Author's note: Niall is Scotland, Rio is Portugal. Hope you like it! :)
I first met her in the woods. I was hunting on my own, since Niall was too lazy to come with me. I saw a rabbit. I'd usually pull out an arrow and shoot it right through the heart and it'd be good enough to cook. However, I noticed it had a bad leg and refrained from shooting it. I put my hand on its furry head to pat it. Niall had told me that food was becoming scarce in the woods and that I should not take pity on any source of food. An arrow shot through the rabbit's body out of the blue, which shocked me since the arrow almost hit me. That was when I first laid my eyes on her.
Her name was Rio. She had short, auburn hair and eyes the same color as mine. She was a hunter as well. I had Niall with me but she was all alone. She was taller than me but we were the same age. I took her back but she ran away because Niall tried to kill her. "Yacan'ttrust 'er,Arthur.She's 'urenemy." He told me. But I felt that it was better to share our victims than fighting over them. She agreed to trade rabbit meat with my fresh fruits and help each other out but refused to stay with me because of Niall. I met her everyday in the evening at a particular place in the woods to trade. Sometimes I would stay and try to chat with her but she preferred to keep a low profile. I took her as a friend. Did she?
One day while I was trading food with Rio, she finally spoke to me normally, instead of the usual hello,goodbyeor whichpartoftherabbitdoyouwant?She asked me about the weather, which the city people call "small talk". We started talking a lot about each other.
"Rio, will you be my friend?" I asked her on that day.
"I don't know, I never had any friends before."
"Neither have I. That's why I really want one."
"Okay, then I'll be your friend."
I didn't return to Niall that night as Rio and I were playing in her camp. When we finally got tired, we had a hearty dinner of rabbit stew and went to bed. The next morning, I left Rio to sleep in as I went to pluck fruits for breakfast. A fruit tree was quite rare in the woods. While I was plucking fruits, I felt someone pull me down from the tree. It was Niall.
"There ya are! I've been looking all 'ver for ya!" Niall said as he carried me on his back and sped off.
"Where are you taking me?"
"Out of this place. The city people are going to trash this place up. I saw a bunch of bulldozers near our camp."
I thought of Rio, who was still sleeping soundly in her camp. "What about Rio?"
Niall didn't answer me. He just kept running, trying to find an exit from the woods without encountering the bulldozers. Tears filled my eyes. I couldn't imagine what would happen to Rio. The bulldozers will eventually cause a stampede that could cause Rio serious injury or even death. But she was just a girl, how can she survive the impact of the stampede? We were only friends for a day and I had already betrayed her by letting her sleep in. I was her first friend and probably her last.
I blamed Niall for not letting me save her. He took me to the city where he sought help from a friend. We managed to settle down but I would never let myself become one of those cold-blooded city jerks. After a few months in the city, I had stopped ignoring Niall and forgave him. I went to school where I met new friends. Niall was convinced that I became one of the city people when I was in high school where I started acting like a real teenage boy: hanging out with friends, flirting with girls, skipping school to crash the mall, brawling with other boys. He was glad, thinking I had forgotten all about our life in the woods and my first friend who died tragically in a stampede.
But I never did.