The rhythmic clack-clack of the wheels, with the overlay of a frantic chuff-chuff invaded my senses, alongside the ceaseless rocking, hour after hour. A sleeper train. No lights. Boarded in almost darkness and travelling through the depths of night with evil so close at hand, a constant companion, a reminder of the sanctity of light. Scotland would not do, so we returned south, and to my aunt's. Closer to blitz-torn London, anyway. Closer to danger, but I knew too little to care. Why wouldn't Scotland do? I never found out.

I drifted back to sleep, fancying that I could hear the drone of bombers high overhead, fervently hoping they were ours.

---

Anais Clement. Little Anais. A French name for a rather English girl. Her father's surname, her mother's upbringing. A lithe form composed of achingly thin white limbs jumbled together in a way which always left you feeling she was too fragile to exist. Little Anais, with a pale yellow sun dress draped across the jagged edges of her form, innocence itself but with a twinkle in her brown eyes which gave lie to her outward appearance. She was port in the onrushing storm, a destination towards which I fled.

I saw her first running. She sped light of foot across a springy, dew-laden carpet of turf, giggling as her feet fired droplets of water into the air behind her in two little arcs, glistening like diamonds in the bright morning sunlight. I stood unblinking, mesmerised, captivated by her. I could take time to watch, and I did so. She seemed so very full of life that I imagined it might run out of her into the soil beneath her feet, and that the ground would burst forth with flowers in bloom. Hummingbirds should have followed her, flitting around her, drinking in the essence of her vitality.

So very different from the dark, spoiled streets of the capital, this place. So utterly otherworldly, like a dream furnished in green, gilded with honeyed sunlight. It was like awaking from a dream, perhaps, because I had slept, and then suddenly was here. The rolling, ambling gait of the railway carriage had lulled me to sleep and keep me there through the night, and now, with dawn but an hour old here I stood on the portico of this absurd castle of a house, watching my cousin racing around as though the devil his-self was at her heels.

I stooped and unlaced my shoes. There was no-one to stop me, no authority figure to deny me the pleasure I was determined to take. I stood in shorts, too young yet to earn long trousers, and with my shoes and socks discarded I ventured onto the lawn. She saw me at last, saw that someone else was invading her world, and she skidded to a halt, watching me. I paused, and then ran. She laughed, diving out of the way, evading my outstretched hands.

Oh, how she could run, narrow hips and gangly legs somehow propelling her forward. Not like I could run, for I had the benefit of three years on her, but she could turn too, and I, unable to anticipate her darting movements, slid and slithered about on the grass, and tumbled, to rise again and once more pursue. She slipped, stumbled, fell to one knee and I was upon her, tackling her, rolling over and over on the grass until we were both soaked to the skin. She giggled in my arms, wriggling and writhing, trying to break free but unable to do so, until we collapsed, spent onto the floor. I looked across at her, lying with her damp hair plastered to her forehead, her dress sent transparent by its drenching, revealing now what it had hidden when dry. Oh, the lurch in my stomach at the sight of her, chest heaving as she fought for breath, eyes locked on the sky, her hands flat on either side of her, letting the blades of grass tickle between her fingers. Matchstick thin limbs stuck out of her dress, defiantly refusing to take colour in the sun, covered in jewel-like droplets of the condensation through which we had rolled.

Her head turned toward me and she smiled.

"Hello, cousin Tom," she said with a smile. "I'm glad you came. Mummy said I have to be nice to you, so I let you catch me."

Without another word she sprang up and sprinted for the house. I watched her go, all of a sudden quite aware, too aware, of the soaked fabric of her dress clinging to her skin, betraying her underlying nudity.

---

My mother cried a lot, I recall, though I can't remember thinking that it would be necessary to comfort her. My thoughts were of that insular kind peculiar to twelve year old boys - what was the next fun thing to do. Distractions were frequent, and pleasure the only goal of the day, in whatever form it might come. My father's infrequent letters from some foreign airfield did little to assuage my mother's terminally gloomy mood. She was convinced that he would not return, that his frail little Spitfire would take his body into the sea. We knew he was in Malta, though the knowledge was not rightfully ours. Clever Daddy managed to encode it in the letter and the censors missed it. Good old Pops. But of course the fight for Malta was bloody, and we hardly thought it likely he would return.

In my childish, short-sighted way I rather ignored the possibility, and focussed instead on his incredible bravery; perhaps that was my way of coping with his almost certain demise. Before London had become unbearably dangerous, and we had had to flee to the countryside, I had bragged to my friends about my father's record, already a veteran of the Battle of Britain and off to fight the war on another front. But it was hell for my mother, as we whiled away the days in the paradise of rural Suffolk. Every day was sunny, I recall. Of course, it couldn't have been, but emotion overrides memory. Darkness and rain for her, was my mother's recollection; one long, endless winter. A memory quite at odds with my own, but perhaps that is as expected.

We ran free, free of schooling, free of responsibility, free of any weight on our minds. An adventure, with no consequence. Perhaps we ought to have been more closely controlled, maybe a little more disciplined, but my mother was incapable and Anais' mother disinclined to make the effort. Endless hectares of arable farming surrounded us, dotted here and there with islands of trees. Paradise, as I have said. Eden, for an inquisitive just-teen and his diminutive sidekick. Or perhaps an inquisitive girl and her hopelessly devoted older cousin.

I was entranced by her. She awoke something deeply animal in my soul, something primal, something which needed her, which made its presence all too obvious in ways I wished it wouldn't. She existed in a slightly different world, a universe shifted a fraction from our own, where beings were angelic, creatures of light, impossibly ideal in form, innocent and naive of their own astonishing perfection. She could not possibly comprehend how greatly I admired her lithe figure, how its gentle curves and perfectly rounded features invaded both waking and sleeping thought.

This I thought I knew: she was sacred, the very embodiment of innocence. As I lay at night flooded with shame at my self-abuse in honour of her raw, unintended desirability, I hated myself for sullying her image, even if only in the confines of my mind. She was a little girl, and little girls know nothing of the torment of young boys, of the thoughts which parade through our minds at night, setting our bodies aflame with desire. She could not possibly comprehend the manner in which my body responded when confronted with her pure, naive, raw allure. All this I thought I knew.

I was wrong.

---

Warm afternoon sunlight turned the air to honey; thick, warm, sweet-smelling. Flies buzzed around, little sparks of light as they passed through the beams so neatly defined by the boughs of the oaks beneath which we wandered. In the far distance there was the drone of a tractor going about its work, and something else above it; a Spitfire I imagined, but probably something more mundane. Otherwise silence, save for the birds in the trees and the insects in the air, and the gentle, almost-not-there sound of our footfalls on the springy woodland turf. And Anais.

Summer had draped its cloak over our little world, sapping the energy from our bones, making each day a slow, melancholy trudge, sticky sweat forming on your brow should you choose to be lively. A cool breeze or a cold swimming hole would have been heaven, but both were maddeningly absent. So we trudged, mouths parched, eyes squinting into the sun, skin slowly turning hazelnut brown in the warmth of its light. Only among the trees was respite found, and then only by margins.

She walked along next to me, chattering away, her lyrical voice espousing the wonders of her domain. This tree here? It was special, because the moss grew in such a manner. That tree? That was unique, home to a family of wrens. And this big oak? Well, that had saved her one morning when pursued by the hounds of a local farmer, who had escaped and chased her into the copse, growling and snarling at her heels. I drank in the stories and questioned not a word of them.

"What are the woods like around you?" she asked.

I laughed, unable to stop myself. The nearest woodland to my inner city home was several tens of miles distant; the nearest I came to such green-leafed luxury was the tree-lined street I passed along when walking to school each day, or perhaps the wooded squares of the business districts where my father had worked before the war. Anais wrinkled her nose at the impossibility of it when I told her.

"Really, none at all?"

"No, none."

And so I was forced to explain my life to her, and suddenly what had seemed so great to me took on an inferior colour compared to the brilliance of her existence. Where I sat in school all day, she ran free, her tutor less than strict with her lessons, her mother largely uninterested in controlling her child. My playgrounds were the streets, dirty, muddy streets, filled with the choking fog of London life. Hers were these woodland paradises, an endless string of superb places to get lost, and to find astonishing things. Each day with Anais, I would come to discover, was an adventure waiting to be had.

Without quite realising, I had slipped into a daydream, and was jolted out of it by Anais' insistent annunciation of my name.

"Tom, did you hear me?"

I blushed. "Sorry, no."

"I said, I need to have wee. I'm going behind a tree. Don't you dare look."

I could feel myself blushing, heat rising in my face even though the heat of the day had already coloured my cheeks. It didn't help that Anais was so forward about such things, whereas I was a little more restrained, a little more uptight. Earlier that day we had seen a stallion showing clear excitement for a need soon to be met by a nearby mare, his appendage hanging heavily between his legs. Whilst Anais had pointed it out and laughed, I had cringed inside; her laughter was only amplified when she saw my embarrassed reaction.

Nor had she sufficiently concealed herself whilst carrying out her necessary act. A knee, just half of a knee was visible past the edge of the trunk of the tree behind which she was crouched. Possibly the frilled edge of her knickers, too. So little to be seen, yet it stirred such unbridled excitement in me. My heart thundered in my ears, attempting the unenviable task of supplying extra blood to all of my senses at once. That little, innocent glimpse, associated with the certain knowledge of what was happening just beyond that gnarled trunk of oak, set my pulse racing like nothing before had.

My experience of matters carnal was regrettably poor at the time. My life to this point had supplied few opportunities to answer the questions which burned in my mind. Knowledge was hard won and treasured, and any rumour of impropriety among my peers was bandied around, embellished with lascivious but ultimately ill-informed detail at every turn. I knew very little of physical love beyond the very basic idea that a man and a woman lay together in some fashion and nine months later a child emerged.

So, you see, that little glimpse and the idea that mere yards from me a girl was naked from the waist down were enough to push me close to delirium. The effect was only enhanced when a thin, dark ribbon of her urine meandered out from beyond the tree roots down the slope before me.

Over the coming weeks I was to discover that Anais was without shame and almost impossible to shock.

---

Deep in the woodland a grove of trees grew slowly, and far enough apart that a thick carpet of moss had grown up all around them. It was so soft we could have lain there to sleep, its spongy surface more welcoming than the softest mattress. Sunlight filtered through the branches of the trees, setting fire to the hazy air in bolts of pure gold. As we sat beneath the boughs of one of the larger trees, our backs on its trunk, our buttocks cosseted in the hollows between its overgrown roots, I reflected that the moss was so soft that I could jump off the branch above our heads and land without hurting myself.

Anais, with a twinkle in her eye, told me that I couldn't, and that I shouldn't be so stupid. No-one could jump that far down and not hurt themselves. I, in my youthful bravado, ignored the quite plain fact that she was simply egging me on to see if I would truly jump. I wanted so desperately to impress her, and so I found myself clambering up into the branches. Suddenly the ground seemed a very long way beneath me, and the feat a great deal less possible. Her eyes, shining up at me in anticipation acted to steel my resolve, however, and I edged out onto the branch.

My heart leapt in my chest at the sudden madness which had overcome me, yet I was resolved to this course of action by my desperate need for her approval. To have thought I could have won it by a sheer act of physical bravery was an insult to her, but my immature intelligence could imagine no other means. A great fall lay below me, and with it the possibility of very real injury.

Yet I was compelled forwards. My desire to impress, and the unspoken promises of our youthful relationship led me to no other possible conclusion. I knew that should I manage to make my way into her affections I would receive grace, in a manner of speaking, the grace of the revelation, the offering to me. I understood the emotional contract, the give and take. I had to her to be the knight in shining armour, her hero, her film star, and then I would be admitted to that secret, sacred world where only men ventured, the club each adolescent male desired above all others to join. She, of course, had promised nothing of the kind.

I edged along until I was standing with one hand holding the trunk and the great drop beneath. Anais stared up at me from directly beneath, and in a sudden moment of clarity something which until then had been forced by fear from my mind came crashing to the fore. My short shorts, whilst by no means loose, still gaped at the leg, and I had some time past taken to Anais' rebellious way of spending the warm summer days unencumbered by what was clearly the unnecessary fettling of my nether regions by sweaty, itchy undergarments. Anais could have no other view than that which filled me with such dread, a view shared only by my mother and my school mates, who had their own innocent reasons for having spied my naked worm. Anais lacked any such good reason.

She grinned up at me, unabashedly staring, making me feel smaller than the tiniest ant on the forest floor. She had stolen an advantage, had taken without consent that which I had kept to myself for negotiations. I had no bargaining tool now, no reason to compel her with the crass, childish "I'll show you mine, if you show me yours". Deflated and crushed by the sudden defeat of my plans, weakened though they were already and dependent on her sharing my needs, I felt no reason now to jump, save for shame.

Shame is driven by pride, though, and pride is a powerful motivator. My resolved returned, renewed by my desire to save what little face remained. I would jump, and she would be impressed, and perhaps she would not abuse her new-found position of power over me, if I really was as heroic as I could possibly be. I jumped. I did not think again, did not pause to ready myself for the fall, did not allow my conscious mind to overpower my unconscious act.

As I sat on the ground stunned by the impact I, for some unfathomable reason, thought back to my friend Jack, whose leg had been broken and who had, to my utter incredulity, insisted that it hadn't hurt at all, at least not at first. Of course it had hurt later, just not when he did it. That's why neither of my legs, which I must have broken in the fall, hurt in any way.

I was pulled from my reverie by the golden peals of laughter coming from Anais. She clapped her hands and jumped up and down on the spot in sheer joy. How could she take such unabashed pleasure in my horrific injury, I thought. The realisation dawned, more slowly than perhaps it might, that in fact I hadn't hurt myself at all, and Anais' reaction was one of delight at my act. My bravery. I had impressed her. My goodness, I had actually impressed her.

"My turn!" she shouted, and was gone, clambering up the trunk of the tree, showing an aptitude for such thing utterly unbecoming of a young lady. I, of course, appreciated this of her, that she was a combination of a pretty girl who would actually spend time with me, and a friend who could climb trees.

I moved to give her room to land, as she edged her way carefully along the branch as I had done, hand holding the trunk in the same place my own had. Her bare toes curled around the bark of the branch as she steadied herself, rocking gently back and forth. Her left leg, though it had no reason to do so, took one more step away from her right, and as if her cry of the minute before had been host to an alternate meaning I was greeted with a sight I had so desperately sought since the first moments of my exile in this paradise.

A boy's first sight of the naked pudenda - or rather, his first sight since it mattered to see it - is always burned indelibly onto his soul. This moment was no different. I remember the sunshine warmly caressing my face. I remember the feel of the soft moss between my fingers as I leant back on my hands. I remember the musty, leaf-mouldy smell of the woodland. I remember the way that a shaft of light, filtered through the branches to a sharp point, burst against the fabric of her dress and illuminated the sight beneath: the impossibly soft curves of her skin, its whiteness and the coral pink divide which defined her. I remember the way her plump girlhood rose like a gently rolling hill from her lower tummy, and the way I could see all the way to her belly button.

This was her gift to me, her reward for my bravery, her sign that actually I had rather impressed her. With the grace of a cat descending from its favourite perch she dismounted from the tree, landing lightly among her billowing skirts, and ran off giggling amongst the trees. My heart raced as I lowered my head to the turf and sighed in the utmost satisfaction. I closed my eyes and let the sounds, scents, feel of the forest become a part of me, locking in the memory of my encounter with Anais' most sacred part.

---

In the gloom of the attic, dusty air penetrated by a hundred pinpoints of light admitted by the leaky roof, the den of our imaginations had been made real. Unwanted blankets were piled into a shape which one could argue might have been a divan or a bed, but not convincingly either. Our favourite clothes harvested from the dressing up chest were there, and the book she had found in her father's library, with its vague and exciting references to acts with which we both admitted we were unfamiliar. We never visited alone, save for the day when Anais smashed her mother's expensive Chinese vase and ran away in tears to hide somewhere she knew she would not be found. On all other occasions our visits were mutual.

On this day, we sat and spoke in hushed whispers. She was cross-legged opposite me, and our knees almost touched. Her dress frustrated me by sitting resolutely in the well of her lap and revealing nothing of what lay beneath. We were reading the book, or rather she was reading it to me, her lyrical voice annunciating each word with a delicious velvet naughtiness.

"He thrust himself upon her, the sabre of his passion rampant..." she said, and then promptly dissolved into giggles. I thanked the Lord once more that in this position my own rampant sabre was not apparent in the folds of my shorts, for if she had seen it I would have died of embarrassment.

"Tom," she asked, suddenly very serious. "Why do boys willies get hard?"

I sat stunned by the audacity of her question, and blushed bright red.

"Um, because they think... uh, because..."

The truth was that I didn't really understand it myself, at least not well enough to explain it to another.

"Is it because they want to stick it in a girl's tuppence? That's what Mary Porter said. She said that boys willies get hard so they can stick in a girl's tuppence."

I was speechless, and shrugged at her.

"I don't think that's right, though. I don't think it would fit, would it? How big is a willy?"

This, too, I was unsure how to answer, and made a non-committal sound.

"Well, how big is yours?"

My throat had swollen and I was unable to reply. I just shrugged again.

"You don't know? Well, is it bigger than this?" she asked, holding out her index finger. I nodded, not quite believing that I was answering her.

"Right, is it bigger than this?" she continued, grabbing an unused candle from its holder in a box of junk. It certainly wasn't bigger than the candle, and I shook my head to communicate as much.

"Right, so bigger than a finger but smaller than a candle. That's still awfully big. I don't think I want your willy in my tuppence, even if Mary says it's the best feeling ever. I think that would hurt, don't you?"

I nodded vaguely, so far beyond the bounds of my knowledge as to be utterly lost in the rolling swell of this sea of conversation. And so ended the conversation about willies and tuppences.

---

"Tom, do you have cold fingers?"

That's how it started, a question asked quite without preamble. She simply asked me whether or not my fingers were cold. We lay in her bed, pyjama'd sides touching, starting at the ceiling. I was being painfully careful to avoid any moves which might be misconstrued on her part. Just to lie there in the heat of the bed with her in such an illicit manner was to be in heaven itself. I almost trembled with the excitement of anticipated fumblings which had never yet materialised. Yet I returned each morning as soon as the sun had risen to lie with her for an hour or so.

"Um, no, I don't think so," I replied, bringing my hand up so she could feel it.

She agreed that it was warm enough for whatever purpose she saw fit, and dragged it with her. I resisted, wondering what trick she might be playing on me, but she growled at me and I submitted like a kitten. She took my hand beneath the covers and pushed it downwards, and suddenly my fingers came in to contact with the hottest, softest skin I had ever felt. It burned beneath my fingers. There could be no doubt in my mind where my fingers now lay, and I gave an involuntary start as all the anticipation which had been building up within me came crashing to the fore. Anais giggled gently beside me, her eyes sleepy-looking.

"Rub it up and down a little," she said, and then her mouth dropped open in silent exclamation as my fingers moved in the cleft at her centre. For my part a stealthy hand crept to my own most secret of places and gently applied the touch it had only recently learned but had already mastered. I lay transfixed as the motion of my fingers turned little Anais from a sweet, innocent girl into a writhing, moaning animal, demanding in hushed but urgent tones that I rub harder and push deeper. My finger slid into the slick, moistened tract of her innermost place without any intent to do so, and still she did not stop me; rather, she simply urged me onwards, to force my digit deeper within the folds of her until the tip of it slipped within a further recess, drawing a sharp breath from Anais' lips.

"Stop, stop!" she whispered urgently, pulling my hand free with a grimace on her face. "Not there, please not there."

I didn't understand, but complied regardless. The inner workings of the female anatomy were entirely unfamiliar to me, and so I only assumed that wherever my finger had gone, it was unwelcome, and painful. I returned to my more gentle ministrations, wondering at the sheathed lump which grew beneath the over-sensitive skin of my middle finger, until with a low moan she pushed me away altogether and rolled onto her side, facing away. Emboldened by passion, and no longer caring in my frenzied state what my bed mate might think, I rolled away from her and frantically squeezed and pulled on myself until blessed, damp relief coated my fingers.

---

"I don't care what mummy thinks, I think you should be able to see my tuppence if you want to," Anais declared as we walked down by the river one day. She said it quite loudly and then giggled as I frantically looked around to make sure we were quite alone; we were. "And I think I should be able to see your willy, too."

I didn't quite know what to make of the statement. She had in fact seen my willy already, in the tree jumping incident, and I had seen her tuppence at the same time, and even been allowed the pleasure of touching it one blessed morning. Was this an offer of an open viewing?

---

She looked different one morning, her eyes downcast, her manner nervous. She invited me beneath the covers with a shy, uncertain smile, and kissed me, as she sometimes did, on the cheek. Her eyes never strayed from my face, and she remained on her side, facing me. I followed her lead, and her eyes bored into my soul, seeking something, an answer perhaps. Uncertain of her intention, or the nature of the question her look bore, I waited and said nothing. I felt suddenly as though we were adults trapped in childish bodies, acting in a way neither of us understood.

Her hand came from beneath the cover, and she touched me lightly on the nose with the tip of her finger. She left it there, pushing slightly then releasing, as if to test I were real and not some phantom come to visit her.

"Do you remember once I asked you how big your willy is?" she asked at last, her voice nervous.

I nodded.

"And you said it was bigger than my finger," - I nodded - "and smaller than a candle?"

I nodded again, wondering whether she was going to ask me to offer her proof. In all our games, in all our time together, not once had she wanted to see it, save for that one occasion in the woods which in hindsight seeded the whole relationship. Certainly the only fingers which touched it were my own, and though each morning she required me to bring her pleasure, she never saw a reason to reciprocate. Perhaps now her curiosity had been sufficiently piqued.

"It's definitely smaller than the candle, though?"

This, I felt, was an attack on my manhood. Yes, it was smaller than that candle had been, but my own impression of my pride and joy was that, should it be compared to those of my compatriots, it would have compared favourably. I had no basis for this assertion, which nonetheless was strictly held.

"I suppose so," I answered, in a rather hurt tone.

"Then..." she went on, her voice dropping to a whisper, "then I think it might fit after all."

Our tryst was brief and energetic, our coupling urgent, exploratory, over with almost as soon as it started. As the pink light of dawn spilled across the cotton of her bed sheets we fumbled beneath them, my legs between hers, my part in the possession of her own, lovingly cradled in its moist, squeezing embrace. She made no sounds, her face expressionless, watching my eyes, which were locked unerringly to her own. Down below another part of my anatomy was violating another part of hers oh so gently, but as long as we kept eye contact it might not be happening, she might not have succumbed to my ardour, might not have allowed me to do this thing, to ruin her. She expressed no concern as I panted and shook above her, my passion building until with a strangled cry I pushed my hips hard against hers, felt our pubic bones bumping together, and the stimulating rush of my young boy emission bursting into her.

She smiled weakly as I rolled to the side, following me, resting her head on my shoulder. I felt the damp drip of a tear on my chest and her body rocked with silent sobs, but I had no time for her pain in the warm embrace of those first few post-coital seconds.

----

"May I see it?"

We lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, naked beneath the covers. Our morning lovemaking was done, my meagre gift offered up to her immature womb, and now we reclined watching the beam of sunlight slowly creeping across the duvet. Her words broke a silence which had lasted several minutes. I could see no reason to refuse her request.

She disappeared beneath the sheet, a hillock working its way down until it settled somewhere in the middle regions of the bed. I could feel her warm breath across my midriff, and it reignited my dormant passion. I could feel an aching hardness growing in the core of my groin. Anais giggled as my worm shifted and grew, standing up as if coming to attention in honour of its visitor. In a way, it was.

It might have seemed more straightforward to remove the covers, yet it felt more natural to leave them in place. Anais and I had shared the most intimate of all acts, had come to know each other in a way we might barely have imagined, and yet the idea of exposed nudity seemed somehow beyond the bounds of our friendship.

Anais' interpretation of seeing, it seemed, also extended to touching, and I felt my willy being manipulated this way and that, straining against its stiffness, objecting to the rough treatment it was receiving. All the time her soft hair fell across my groin, tickling me, adding immeasurably to the pleasurable sensations applied by her fingertips. She discovered the secret of the retracting skin, and delighted in repeatedly unsheathing and resheathing my sword, until I, unable to prevent myself from doing so, felt another peak arrive and crash over me. A shocked gasp and a loud giggle came from beneath the covers.

"You can look at mine if you like," she panted when her head burst out from beneath the covers.

It was gloomy and musty beneath the sheet, the air ripe with the smell of young bodies, the predominant smell in my nostrils that of her scent, the jasmine-flavoured water she often wore in imitation of her mother. Then, closer to the centre of her, a stronger, more pungent odour, a scent which sometimes escaped in bursts from beneath the sheet as we coupled. Here it was constant, and dizzying; I wondered if I might suffocate in it. Her legs spread apart, her invitation clear. I nestled between them, down the length of the bed with my knees bent and legs up behind me, my upper body supported on my elbows.

It was as I remembered it from the tree, from my peek up her dress, or at least nearly. The soft, cowrie shell cleft which dived backwards to join the valley of her behind was redder than before, and glistened damply. I understood this was partly her excitement, and partly the lubrication I had fired into her. My fingers had dipped blindly into that crevice often enough to understand its workings, even though this might be only my second sight of it, and my first at this range. At the head of the valley stood a nubbin of flesh poking proudly from between the rounded lips. I reached forward and touched it, pressing it back beneath the folds as though it had no place emerging from its shell like that. Anais gasped above me, and her legs flew up as if ready to close, though they came no closer than the breadth of my shoulders. I pressed again, and was rewarded with a squirm of the hips. I could see Anais' hands by her sides, knuckles white as she clenched the sheets in her fists.

I explored lower, the folds gently parting around my fingertip, sliding out of the way on a bed of grease. Near the point where her front started being her back, the flesh dipped away, and I found what I had been searching for, the entrance beyond which only my willy had ventured. I pushed forward, marvelling at how easily my finger was engulfed in the tight little tunnel until there was no more finger outside. Never had I felt such silken softness, nor such a warm, embracing place. Her stomach tightened, and I felt the walls grasp me, and then release, grasp, and release. Anais was playing with me. I used my finger to simulate the movement of my spear within her, and felt with surprise the way the tunnel loosened, and became ever wetter.

When I pulled my finger free I was surprised to see Anais' own replace my own, maintaining her pleasure. Never before had I considered that she might provide her own pleasure, though I found mine often enough. On the basis that she hadn't requested that I move, I remained where I was, watching with an increasing sense of tightness in my groin as she inserted one, and then two fingers into the hole which I had naively assumed was mine to use. Her peak came like a wave crashing against the shore, her hips undulating as the pleasure threatened to overwhelm her. Sweat broke out all over her skin, leaving it glistening.

I emerged into the fresh, cool air. When Anais' eyes met my own a silent question was asked and answered, and she allowed me, for the second time that morning, to lie my body atop hers and join our bodies as one.

---

"Will you have a baby then?" I asked, fear constricting my throat at the thought. I would be beaten by my father within an inch of my life when he returned from Malta. If he returned. And if not by my father, then by hers, though that relied on his safe completion of a North African tour.

Her peals of laughter were unsettling, and set my cheeks aflame. I was being made fun of.

"No, silly," she said, eyes twinkling in merriment. "I have to be older. I'm not a woman yet, so I can't have a baby. But that's how it happens."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, Mary Porter told me."

"How does she know? She just tells you these things."

"Her daddy is a doctor, silly. He has books. Now he's away in the war no-one notices if Mary goes and reads them. She tells us all sorts."

"And that's how you make a baby, by putting it in and squirting the stuff, and we've been doing it all this time, but it's alright because you're not a woman?" I asked, in one rapid-fire breath.

"Yes. Isn't it just amazing? And anyway, you only squirt a little bit. The bulls at Mr Fothergill's farm make buckets of the stuff."

I wasn't so sure it was amazing, actually. It scared me stiff to think that there was even a small chance that Anais might fall pregnant. I vowed never to touch her again.

That night, as she drifted off to sleep in the bed next to mine, I reflected on what we had just done. It had taken one small giggle from her, one featherlight caress of her soft fingers on the insides of my thighs to make me forego my self-enforced abstinence. She had climbed beneath my sheets of her own accord, aroused me by her own design and done what we had come to do at least once a day, until we were so practised it became boring. Perhaps not actually boring, but commonplace. Everyday.

---

Parting is, as they say, such sweet sorrow, and so I shall not dwell. I prefer to think of Anais in happier times, in the moments we shared, before that fateful day when the telegram we had all hoped never to see brought her world crashing down. Our lovemaking stopped that instant, and never regained momentum. And so I celebrate those few good months in these short memories, these snapshots of remembered time. Here's to you, Anais, my flower, and to the memory of the little girl you were.