Lost and Found
I shivered. I did not know how I got here, in this strange place, full of big trees and snow covering everything. I could hear faint laughter so I followed it and as the laughter became louder, I came across a clearing. There was a boy there, with who I assume to be his mother tickling him.
"Не мама! Моля, спрете!" (No mama! Please stop!)
I frowned, confused at what I was hearing. "Hello?" I called out hesitantly. The reaction was instant, the boy stopped laughing and his mother held him behind her back with a stick held out in front of her. Her eyes were speeding around, as if looking for the source of the voice. I stepped out fully into the clearing, and she lowered her stick slightly, a frown forming on her face, wondering what a child as young as I was doing out in the woods alone without a chaperone in these paranoid times.
"Hello?" Her voice was gentle now, as if expecting me to run away from her. "Where are your parents, little one?"
I frowned, not remembering, "I don't know." I answered honestly.
Her face relaxed, now not paranoid that I was there to hurt her or her child. The boy from behind her slowly edged around his mother and he walked towards me, ignoring his mother's hissed "Viktor, no!"
He held out his hand for me, an accent edging his English words, "Hello, my name is Viktor. Vhat is yourz?"
I accepted his handshake, grinning at him, "My name is Harlan, and I think we are going to be very good friends, Viktor."
6 years later
"Yes! Of course!" I was pleased, to say the least, when my best friend for all of 6 years, asked me out on my assumed birthday, the best present I could ever get. The reason I say assumed birthday is because today was the day I met Viktor and also because I don't remember anything from before that fateful day. It was the best day of my life and it has been every year especially this one. I can't believe that my feelings for my best friend were returned and that I'm going on a date with him. We are going to Разходка на висшия магьосник and he's taking me to our equivalent of the English chocolate store and the rest of shops in the village they call higsneade or something.
"What am I supposed to wear?!" I fretted, throwing clothes from my trunk out onto the other boys' beds. They all avoided my clothes with super efficiency and sighed simultaneously.
"He's going to adore you in whatever you wear. You could go in a bin bag and he'd say you look gorgeous." Mikael said monotonously, then dodging one of my boxers when I threw it at him.
"Exactly! That's the problem! He wouldn't tell me if I looked hideous because-"
"Because he loves you and wouldn't care for something as materialistic as clothes." Mikael sighed and sat down on my bed and patted the space next to him for me to join him. He stared at me until I grumpily did so.
"Harlan, you know I'm not that romantic guy who knows everything about love and romance but I do know love when I see it, and I've known Viktor since he was in diapers so I know the guy more than anyone other than maybe his parents, and trust me, he is smitten with you. It's like he has hearts in his eyes every time you come into the room. It's disgusting. And I also know that you are just as smitten as him, which is why you're trying so hard to impress him. The thing you need to understand is that he doesn't want to be impressed, he just wants to be loved by you. And now I need to go and wash out my mouth with soap from that disgusting speech I just gave you." Mikael shuddered in mock horror.
I chuckled at his impromptu speech and softly said, "Thanks."