Part One


She was raised by men who didn't know how to raise a girl. These men were too young to know. They didn't yet have wives and couldn't remember their sisters. They were very nearly at the level of thinking that girls had cooties.

I was very nearly at that level, too, but they pretended she was a boy, and so I thought she was a boy, like me. She thought she could kick my ass.

She couldn't, and I pounded her... still thinking she was a boy.

She even looked like a boy. Short ash-blonde hair, always seemed to be scowling, pink and blue eyes... Strange attributes, yes. But not much stranger than the purple-eyed bitch she hated so much who lived right next door to me.

So I could beat her up - thinking back, that doesn't sound very good, does it? Haha... But sometimes, she rescued me, too. Probably just to see me when I was down, but I appreciated none the less. Even if she looked pretty lame doing it.

And then, one day, while we were climbing trees... I don't know how I knew... She was a girl in my mind. Definitely, undeniably a girl, and I told her so.

"You're a girl," I said.

It took her all of two somewhat cross-eyed seconds to process this. "So are you!" She stuck out her tongue, assuming I meant it as an insult.

"No, really. You're a girl. I bet you have breasts."

"I do not!" She jumped down from the tree, pulled out her sword (joy), and pointed at me. "Go ahead, say it again! Say I'm some un-awesome girl who can't kick your ass!"

"I never said any of that. Except that you're a girl. Which you are." Though she'd never kicked my ass and her so called awesomeness was a result of her own imagination.

"I'm not!"

"You are."

"I'm not! Why do you think I am, anyway?" She waved her sword at me.

"I'm not sure... but you are."

"Don't you fuck with me," she said, frowning. She sheathed her sword and turned. "Dick. I don't wanna talk to you if you're just going to insult mein awesomeness."

Dick... "Do you have one?"

"Do I have one what?" she shouted back, though not quitting her retreat.

"A dick!"

She snorted. "Ja, and it's five times longer than yours."

"Let me see it, then."

"Nein." She kept her hand on her sword when she turned back to face me. "It is too awesome for Ihre Augen. Said Augen would fall out of your head as soon as you were graced with something so simple as a view of the awesomeness that is my penis."

"You're lying, then."

"No I'm not."

"Liar."

"Not."

"Liar."

"Not."

"Liar."

"Leave me alone! Mein gott! It's like you want me to be a girl, or something! Do you have a thing for me?" She paused. "I mean, obviously you do - who wouldn't, I'm awesome!"

"No, I was just saying that you're a girl." Her ego was not so attractive, even if she did sometimes manage to be... barf... pretty. And she kept using the word awesome. "That's all."

"You're wrong! I'm not." She poked herself in the chest but I didn't look down. "Check it out, I don't have breasts. This is all muscle."

I wasn't convinced for whatever reason, and she could tell I wasn't going to back down.

"I don't need to prove anything to you," she said, turning again.

"I don't need you to, Kisasszony A Német Lovagrend."

She paused to twitch, then thought better of it and kept going. Just before she was out of sight, however, she drew something from her boot and turned.

"Weren't you the one who told me I shouldn't insult my neighbors or they'd start fights with me? Do you really want to start a fight over something like this? Hm?" She thrusted the object at me; it was a small knife clearly intended for the purpose of throwing from that distance. I ducked it - barely. "Kisasszony this!"

She stopped talking to me for a long time after that. It was no loss. I didn't particularly care about her gender after a few months, and a few months after that, I wished I had thought to insult her masculinity earlier, if it would get her to leave me alone.