No Questions Asked

chapter I

1931

*

From the earliest days I'd known her, Vivian Jones had appeared to me a most peculiar girl. 

Of course I didn't know her name then. I had only seen her around Aunt Jenny's house, playing about the wild lillies, delicate and precise, before my grumpy old aunt shooed her away with her three mean fingers. 

But whether it was the way Vivian managed to look so intriguing from across my lawn, or whether it was that charismatic ray of nonchalance, an embodiment worth noting every time I saw her walk out of Aunt Jenny's big, white villa, she never failed to fascinate my curiosity.

Vivian appeared to me a most forbidden gem, an untouchable specimen amongst all the white color I knew by sight from the entire seven years of my living. 

Vivian graced my little world with an ethereal purity I had never felt around any other person before.

See, she appeared genuinely different. 

So one day when I was sat on the old, wooden bench outside my house that marked the bus stop, and Vivian herself walked upto me with a box of chocolates in her hands, I couldn't do anything but stare.

Perhaps it was a dumb thing to do. But at the time, my mind was too numb to do anything else. 

I was young. Too young to notice all that I did.

Her skin was a woodsy brown and her eyes were not the least bit familiar. They were the most peculiar brown, twinkling like the sun in Uncle Denver's farm. Her face was delicately round and her forehead was wider than mine. The long arches of her eyebrows seemed to be sculpted right into place and for the longest time in my juvenile mind, I used to think she was gifted them by a fairy. Vivian's hair, a glossy midnight black sent an unforgettable wave of envy down my spine, yet the moment she smiled, I felt stupid to ever think that way.

I was young. Too young to feel that stroke of admiration within my heart.

But it was impossible not to. Not when she was smiling at me like she was the happiest seven-year old on the planet.

Snow white skin. Ocean blue eyes. Golden blonde hair. They were the only things I knew my entire life, so when Vivian arrived in a blur of windswept magic, I welcomed her in like the first spell of rain after decades of drought.

"Want one?" she had said, her voice a lot stronger than she seemed.

I looked up at the girl and then at the tiny wrapped toffee she was holding towards me.

Mom always told me to stay away from strangers, but she also told me to never deny fairies. Still when the time arrived to make my reply, my tongue refused to function.

"Um...I-"

"Okay, here you go," Vivian said, simply plopping the wrapped goodie right into my closed hands. 

That silver wrapped ice-breaker!

It was only after finishing our treats that we got to introducing ourselves. 

Even her name intrigued my little mind. I didn't know it meant 'life' at the time, and when I did come to realize, I decided it would never need a replacement.

She was the epitome of life, always giggling along with me as I cracked the poorest jokes, smiling away my tears whenever teachers picked on me and insisting we always stopped by Tommy's icecream cart, so that I'd heartily have mine and she'd give her cone

Seated by the gardening spray in my backyard, cool springs of water kept falling on our unaided necks as talked on about unicorns and fairies. I found it extremely coincidental when Vivian told me she loved the spring just the way I did, when all the flowers came out of their little buds and the birds flitted about them in flocks.

It signified the start of an everlasting bond between the both of us and my juvenile mind didn't have the heart to laugh at the idea.

In reality, however, Vivian and I were two very different people living two very different lives. 

But we didn't need to know any of that.

Because when fate brought us together on the bus stop that day, we were just two young girls, oblivious to our surroundings. We were somewhere far, far away from there. We were somewhere only happiness reigned.

That was our very first conversation.

I never bothered asking her why she decided to talk to me that day, nor did she tell me why. We were happy in the place we were and nothing else mattered. 

No questions asked.

That was our relationship.  

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