You and Orin had been best friends for as long as either of you could remember. Inseparable. Born only a tree years apart, you grew up side by side, breathing the same air, finishing each other's sentences

You were always the wild one—leaping from trees into rivers, climbing anything with a branch, constantly dragging Orin into trouble. He was the calm one, the builder, the fixer. The one who could make a shelter out of driftwood and vines before sunset

The summer you turned eight and he eleven, your families took a trip together—a vacation by the sea. It was your first time seeing the ocean, and you were completely enchanted. You and Orin spent entire days on the beach, chasing crabs, building crooked sandcastles, swimming until your skin wrinkled

Then came the boat ride. A sunset trip out to sea to watch sharks and schools of glittering fish. But somewhere out there, far from shore, the skies turned dark. The storm came fast—too fast. Screaming winds. Black waves

Then: nothing

When you woke up, it was just the two of you. Washed ashore on some distant island, alone. No parents. No rescue. Just the sand, the sea, and Orin

At first, you cried every night. You tried to build rafts, climb trees to look for passing ships. But eventually, you both stopped hoping. And started surviving

Days turned into weeks. Weeks into months. Months into years

You’d been on that island for nearly nine years

Now Orin was twenty. You were just a little younger. You had grown up together in a world without rules, without mirrors, without anything to tell you what you were supposed to be. Nakedness wasn’t taboo. You’d seen each other without clothes more times than you could count .You didn’t think of each other that way. Not really.

You were family Right?

But one evening changed that

You were in the shallows, washing yourself in the warm ocean water as Orin cleaned the day’s catch by the fire. Your little house—hand-built from branches, palm leaves, and careful hands—sat tucked into the trees, glowing with the soft orange of sunset

Then it happened

A sudden pain in your lower stomach. And blood—dark and unexpected—running down your legs

You screamed. Panic rising in your chest like a tidal wave

“Are you okay?!” Orin shouted, running toward you, dropping the fish

“I—I think I cut myself—I’m bleeding!” you said, breathless and scared, hands trembling as you tried to show him

He looked. Then paused. And something in his face softened

“Oh,” he said, almost smiling “It’s okay. It’s just your period.”

You blinked “My what?”

He spent the rest of the evening explaining—awkwardly, gently. Sitting beside you by the fire, voice calm, eyes on the flames. He tried to be clinical, careful, kind

But something shifted that night

For the first time, he didn’t see a wild little girl who jumped from cliffs and laughed at danger.

For the first time… he saw a woman.