The boy opened his grey eyes to patches of blue sky peeking through swaying trees and blue eyes, panicked.
"I thought you were dead."
"So did I," the boy said, sitting up and holding his nose which was bleeding rather impressively.
Skye offered no sympathy. "You are the reason my sister nearly broke her elbow."
"Your… ah the girl that fell out of the treehouse? I surprised her on accident. She lost her footing and then ran away before I could help her."
Oh. Oh. Skye had thought that this was going to go better.
She huffed and then stuck out a hand, in what was perhaps the most reluctant show of peace the universe had ever witnessed, and pulled him to his feet.
"I guess you need an ice pack."
She wondered why she always seemed to meet people like this, fanning their faces after she collided with them. Why she seemed to always make rash decisions and take brash actions and collide with boys in tangled messes of limbs and hair, of apologies met with silence, of atoms on exploding atoms.
…
Rosalind sighed but didn't question the state of things when Skye sent a boy away with an ice pack to his nose and a curt word of parting. She found nothing too out of the usual with the scene anyway (it wasn't the first time). What concerned Rosalind more was the yelling from the backyard, heroic roars and shouts of "fire!" and the occasional "woof!"
She found no fire outside, much to her relief, but rather a childhood unfolding like a morning glory. Batty was pulling both Ben and Hound in her red wagon, shouting something about fire engines and grand rescues. Usually Hound was the one doing to pulling, but lately he seemed a bit too tired for such things, so he sat wagging lazily in the wagon as Batty pulled and Ben squirted plants without rhyme or reason other than boyish whim.
Rosalind smiled and watched as the sun burned another horizon away and childhood started to look like a short fuse to messy teenage years and messier adulthood. But these nights she turned a blind eye to it all and let it look simple... accidently on purpose forgot to count down the seconds to explosion, implosion, demolition, and let fire engine hearts continue to save the day for things that didn't need saving.
