Child of Youth

Chapter 6: Beautiful Soul

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Restricted reading. DO NOT read if you don't like sexual content involving minors.

There are many things that Liana wanted to have...things about her body she wanted to change so she could start carving out the pathway to Paul's heart. It had an overgrown forest filled with tall, dark trees, with a small, crooked path every few feet, and muddy lakes and ponds, but no oceans or seas.

Her height was one thing that bothered her least of all. She liked Paul being a head taller than her. To her, it made their story seem even more fairytale-like. The other thing that bother her at all was her clothes. The outfits she had packed - or rather threw in - her back bag that hasty night - were quite limited, 6 to be precise.

Her favourite one was the yellow dress. It was three quarters in length, with three quarter length sleeves. It was very plain, with a narrow skirt, but she liked the fact that it buttoned down from the scarf at the neck to the seam because...one day Paul might help her button them down... It also rolled up easily at the sleeves and looked great with the tight, neat and shiny, thick black braided bun in her neck. Sometimes she picked lilies or white roses and wore them near her forehead in her hair while she went about her daily work.

Their was the dark gray halterneck one, the white wedding one - which, sadly, she never wore again, and it slowly started collecting dust - a light blue one, a pink one, and a brown long sleeved V-neck one. It had a couple of frills, at least, to make up for the heaviness, the rugginess and the lack of colour.

Paul, being a typical guy, thought Liana's biggest insecurity was her hair being "too short," though it already cascaded down to her waist, near kissing the crack of her butt. She was glad he at least didn't think it was her breasts - the fact that they were too ... small.

She binded her chest by making two bandanas she bought with her into bras. She sewed them tighter, like her mother had taught her, and narrowed them to find her dainty chest. She had now begun a secret habit she didn't want her young "husband" to know about.

Every night, at midnight, in the candlelight, while he was asleep, she would go out of her bed and slowly creep to a mirror...strip down the top half of her little body...and stare at the area of her body her bra had concealed in the daylight...hoping they would change, praying they would grow. It would be the first sign that she was turning into a woman. Oh, how much she desired and longed to be one these days...! They were about the size of two small strawberries. Still. Exactly.

Sometimes she would do it someplace he couldn't wake up and see her there. At the river, to be precise. The silver moonlight and the patches of yellow-golden candlelight in the blackness was just enough to light the area of her skin and body parts in the dark reflection of the quite waters.

Sometimes, in the daylight, while bent over slowly trudging with a heavy water Paul in hand back to the cottage, or verociously trying to peel a carrot she didn't know how to, or wringing out her and Paul's large bed blankets in the river nearby, she caught herself wondering things... Strange things.

Like whether or not Paul was really a young man... Capable of planting a seed inside of her. A seed that could sprout into a life she was strong enough to hold and carry with her little arms, to nurture from her small chest, and to teach to walk beside her, while holding her larger, yet small hand, even to one day start forming words with its small mouth and see the world as a laughing matter through its tiny baby eyes?

The lyrics at the end of chapter 4 was one Liana often sung while going about her daily chores. She never got tired of doing them with those words in her heart. It meant about as much to her as it possibly could to "just" an 11 year old girl like her.

She didn't think much about having a beautiful soul.

She didn't think about the Bible verse: "Charm is deceiving and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised." Liana was not reminded of text parts like: "You shall adorn yourselves not with expensive clothes or elaborate hairstyles or fancy jewels, but with good deeds and a pure soul."

Every day she became more tired of looking 11. Of acting 11. Of dressing 11. Of talking like an 11 year old. Of being 11. She didn't think cutting up her clothes and dressing trashy was a good thing since it might make her look older than 11, but... Maybe...

One day she randomly wanted to surprise Paul by what she wore.

Paul went to town every day to find someone to work for or someplace for a job. Yes, people were surprised to see a boy of his age walking around alone in a strange town, after all, everyone who lived there had always lived there and they've never seen a boy like him there before - but they assumed he lived in one of the other towns 10 miles or so off.

He was probably an orphan - they thought, and that's what he had to tell them, though he detested lying to others - even more than Liana did. He told them he was now living with his aunt, but she was poor, couldn't afford to send him to school, and he had to find a job. They believed him, usually, fairly quickly, but no one said they had an open place for him. Some store keepers, market sellers, housebuilders, police officers, etc, even tested him for drugs and asked for his birth certificate and home address before allowing him to move a foot.

Paul had given them a false age - 16, to make it seem less illegal for him to "cupcake-ing about all alone like this," according to the words of one plump, gray haired lady in a rainbow coloured dress  who seemed to love eating unroasted marshmallows, which she sometimes gave to him and Liana, the latter appreciating the unusual treat greatly.

Some people didn't believe that he could be 16 years old, already, some did. But at least no one arrested him. He had no ID to show them to "prove" this false age.

He managed to plead for food or do a chore her and there, like help sell fruits and vegetables at the market or clean a store porch or paint a fence or dig out weeds, move the lawn and plant fans water flowers for somebody, which usually earned him a couple of dollars and sometimes also a bag of brown bread and a dark chocolate bar or so. Or even worse... A lollipop, which made him really angry, to say the least.

It was an unspoken rule that Liana should never go to town with Paul. It would just arise further unnecessary suspicions.

When he came home from looking for a job in town - which he still hadn't found, and which was something Liana ought to have been considering way more than she did - he found Liana doing something he wasn't expecting. Not schoolwork, she had bought her books and stationery with her, and sometimes put a couple of hours in when she was motivated, sometimes skipped when she was lazy...but...something else.

She was doing yoga, to be precise. Her black hair, she wore loose and streaming down her back and along her waist and hips. He noticed her hips had gotten a slight curve to them. Very slight, but they were now, for the first time, noticeably wider than her waist.
She wasn't naked, or even close to it - she wore the light gray dress, but the back of the dress was non-existent. He had never known that the pattern of a girl's upper back bones could be like a smooth, caramel chocolate ribbon.

Or rather, she seemed to be striking a spectacular ballerina pose. She was in a warrior pose at the same time, with one leg extended in the air in front of her, hands outstretched above her head, slightly to the sides. Her naked back was arched smoothly and beautifully and she seemed to be staring straight through the clouds there above. Her neck was clammy and the hair around her face also seemed to be struck by rain. Even her face and eyelashes. She blinked her eyelids slowly, like a butterfly flaps it's wings for the first time.

"Li...Liana..."

She turned, after a couple of moments. Her eyes. They were as wide as saucers, and she looked like she had been caught in an act she didn't want her "husband" to see her doing. But she kept the pose like a small ballerina butterfly with black hair frozen forever in a piece of amber.

She was his wife. It was a very strange thought, but she had been for more than six months. And he was her husband. Yet this was the most sexually suggestive thing he's ever seen her do ... And the most sexual Paul had ever Liana appear to him. He highly doubted she really didn't mean for him to see any of this. But how could she get such clever, odd ideas at her age???