Vivi has never been the type to love quickly. Love comes slowly—oh so slowly—to her. But once it arrives, it is here to stay. The intensity may dim, and the wanting may fade, but the love itself is always there, thrumming underneath everything like the comfort that it is.
Pell is her first crush, and he's the only one that she can never quite remember falling for. By the time she becomes aware of love, Pell is already the center of her world. Love means Pell, and Pell means love. There is no other. She already knows that the affection she feels for him is different from Father, or Igaram or Chaka.
She is three years old when she declares her intent to marry Pell when she grows up, and Igaram has to hold her father back from going after Pell.
Years later, people will continue to tell the story and laugh.
"You were three, you didn't even understand what that meant!" Pell will tell her himself.
Vivi will smile and laugh with him, keeping her secret: that she remembers being in love with him, and perhaps it was a naive, childish sort of love, but it was love.
Vivi is four years old and on Pell's back in the sky when she dares to ask for the first time.
"Will you kiss me, Pell?"
She can't see his face, but she feels the stiffening, then the chuckle reverberating beneath her.
"If you like, Princess Vivi. When we land."
She has to remind him after they land. He kisses her on the cheek. Four-year-old Vivi cannot imagine a greater joy. Vivi cherishes that memory for the rest of her life. It is branded into the story of her life as her First Kiss.
By the time that she is five, she has learned about status and responsibility and respect. She knows that she cannot solicit more affection from Pell than he offers freely. She apologizes for the time that she made him kiss her.
His eyes go soft. "It's nothing to apologize for, Princess Vivi," he says. "The love I bear for you and your father is true."
She understands then, in her young heart, that this enormous affection she feels for Pell will never be returned. She is only a princess to him. Beloved, yes, but not the way that he is beloved to her.
Vivi's heart breaks for the first time, then. She claims a headache and takes to bed and cries for the rest of the day.
Mrs. Terracotta comes in at dinner time with soup. The soup gets haphazardly deposited on the bedside table when she sees Vivi's shoulders shaking.
"Princess? What is it?"
"It hurts," Vivi whimpers to her own shame, too deep in the ravine of heartbreak to say anything but the truth.
"Oh, sweetheart," said Mrs. Terracotta, stroking Vivi's hair. "I know it does. Just wait a minute—I'll get the doctor."
And Vivi is ashamed that her secret is out, but grateful that she is understood. The doctor gives Vivi a spoonful of a sweet syrup, and soon after that she's asleep.
It's years before it occurs to Vivi that Mrs. Terracotta didn't understand at all—she only thought she was dealing with a child with a nasty headache.
Vivi's secret is safe.
Vivi meets Kohza when she is five, and still desperately and hopelessly in love with Pell. Kohza is nothing but a nuisance to her—a kid who dares speak to Father like he understands better than Father how to be a king. He's rude and mean, and doesn't care that she's a princess when she tells him so.
In all fairness, he doesn't start the fight—but neither does she. Carue pecks him in the stomach, and he lashes out at Carue. She steps in the way. He punches her in the face. She kicks him in the groin, like Pell taught her. War is waged.
After a few fights, there's a sort of respect that underlies the fights. They avoid each other's faces, and don't punch more than they have to. Kohza takes her to his Suna Suna Clan, and accepts when she immediately challenges him for leadership.
She loses. He appoints her vice-leader all the same.
They are friends.
Vivi has never had friends her own age before. It's different. She likes it.
Everyone expects her to fall in love with Kohza.
She doesn't. She still watches Pell when she thinks no one's looking, her heart beating affection and pain in silent tandem.
Kohza becomes the first one to notice, when she's seven.
"You really love him, huh?" he says quietly, subdued.
Vivi jumps, not having noticed him coming up from behind her.
"Who?" she attempts to obfuscate. It doesn't work. Kohza just fixes her with a look. She sighs and looks away. "Aren't you supposed to be seeking us?"
"I am. I just found you. But you were too engrossed to notice."
Vivi scowls at him.
"If you think I'll let you make fun of me-"
"Never," says Kohza quietly.
Vivi furrows her brows. "You make fun of me all the time," she points out.
"But not about this. I wouldn't."
Vivi blinks at him and thinks about how she thought that Mrs. Terracotta understood her all those years ago. This is infinitely better, because she thinks Kohza really does understand.
"It hurts sometimes and I can barely breathe," she confides in a whisper. "But I can't tell him. I can't let them see. It would hurt him, if he knew. People would hurt him, blame him."
A tear trickles out the corner of her eye, and she wipes it away furiously.
"Hey," says Kohza quietly. "You can cry if you want. I won't tell."
She looks at him for the first time, and thinks she sees something like her own pain reflected in his eyes. Her lip quivers, and a half-sob escapes out her nose like a grunt. Kohza doesn't laugh. He opens his arms to her, and even though they've never done this, even though this isn't them, she dives into his arms as if it is. She cries her heart out, for the first time, face buried in Kohza's shoulder.
She thinks she's imagining the wetness she feels in her hair, but when they pull apart, his eyes are red, too.
"Thank you," she says quietly.
"Anytime," he replies.
She wonders what made him cry with her, but she senses that he fears the question, so she doesn't ask.
"You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to," she says instead.
He stares at her for a moment.
"Can I kiss you?" asks Kohza out of the blue.
Vivi furrows her brow. "Why?"
"Because I'm not him," he says.
Vivi isn't sure what that means, but she agrees anyway.
Kohza leans in and kisses her on the mouth, instead of the cheek like she was expecting. It's a quick, dry pressure that's gone as soon as it came.
Kohza's face is red when they part.
Vivi realizes, then, that maybe she just broke a heart, too, and wishes she hadn't. She throws her arms around his neck and starts crying all over again.
Kohza holds her and cries some more, too.
It's a long time before they leave the dark alcove where Vivi had been hiding. The Suna Suna Clan is no longer hiding—they've gotten bored and are playing tag at the base instead. When they return, Vivi and Kohza are met with demands for an explanation. They lie. Vivi pretends she fell asleep and Kohza pretends he got lost in a secret passageway. Vivi leads them to one of the secret passageways she knows to corroborate his story.
They never talk about that day again.
But it's a brand on Vivi's heart, and after that day, she feels the hurt and the intensity of her feelings for Pell begin to ease.