The Fist

4

After having fired everything into the space between each other, Ava shuffled closer to Nathan along the rough bark of the fallen tree. "What was your life like before the meteor came?" Head tilted and eyes unfocused, Ava watched her own childhood play out before her.

Re-positioning himself and shivering once, slowly, with rolling shoulders, Nathan left the question with the wind.

Turning her head away from the whispering enquiry, Ava climbed off the log and grinned to herself. Stumbling over nothing, she put her hands down to catch herself and brought them back in fists. Slowly, she walked behind Nathan, stepping one foot onto a flat outcropping stone in the river. After putting both fists together and squeezing hard, Ava threw the snowball at Nathan's back and burst into laughter.

Nathan's thin mouth opened slightly on impact and he turned to face Ava, whose giggles, after seeing his impression, ended abruptly. "Why?"

Ava simply shook her head with a frown and climbed over the log to slouch back onto it. Swinging her legs, she started to pick at the bark with her dirt-filled nails and flick the bits over the edge, into the water. Her gaze swung lazily over the surrounding trees, 'Brown tree. Brown tree again. Oh, look! Slightly greyer brown.'

She straightened her back with a deep breath in, and the heaviest sigh that she could muster sent the air straight out again and re-folded her spine. Then, her eyebrows raced each other down the bridge of her nose. "Are you not bored?" It came out more demanding and a little higher in pitch than she had meant it to.

After having refocused his eyes on Ava, seeming to finally remember she was there, he shook his head. "I like it here. Calm. Peaceful. Feels... safe." He said the last word straight into her eyes.

"Yeah, yeah, I get that," Ava muttered, jumping off their bench again. "But what's the point in safety if it's not fun? I'd just die of boredom then," she span around to finish her sentence towards Nathan, "Which means it's not actually safe."

"You'd never die from boredom," Nathan pointed out, looking downward, his shoulders growing out from where they'd hidden in his neck.

"Technically, if I die out here, it'll have been because of boredom. If I hadn't been bored," Ava almost sang, walking along the snow, touching each heel to the toes of the foot behind, arms pointing slightly downward out to each side, "Then I wouldn't have come out here."

Nathan's eyes glazed over with worry as he turned his head away from her. "Maybe you would survive Dursley," he whispered to no one. Turning back towards Ava, he nodded sadly, though she wasn't watching. He repeated his words exactly and Ava perked up immediately.

A while later, they lay on the powder snow behind a cover of bramble bushes. They peeked between the spindly, winter-bitten branches, staring at the family of metal giraffes, turning necks made of crossing bars growing into the sky, conveyor-belt legs unseen below the lip of the hill. Together, they worked like ants to build some sort of framework of floorboards and steel rods. Skyline full of tall creatures and a wooden canopy, the whole city felt alive.

Ava imagined herself roaming around the safari of Dursley, riding the giraffes herself.

Beside her, Nathan shivered. "I'm not going any further."

"Classic book character," Ava said, rolling her eyes. "Take the main character, which would obviously be me, somewhere dangerous and ditch them to save your own skin. Not that it's any better out here."

"You read?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Ava shouted, springing to her feet. Her eyebrows dug further and harder into her nose as her eyes set fire to the snow. "Yes, I read! I'm very good at reading for your information." Flinging her arm out to point down the hill, she added, "Whether you're coming with me or not, I'm going into Dursley right now!" She dropped her small plastic bag and grabbed his rucksack from its space beside him. Her footsteps reverberated through the woodland and down into the valley she was charging towards.