Topic One: The Meeting of Friends of Foes

I guess this needs a little bit of background, though I'm not sure how much to get into. In this scene, Muni (the narrator) is being reunited with her cousin, who was her childhood best friend. At the age of fourteen she went to live with her cousin and his family on their dye farm out in the country, because the city was occupied by a military force known as The Red Guard. It was while living on the farm that Muni discovered she had a special talent, she could fly (well, it's more like walking on air). She kept this talent a secret as she learned and perfected it. When she was seventeen her cousin left the farm to attend university, but he never wrote home or visited during holidays, and his parents acted very mysterious about the whole matter. Two years later Muni's father, who was still living in the city, died, which stirred up a lot of anger and confusion in Muni, who had lost her mother at a very young age, due to a brawl between the citizens and the Guard. Muni decides to use her talent for something and leaves the farm to secretly re-enter the city.
This scene takes place on the rocky cliffs that back the city, where she has just encountered her cousin for the first time in four years. It turns out that her cousin has some talents of his own, and it's obvious that the training he has been receiving didn't come from a university.

Pardon the roughness of the scene...

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I stood on the rock, panting, wishing I could look away. His eyes were ready to tear me into pieces. I didn’t want to look at them, to see his questions and his betrayal and his pain. But I couldn’t look away. He broke eye contact first, tearing his gaze away is if cutting me off from his life by sheer will. He trained his eye upon the rock near my shoe. I felt bereft. I wanted to see into his eyes again.

“I’m sorry,” I said, feebly. He glanced up, quickly, as though he was expecting to find something, to see something. I didn’t know what. I wasn’t sure if he saw it. My mouth felt glued. I opened it, slightly, and ran my tongue across the roof and floor and around the insides of my cheeks. He was looking at me again, his brown gaze making me feel as though I had given up more than just my own life the moment I stepped off that hay stack. My eye caught motion as he licked his lips. I strayed from the brown eyes that had once felt like magnets, to his mouth. His lips were fuller than mine, square even. I remembered the shape they made when they said my name; gently parting, the bottom one protruding slightly. He might never say my name again. I forced myself to swallow as my mouth became full. I didn’t know what to say.

He took a step forward, hesitantly, and I was suddenly overcome by a fire I couldn’t describe. I wanted to move, yet I couldn’t. He had betrayed me, and I him. We could never be friends, even cousins, again. My eyes pricked and I looked away.

“Muni.”

I jerked my head, my heart racing. He was standing closer than I remembered. I could hear his breath, gently, near my ear. I was startled into looking up into his eyes. The patterns reminded me of the swirl of milk in coffee. I felt myself start to shake. He was here, in those eyes, my cousin, my best friend. He was here.

His hand gripped my elbow. It felt so big, so warm. The last two years, so cut off from the people around me. I started crying. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I sobbed. “I should never--didn’t think I had a choice--had to do some-- people were dying.” He wrapped his other arm around me, drawing me closer. I could smell the sweat, and that faraway smell of golden rapeseed, that lay beneath it. It smelled like home. I felt his lips touch my hair, so lightly it might have been a bee landing briefly before taking flight again. I looked up into his face again, following the jagged jaw and high cheekbones across his skin. He looked tired. Small lines had begun to form beneath his eyes and above his mouth. Lines of worry, not of laughter. I felt grief take hold of me again, taunting me with all the pain I had caused in trying to save people. Yes, I had preserved many lives, but for what? I had destroyed the peace of his family, the family that had loved me like I hadn’t deserved. But had I not gone-. I shivered to think what would have become of the city.

I looked at those lips again, this time so close to mine. He was my friend and cousin, the brother I never had. I licked my lips again. Surely he saw me in such light. A sister who had disowned him and betrayed his family, yes, but a sister nonetheless.

“What is it?” he asked, his lips parting and meeting and parting again. I looked away, trying to regain my composure, hoping he hadn’t glimpsed the desire that had haunted me for the past four years. He was here, within my grasp, holding me in his arms, and yet…

As if sensing my hasty retreat he withdrew his arm from around me nervously cleared his throat. “It’s getting dark”

We picked our way across the top of the cliff in silence, not speaking until I had led him down the rocky slope to the streets, twisting through alleyways and climbing the rickety stairs to my apartment. And then it was only to remark on the sparse decor, and the location of the towel cupboard near the bathroom, and the finicky toilet that had to be flushed just so or it would overflow onto the bathroom floor. I left him to shower as I rooted through the refrigerator, looking desperately for something I could feed him. I ended up throwing everything in a big pot, all the old greens that had begun to wilt, the corn that was freezer burned, last week’s Plov, which was a gift from my neighbor who came by to tell me that she thought I was growing too thin; at least I thought it was last week. I couldn’t identify the meat in it, but the rice and carrots were still good. I filled the pot up with water, set it on the back burner, and said a prayer that the stove would stay lit long enough for me to have a turn in the shower.