it? All that uncertainty up in the air? Bet they felt important." The sun flashed in her eyes and she released the branch to shield her eyes. "Gah, go away sun!" She protested.

     

Edmund moved an arm out to shift some hair from his eye the paused, slowly lifting over top of Maurine. "Better?"

     

"Um, yeah, actually. Thanks." Maurine lowered her arms, observng the peculiar eclipse his arm created. Three birds flew out of the overhead canopy, giving his arm a wide berth. She opened up her sketchbook and began to rough out the shape of the boulders on the other side of the brook. "So tell me, is it just you, or do you have some siblings back home?"

     

"My older brother Matthew. He's...an interesting character to say the least." He said, keeping his hand held steady over her head. He loved watching her work. He could even pick up the odd soft scratch of a sketch being born.

     

"That so?" She grinned at her page in progress, sparing the giant a quick glance. "Hah. I think I know what that means."

     

"And what about you? Any siblings?" Edmund inquired, lifting his hand a little bit to flex the fingers a bit before returning it to where it hand been.

     

"Five." She looked up, clearly anticipating the flabbergasted response she always got. "Second youngest of the lot. Three are already out on their own- flown out of the nest, as my pop puts it. Just me and Lyden at home now."

     

"Five. That must have been something interesting growing up." He chuckled, mindful of his volume when he was so close to her. The idea of any parent being able to raise five children was astonishing; he gave Maurine's parents a mental pat on the back.

     

"It was a mad house! We were the house kids always wanted to sleep over at, cause my folks were too drop-dead tired to care if we had sweets for supper twice a week." She chuckled in remembrance, a mixture of bitterness and warm nostalgia on her face. She was utterly aware of how close she was to Edmund- his breathing, the radiating life he emitting- and it showed in her half-hearted drawing of the riverbank.

     

For a moment, he remained quiet after she was done speaking. He'd been attentive to her words and now he remained so but with relocated focus. Edmund silently observed her, upper lids drawn slightly downward in a fan of long, dark lashes and again, he felt his lips part, letting out the gentlest of sighs, a soft utterance.

     

She tried in vain to fix her drawing, but it was useless. She shut the book gruffly and shoved it into her cloth purse with her charcoal.

"Urgh, I can't draw with you around. You're distracting me." Maurine huffed and jumped from her perch, dangling from the branch with a secure grip. She glanced down for her next branch of descent.
     

Once freed from his trance-like stupor, Edmund took notice of Maurine's irritation. He pursed his lips nervously. Had he screwed up?

"Oh. My apologies." He mumbled and moved his hand down. He'd let her climb down herself for now, respect her independence and all that...though her position was making him a touch nervous. "Would you...like a hand maybe?"

     

She snorted. "You don't have to apologize.." She let go, dropping to a branch roughly four feet down. It shook, not being terribly thick. She had a couple scratches, but they were just bright pink. No blood. Maurine turned a sly smile up towards the giant. "I know how much you like to manhandle me, but I'm a big girl, believe it or not. Well-" she laughed at the irony and shook her head. "Sorta. You know what I mean."

     

Edmund shifted and sat up, eyes still fixed entirely on the human below him. "Believe me, I know that you are a 'big girl'. Even if you do fit in the palm of my hand." He ran his fingers through thick curls and glanced away towards the rest of the forest. He loved the layers of branches and low canopies, how the light filtered through green...

     

Maurine crept away from the base of the tree once he was still again. He looked like a Greek god, even from way down here. 

"I...Oh." She said simply. The snarkiness seemed to have been blown right our of her.

A gust of wind, feeling more like a gentle caress of a breeze swam through inky black locks, barely causing a hint of any real movement. He took a deep breath and released, glancing back down towards her, eyes searching softly for something.

     

She should have looked away. Hide the vulnerability that came with admiration, curiosity... But instead, her feet carried her closer to his folded leg, thicker then a tree trunk. Her tongue felt like lead.

     

"Would you..." He said softly then regained a little bit of volume, laying back down on his stomach. His comment trailed off, left unsaid. He eyed a pair of impossibly small lips.

     

"Yes?" She prompted, eyes alight. She stepped closer towards him, close enough now to reach out and lean against his wrist. Her heart fluttered, looking up to watch those perfect lips part slightly.

     

Her dainty weight made his eyes close to half mast, his chest fill with rapid heartbeat. She was in reach. Edmund leaned closer to her, only a moment away before whispering as softly as his voice would allow. "May I kiss you?"

     

Was she daydreaming again? She could barely hear him over the deafing thrum of her own hearbeat. His lips were the center of her vision now, holding her gaze captive. He was so close, she could practically imagine the texture. Finally, she nodded, then vocalized in case he couldn't see.

"Y-yeah.."

Kissing a human was going to be a challenge, that much he could innately guess but none the less, he would try. With as much delicacy as he could, Edmund leaned in and barely carressed her lips and lower face in the smallest of kisses he could give.

     

It was softer than she expected. Not uncomfortably hot, either. She marveled at his precision, given how tiny of a target he had. Maurine had been kissed a fair few times… but they were all sloppy and irreverent compared to this. She wasn't sure how she could even respond, but puckered her lips and leaned a bit more against him.

     

Without disrupting her too badly, Edmund lifted his free hand and placed it at her back, his index finger supporting the back of her head carefully. He kept his eyes open and ears pealed for any sign of potential struggle or need to pull back before leaning in the smallest amount--well, small for him.

     

A new wave of tingling euphoria cascaded from her heart down to her legs. She could feel his immense strength, how little of his shifting could cause such an increase of pressure. It was harder to breath, and after a few moments, she was forced to push against his lips to get a gasp of air.

Edmund backed up a bit, releasing as much pressure as he could and kept his hand behind her, a support "...Forgive me, was I too forceful?" He said softly, waiting patiently for her to respond. His brows furrowed in worry.

     

"No! I just needed to breath." She finally took a few steps back to look up towards his eyes. She gave a small start when she backed into a wall of loosely curled fingers. She tested leaned nearly her entire weight back against his hand, confident he could amply support it. "I've never kissed a giant before." She confessed, a dazed smile tugging at her reddened lips.

Relief washed over the giant intantaneously, that he hadn't hurt Maurine by accident. He smiled and curled a finger around, tracing the pad slowly down her shoulder "A new experiance for the both of us then." He leaned in, pressing a small kiss to the top of her head then pulled away to speak "I have never kissed a human before you."

Her chest heaved with new breaths. Maurine struggled to regain her compsure from the dizzy schoolgirl Edmund had reduced her to. She laughed louder than she intended, but it came out cute enough. "Well…" She began to trace a circle around the pad of his fingertip, holding it there against her shoulder. "If that's the case, then maybe… we should practice." She batted her lashes up at him. The blush felt pleasant on her cheeks now.

"Well then..." His eyes wore a flirtier, sexier tone much akin to the one that drenched his voice as well. "...Shall we?" Edmund whispered.