Artemi

It was like... Kindergarten to 1st grade, I think? Her name was Priscilla, she was a little blond girl with glasses who was my squad medic.

---

Ok, I guess this requires explanation. See, back in elementary school there was this fence that ran along the backwall of the playground yard, that split the school off from this forest behind the school. Some of the kids, the ones who didn't think they were the next NBA or World Cup stars or too cool to play with the young kids (2nd grade +, mostly), would go back there during recess, where there were kind of two forts. The first was a low tree with big branches you could climb, and the other was a huge bush that had sort of trails through it that you could scramble through if you were small/skinny enough.

---

We would battle there all the time, hitting each other with sticks and throwing rocks/snowballs and trying to ambush people out of the brush. I mostly belonged to the bush group, because I was small and quick enough that I could dart in and out from different areas, while the bigger kids tended toward the tree because they could climb up it. It wasn't all boys, though, I remember the 'leader' of the tree group tended to be a girl named Shawn who was cool and had a mean arm.

---

Anyway, people would get banged up, and would have to retreat back to catch their breath and stuff. Priscilla was one of the ones who stayed in the base, and she'd grab everyones lunches and water bottles and hand them out when you got tired, and would sometimes make 'medicine' out of mud, berries, and leaves to put on your scrapes. It... probably wasn't hygienic in the least, but it actually worked! Or at least I remember believing it would, which was good enough, I suppose.

---

But anyway, since I was small enough to get in and out of the bushes quickly, but not really tall enough to run out and hit the tree branches with sticks (the obvious ultimate goal, to show our dominance for the day), I mostly was a defender who stuck to the base and kept people out of the trail tunnels. So that meant I spent more time talking with the medics then some of the others, and I got to know Priscilla really well. We'd even hang out after school once or twice! She was super cute, and always seemed to make sure that I had my lunch first and would make the most medicine for me when I got hurt.

---

Sadly, she moved to California in the summer break between 1st and 2ed grade, and that was that. C'est la vie, I suppose.

View more