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Author's Note: Can you tell that I can't wait for school to get out?

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Summer is the time when one sheds one's tensions with one's clothes, and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit. A few of those days and you can become drunk with the belief that all's right with the world. ~Ada Louise Huxtable

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Those two weeks of summer are written in fruits. Pineapples from the far south that are sweet and slightly tangy on their tongue; shared berries in a bowl as they take turns reading to each other. Apples when they attempted to juggle one rainy afternoon when there was little else to do. Persimmons as they watch the sun go down, the juice running sticky between their fingers and on their chins. Bananas that are split in half and shared after they race each other to town one morning. Grapes that are tossed in the air and are—attempted—to be caught in their mouths. Kiwis that are sour-sweet and make their tongues tingle even as they point out constellations and comets in the sky.

Kratos turns thirteen the day before they're set to return. They celebrate by stealing away down to the river just outside of town. They splash and race each other in the cool water, climbing trees—Yuan always beats Kratos to the top—and jumping in. Today is theirs and no one else's.

Yuan tosses Kratos a pomegranate that they'd gotten from the kitchen that morning before lying beside him on a sun-warmed boulder. "So…how's it feel to be a teenager?"

Kratos bites into the pomegranate, the red juice filling his mouth with sudden sweetness. "…I don't feel any different, actually. The same as I was yesterday."

"Yeah?"

"Mmhm."

"Why'dya suppose everyone makes such a fuss of turnin' thirteen then?" Yuan plays with a seed. The smell of the pomegranates still reminded him powerfully of home. (It's powerful enough that his chest aches with the feeling, but after today, he'll be able to associate pomegranates with Kratos and a sunlit day when it's just them as they're supposed to be, just Kratos-and-Yuan.)

"No idea."

"…You ever think that every year we get older, we're still all the years before it too?"

Kratos stares at him as though he's grown another head. "What?"

"Well, like…" Yuan propped himself up one elbow. "You're thirteen. But maybe you're also twelve and eleven and ten, all the way down to one year old. 'Cause sometimes, you don't feel as old as you actually are, right?"

"I guess not."

"Like, when you hear something at night and you get a little scared—not that I do, mind you—maybe it's because you're still six somewhere and that six year old is still scared of the dark."

"You're a freak." Kratos snorts, but with the easy gruffness that was allowed only between close friends.

Yuan pokes his tongue out, feeling very much like seven and not twelve at all. But he likes being twelve because twelve means having Kratos for a best friend and Yuan finds himself hard pressed to find something better than that.