Dreamfiction

Everyone had to pass through this certain ruined city, filled with crumbling walls and ledges and archways, on the way to the next town for their journey. He was waiting there for me, this boisterous kid who was a few years older than myself - - who had always teased me and poked me when I wasn't looking and called me slightly mean nicknames.

I had managed to avoid him for the past two and a half years, though, you see. Because of the gap in our ages, and the traditional time each village sent out its children to make the journey, I hadn't seen him since he'd left. He was fifteen then, and I, thirteen. I remember it well - -
I was standing at the edge of town, making faces at him as he walked backward behind the rest of his peers to stare back at me. ... I remember him looking .. rather sad, though, for a reason I could not place back then . . .

Anyway. As I walked below a few buildings whose connecting walkway overhead had long since rusted and collapsed onto the ground beneath my feet, something tapped my head, and then clattered off the iron bars I was picking my way over. I looked around quickly, above and all around me. It certainly wouldn't do to be caught beneath collapsing rubble.

But there was nothing to see. Another tiny pebble tapped my forehead then, and I looked up. He was on the walkway above me, leaning in a corner of the building's facade, with that same half-sad smile on his face as the last time I saw him. I remember how my breath caught in my throat. Then he grinned, as from when we were children, and my heart burst. I could feel hormones rushing to my head, making me dizzy as I jumped up there, and threw myself into his startled arms. I had not realized how much I missed him until just then!

We didn't speak - there was no need. My hands slipped beneath his shirt and clung to his back and shoulders, even though the force of my jump had pressed him into the wall against which he'd been leaning. Look at how much he'd grown! He was nearly a foot taller than me now, as I looked up into his face. That same boyish face - - no ..

The eyes were the same, and the curve of his mouth as he smiled, but all else had undergone a drastic transformation since he'd left home. His brow was set, his jaw lengthened and sturdy. The first traces of facial hair adorned his chin, and his childhood haircut was trimmed back out of his eyes .. just enough to highlight them for me. I blushed, unable to meet the the soul-reaving gaze he'd lost himself in, staring at me, and for a moment I ducked my head to his chest,  resting my cold face against the warmth of his shoulders.

It did not last, though. In but a few short seconds, he lifted my chin to meet his eyes again - how large his knuckles now were! - and he moved us from leaning against him on one wall of the corner, to leaning against me on the other. Our eyes still met, in entirely a different kind of gaze - one of hunger, and longing, filled with the silent remembrance of many long nights on the campagna spent thinking of how "I want to pull her pigtails again", or "I want to kick his shin just one more time". He dropped the traveling pack which had occupied his other hand since my arrival, took my face in his hands, and kissed me as though he'd been planning it for a year - -
Which, to his credit .. he may well have been. Our eyes fell closed, or at least mine did, and I soon became dizzy with everything about him - his scent, the taste of his lips, the muscles in his neck I clung to for dear life.

.... And that, my dear granddaughter, is the story of my first kiss.

"Ewww, Grammamma! I didn't want -that- much detail! Boys are gross! And mean.."

Haha ha! Yes, my dear little one. You'll think so ... for just a few more years.