A day ago, Yuki would have taken this moment and struck without hesitation. She'd felt the fear of Aria, and the boldness of being a knight, and she'd have looked at this as a moment to rid the world of an evil-doer and struck confidently and quickly. 

But then, this has been quite a day, hasn't it? Nearly a whole day in fact, the dance carrying them past midnight into the wee hours of a new morning. A day full of pain and loss and also full of new learning and questions about the shape of the heart. Thellamie has a lot to offer, even if it doesn't fill you aglow with starlight and place you on the royal road. 

And Aria Thendragon is not Walking Elm. The latter makes Yuki sick and afraid and her response had been anger and instinct first. She was still angry, would still have struck Walking Elm in anger had the targets been reversed. But Aria...she was tragic, and now Yuki could see that tragedy from a safe place and consider it.

And so the blow she strikes is without hesitation, but it is not a fierce and confident blow, but a gentle one. The slow twirl of an intimate dance, a languid movement through measures of music in which the axe rises and falls and kisses the neck of Aria Thendragon. That for a moment, in Yuki's fullness within the play, she can be great enough to catch even a falling dragon and lay her down to sleep without any unnecessary jostles. 

She did not strike to claim the title of lumberjack knight, though it is now irrevocably hers for the great tree she has felled. And she did not strike to save anyone this time. She struck because when she looked at the dragon before her, she saw a queen whose eyes were so very sad. Who did not wish to keep trying to conquer and did not feel any of the joy before her now. Only the sorrow of what was lost. She struck because that was what Aria Thendragon’s heart desired, that she might go back to rest and not be forced yet again through the pain and struggle of a world that had already had its time with her and she with it. 

This strike, then, is the greatest gift that Yuki knows how to give to a dragon queen. And she gives it freely, with all of her being.