Unnamed Prologue

Two children are playing in a forest, at a waterfall that plunges into a crystal clear lake.

            “So… uh… we’re really doing this.” A boy says, staring at the girl with a look somewhere between disbelief and distraught.

            “Yeah. Yeah we are. Don’t you chicken out.” The girl replies daringly, a grin on her face. They were both dressed in really simple clothes. She wore her favorite bikini, but he insisted on hiding his body, which she was okay with. She found it awkward to talk to shirtless boys anyway.

            “So come on!” She shouts, “Let’s do this!”

            With the roar of a lioness, she leaps off the cliff side and plunges into the depths below with a vivid slam of water, and the quick force of air blasting out of her lungs.

            The boy waits for what feels like tens of minutes, his eyes bugging out as he stares down the fifty foot drop into a mid-forest lake from a waterfall they stand"well the one he stands and she stood"upon. Finally, the girl reemerges from the depths.

            After taking a couple heavy breaths, she shouts in an exasperated voice, “Com’ on you big scardy cat! Are you gonna let a girl show you up?”

            He pondered the thought, she was sure. She could see it in his figure"he was really scared. She had dived head-long into this lake, but he’s a big coward. She almost felt sorry for him.

            But, of course, she didn’t.

            He runs cross the cliff, taking a bound similar to the girl. In seconds, he splashes into the sparkling lake below, an explosion of water firing off as if he was a bomb.

            She had resurfaced by the time the splash died back down.

            “Heh… see? It’s not that bad.” She speaks to the boy. There’s a pause while the boy takes about a moment to resurface with a deep gasp. The first thing the boy sees is the girl’s mocking grin, her feet gently gliding soft kicks under the water to keep her afloat.

            “Yeah, yeah.” He mutters at her.

            “Hey.” The girl speaks curiously.

            “What?”

            “What’s that behind you?” She points at the rocks, nothing really being there. He, of course, falls for her bait.

            “W-what’s over there?” He speaks curiously as he turns around to view the boring rocks. As he turns, he’s met with a large splash of water from behind.

            “Hey!!” He shouts at the mischievous girl, whom still has a grin matching her playful intent.

            “Haha!” She’s laughing at him, and she can’t believe how dumb he is… until he goes headlong into the water.

            “Where did you go…?” She says cautiously, almost nervous to her friend’s sudden disappearance. Without another word, a phantom limb grabs her by the leg and tugs her under the water.

            She screams, nearly gulping in a mouth full of water as she’s plunged down. She seems to go deeper and deeper into the crystal clear waters, kicking and struggling against the murkiness below.

It finally lets go of her, allowing her to swim back up. She, of course, swims back up in a panic. As she does, the boy resurfaces with her. The boy’s laughing his head off at her panicked reaction to his crude prank, and golly, she didn’t care at all. She wanted to rip his head off his body.

“Haha! Got you good!” The boy laughs at her some more, slowly descending into mere snickers. He sees her face and his snickering quickly dies, she must’ve looked angrier than she meant to, because the boy starts getting all soft with her, he seems to merely give an apologetic gaze, not daring to say sorry.

Why would he say sorry, anyway?

“It’s okay,” She says in a hopefully kind tone, “Let’s just… get out of this lake so we can get dressed and stuff...”

“Yeah,” The boy replies, “Mummy’ll be really angry at me if we don’t get home…”

            The girl exits the lake first, the boy taking a moment or two to catch up behind her and climb out of the lake and onto the wet, sunshine covered, rocks that surround it.

The girl is the first to remove her bikini, tossing it onto the driest of the rocks, making sure the sun has plenty of room to help nature dry the outfit. The boy then follows, and now she felt just a little uncomfortable… not just at the shirtless boy before her, but the completely nude one.

She doesn’t face him, rather she faces away. She can’t bring herself to gaze at him, especially without anything on either of them.

Regardless, the boy still comes to her and sits near her. They sit there, soaking in the harmonies of the forest. They gaze around, looking at infinite sea of trees and greenery in almost every direction. The waterfall to up some of the view.

While they sit there, waiting for their clothes to dry, the boy asks a jarring question that still confuses the girl to this very day:

“Why does Mummy always get mad at me and never at you?”

 

It’s one of the last times she ever saw him, and she couldn’t answer that question back then"and she still feels haunted when she thinks about it now.

Author's Note

I wrote this on a whim. No real thought went into this until after I wrote the first draft.