To my inspiration, Elizabeth Klingbeil, who started all this. I love you even if you burn down my house.
Chapter 1: It all started with two very good friends and a handful of snacks.
June the Sixteenth in the year Two Thousand.
The warm, summer wind whistling through the extending branches of their favorite tree, Mya and Keilah climbed branch by branch up its rough trunk.
"What a lovely day!" declared Mya, pulling herself onto a sturdy limb.
Keilah struggled onto an adjacent branch beside her before spouting, "Isn't it a little odd for a couple of seventeen-year-olds to still be playing on trees?"
Mya laughed at the silly question as she untangled her long, blonde hair from the poking twigs. "When have you ever minded doing something socially bizarre?"
Her brunette friend only rolled her eyes at that.
"It is rather amazing that we are still friends, though," the blonde thought aloud. "I do believe a decade has flown past between us."
At this Keilah's ears pricked up. "Thirteen years, actually. And you're still as innocent as you always were, Mya."
With a squeal Mya exclaimed, "You're right! Thirteen years!" She tried to hug her friend but realized in time that they were still, in fact, in a tree very high up. Before she let her friend sigh and scold her, she nodded, "Yes, I suppose I still am! But isn't that cute? Hugging in a tree? It's the power of friendship!"
Keilah's eye twitched.
"And you are still as immature as you once were, Keilah!"
The brunette balked at this. "Wot wot? I am not!"
"You are! You still haven't learned to withhold your awful cooking ideas!" Mya giggled.
"That's not--"
She interrupted the terrible chef to blurt, "Don't you recall yesterday's incident? I've never seen my mother so flabbergasted in my life!"
Keilah gasped, "It wasn't my fault! If I hadn't been distracted by your stupid brothers--"
"They were trying to put out the flames!"