The summers of endless running eventually gave way to something different. Something quieter.
By then, my legs had grown taller, my shoulders thinner, my heart somehow louder. I was no longer only a child shouting across fields, I had begun to notice things I never did before.
And one of those… was her.
She lived down the slope, at the far end of the road near the well. Her family wasn't poor, but they weren't much better off than us either. The first time I really saw her, not just as a neighbor, was beside the river. She was helping her mother scrub laundry, sleeves rolled, hair tied back, strands swaying in the breeze.
I remember how the sunlight clung to her. Strange how small things like that can tattoo themselves inside you forever.
She caught me staring. And I, foolish, clumsy boy that I was, nearly tripped over the rocks trying to turn away. She laughed. A simple, ringing laugh that somehow filled the silence I carried from home.
Not once had my mother or father laughed like that at me. For the first time, someone's joy seemed to spill my way without condition.
Back then, we had no phones, no letters between us. We had afternoons. That alone was enough.
Some days, I'd walk her halfway back from the fields. Other times, she would sit near me as I tried to skim stones across the water. She was better at it than me. Five skips. My record was three. Each time she teased me, narrowing her eyes in mock victory, my chest grew warmer.
It wasn't love in the way adults speak of it. There were no declarations, no promises. Just an endless string of small moments, sharing half a roasted ear of corn during the festival, hands brushing by accident while picking wildflowers, her mocking me for being afraid of snakes and my desperate defense that "anyone would run!"
Ordinary moments. But to me, they were everything.
I remember one evening clearer than most. A festival night. Lanterns floated softly, bobbing with each gust. Music, laughter, the crackle of food stalls. The whole valley seemed alive.
She tugged at my hand, bold, fearless in a way I never was. We ran beneath the glow of paper lights, weaving past people, until we found ourselves at the edge where fireflies danced.
For the first time, she looked directly into my eyes. And for a long moment, we said nothing.
My chest thudded so hard I thought the whole festival must hear it.
But before words could escape me, her family called from a distance. She ran back quickly, waving once over her shoulder. That smile… I see it even now, all these decades later. Pure. Untainted. The smile of something beginning, and ending, in an instant.
The season turned.
She moved away.
Her father had found work in the city, and within a week, her family packed their things. No proper goodbye. No promise to meet again. Just distance...sudden, absolute.
I stood at the riverbank one last time, clutching a stone, praying she might return if I skipped it far enough. It sank on the second spin, ripples fading into silence.
And so, that was it.
My first love. My first real loss.
Now, old and brittle, I lie here smiling faintly at the memory. It hurts still, but not in the same way. That hurt has softened, becoming almost sweet.
For what she gave me then was something no regret can take away:
the first understanding that the world was beautiful, not just wide, not just cruel, but beautiful.
And it taught me something else…
That some things are precious precisely because they cannot last.