Child of Youth

Chapter 7: Little Miss Grumpy Skirt

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Recently, Liana and Paul had begun a few new, "strange" little habits. And strange was now their most used and favourite word, next to "awkward", "weird", "why," "how," "back off," "turn away," "privacy," "not now" and' "what does your parents say today?"

For one, they had begun giving each other cute little nicknames. Whenever Liana, his little wife, which he didn't dare to call her yet, was acting like a "bossy little squirrel" or "moody little donut" today, he called her: "Miss Grumpy Skirt," which, needless to say, infuriated her like nothing else.

And then again, Liana's new nickname phrase for Paul, he didn't exactly like the sound of, either. It was...*gulp*...it was... Uhm... Ahemmm... "My dear young husband."

Deep in his soul, Paul liked being called "dear." But...the other little part, my "young husband" didn't ring wedding bells in his ears as much as it rang alarm clocks in his esophageal sphincter or large intestine to release ... Ahemmm... Unmentionables. Out of pure shock and awkwardness. She also called him Mr Grumpy Pants when he was being... well, grumpy-pants-ish.

The day Liana had being doing ballerina warrior poses in a backless dress was now a week ago, and hadn't completely left his mind. It was still in a dusty chest behind a closed door down in a basement there somewhere. She didn't wear it again. But she did start wearing the halterneck dress and the pink dress more often.

She used to wear only long sleeved and three quarter sleeved dresses to cover up as much skin as possible. She also wore her hair down with it, and when it fell over her left eye, mixing with her, sometimes wet, dewy-looking eyelashes when she looked down to chop a carrot or peel an onion correctly, she looked absolutely beautiful to him. He could only stare at her in stunned  silence.

They didn't expect their parents to ever find them again. It had been a month since they last heard from either one of the four members of United States' Lost Child Parliament. Liana's mother - and Paul's - had said they were putting up MISSING and LOST and RUNAWAY pictures of them in every town and city they crossed.

Needless to say, it was more than just nightmare fuel to the child couple. In fact, it was soul food for committing suicide. Paul once vocalised that if his parents found him, he was genuinely afraid that they might have flogged. Well, not with a horsewhip, but with a belt. They might give him 6-10 strokes on his back instead of his butt!!

Oftentimes, it felt like a complete and total miracle that their parents had, after all this time ... STILL not found them yet, and the two children stopped midway through whatever they were doing - Paul, even in the middle of a town chore he was busy with, in front of who ever else was there, watching, closed their eyes in unison in prayer to thank the Lord for it, even though they felt guilty for running away the way they did...and praying after that made them feel somewhat more, and somewhat less, guilty.

They had begun to care less and less what others' opinions about them were...even if they were objective.

One night, Liana jumped awake to the evocative memories of an unusually intense nightmare she had just had. It was about their parents, but she found it a very strange dream indeed. It was located in a jungle, and she dreamt she was 13 already and they had been hiding in the log cottage in the forest for 2 years, instead of only 6-and-a-half months.

She was taking a walk through the jungle with Paul. She didn't know what they were doing ... Why they were going on this walk.    Their legs were simply moving forward and she could hear a hot, heavy breath behind them, growing louder with every thunderous beat of her heart and seeming like it was stamping through her body as she moved. She didn't know what it was at first...maybe it wasn't a lion...or a tiger...