Living Fatally : Loving You

Chapter 12: Daniel

A small, green dot in the distance was scuttling towards us. 

"Danny!" 

Alexei excitedly sprinted towards the dot to greet it. I did the same, although a bit confused at the identity of this stranger. 

As we got closer, I could see that the green dot had been a boy that looked about Alexei's age. 

He was wearing a wooly green coat, and it flapped like a seagull's wings as he was racing towards us. Just as Alexei was about to greet the stranger with an embrace, a startling sensation hit my forehead. 

A snowball had flied across the field to my face, and I hurled me flat on to the icy ground. As the cold slowly burned into my face,  I realized what had happened. 

The new kid was going to be difficult, I could just tell. 

I quickly sprang up from the ground and formed a snowball with my ruddy bare hands. At this point, all worries about the cold or dirtying my attire had metamorphosed into pure adrenalin. I flung the ice across the plain, aimed at the dot in green. From the small yelp and a plopping motion, I could tell that my retribution had done him some good. 

From then on it was plain dog fight. Alexei, "Danny", and I had turned into small devils and waged war on each other. The clean, white snow field soon became a dotted one, with small kid footprints. 

At the end of the day winner was unidentifiable, like most childrens' games. Each one argued that they had fired more snow catapults, but the dispute was pointless. After a good couple hours of horsing around, us three were dozing softly on our respective snow angels. I laughed to myself as I mused the fact that despite being a few years older than the two boys (mentally), I had enjoyed myself to an extent I did not expect. Playing mindlessly was something that I had not forgotten about. 

"I didn't mean to throw it at you, of course. It was Alexei that I was aiming at," said the boy timidly. He then acted like nothing had happened and continued to widen his snow angel.

Alexei threw some snow at him as a form of retort, and chuckled. Then he turned towards me and started introducing us to each other.

"Lee, this is my friend Daniel Lipovsky. Daniel, this is my friend Edith Lee."

I turned to face him, and I could see now that "Danny" was surprisingly beautiful. I had not noticed his face in the midst of all the chaos, but his profile was of utmost culture. His messy strawberry blonde hair was tinted with golden highlights, and his long, dark eyelashes (which I so envied...!) were casting shadows on his warm caramel eyes. Cheery freckles were dotted all over his tan skin, hinting his mischevious nature. 

Trying not to act too self-conscious, I quickly got up and shouted out the obvious fact. 

"Thanks for the introductions, but I think we'd better get home soon. It's almost dark now!"

The sky had already turned into milky blue twilight, and we all raced to get inside. Zinovia, who was waiting for us, had prepared warm tea and blankets.