At home, our shared world bloomed slowly. We spent hours in the backyard, especially under the pine tree near the edge of the fence. It was gnarled and bent, with thick roots that curled above the ground like ancient fingers. Most kids found it creepy, but to us, it was sacred.
That's where we built our kingdom. We gave ourselves titles. She was Queen Tasha the Fearless, I was Kerif the Wise. We crafted flags out of torn pillowcases and stitched our symbols with colored markers. The kingdom had rules: "No grown-ups past the first root," "All disputes solved by rock-paper-scissors," and "No lies unless they're very good stories." We wrote them in a shared notebook, a blue one with frayed corners and bent pages.
We even held court sessions. Tasha would wear a crown of leaves, perched on a crooked lawn chair, and pronounce judgments on our imaginary citizens. I recorded each ruling like a scribe. One time, she sentenced a squirrel to "eternal exile" for stealing the peanut butter we'd left as tribute. Another time, she knighted a neighborhood cat with a stick wrapped in aluminum foil. To anyone else, it would've looked like nonsense. To us, it was everything.
One day, we found a wooden box buried beneath the flower bed. It was old, cracked at the edges, covered in dirt and rust. Inside were small trinkets: a broken watch, a school badge from the 80s, two faded Polaroids, and a note that said, To the future. Remember us. We stared at it for a long time, both of us silent. Then Tasha whispered, "Let's make one too."
So, we did. We filled ours with drawings, a list of our laws, a plastic soldier with one arm, and a photo my sister had taken of us under the pine. I wrote a short letter, just a few lines, saying we had built something here, something that mattered. Tasha added a note too, but she didn't let me read it. We buried it deeper than the one we found, marked the spot with a stone shaped like a heart, and promised not to tell anyone.
"I hope they find it in a thousand years," she said. "When Nairobi's a floating city or something. Maybe they'll build statues of us."
"They'd probably laugh at our spelling," I said.
"Then I hope they don't understand it," she grinned.
One evening, just as the sun dipped behind the acacia trees and the world turned gold, Tasha and I sat on the back steps. We were barefoot, eating mangoes, the juice sticky on our fingers. A breeze rustled the leaves overhead. She looked at me suddenly, more serious than usual.
"Do you think things can stay like this?" she asked.
I didn't know what she meant, not exactly. But I understood the feeling, the quiet fear behind the words. That what we had was fragile. Temporary.
"I hope so," I said.
She nodded, but didn't look convinced. "Things never stay, though. Not for me." I wanted to ask what she meant. Where she came from, what had happened before she got here. But something in her eyes warned me not to. So instead, I offered her the last slice of mango. She took it without a word.
That rainy season brought with it more than just flooded gutters and cold tile floors, it brought closeness. A kind of closeness I hadn't known before, not even with my own family.
Tasha wasn't always loud and clever. Some days, she grew quiet, her edges softening. She'd stare out the window for hours, watching the rain, her chin resting on the back of her hand. I learned to sit beside her without speaking, our elbows touching on the sill, just listening to the tap of water on glass. I never asked what she was thinking during those long silences. I figured if she wanted to tell me, she would. And eventually, she did.
"My mum used to say the rain was God washing the dust off the world," she said one afternoon.
I turned toward her, surprised.
"She hated it," Tasha added, a faint smile curling one corner of her mouth. "Said it ruined her hair and made the city smell like wet socks. But she still said it every time it rained."
"Do you miss her?" I asked, gently. She didn't answer right away.
"Sometimes. But not the way people expect." She paused, chewing her bottom lip. "I miss how she used to sing when she cooked. I miss how she'd laugh at her own jokes. But not all of her. Some parts I don't want back."
That was Tasha. Honest, even when it hurt. She didn't coat her grief in soft words. She laid it out, unwrapped, and dared you to look at it with her. I admired that. Maybe that's when I began to love her and not the childish love I'd imagined at first, but something deeper. Something more rooted in reality than fantasy. It wasn't the way she smiled, or how good she was at climbing trees, or how she once made a slingshot out of shoelaces and a spoon. It was the way she let me see her sadness. The way she trusted me with it.
One night, during a blackout, we lit candles and built a fort from couch cushions and old bedsheets. The house was cloaked in silence except for the occasional creak of wind against the roof. We lay side by side on the living room floor, our faces lit by the flickering orange of the flame.
"Let's play something," she whispered. "Truth or dare."
I hesitated. "Okay. Truth."
"Do you believe in soulmates?"
That wasn't the question I expected.
I thought for a while. "I don't know," I said truthfully. "I think… some people just understand you. Instantly. And they never stop understanding you, even when you change."
She looked over at me, her expression unreadable.
"That sounds like believing in soulmates," she said softly.
Then it was my turn.
"Truth or dare?"
"Truth," she said.
"Why did you come here?"
Her fingers fidgeted with a loose thread on the sheet. She didn't answer right away.
"My aunt couldn't keep me anymore," she said finally. "Too many kids. Not enough space. She said I was too loud. Too strange."
"You're not strange," I said immediately.
She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes.
"Maybe not to you."
We lay there in silence, the candle slowly burning lower.
In that moment, I wanted to reach out to take her hand, to promise her that she would always have space here, with me. But I didn't. I was eleven. I didn't know how to reach out, not then. I still think about that night. I still remember the way the flame danced in her eyes.
The day I realized I was in love, it was raining. Again. Nairobi in December always felt like the sky had forgotten how to stop crying. We were outside anyway, wearing my dad's old raincoats and stomping through puddles. The neighborhood dogs barked at us from behind fences. The streets were slick and shining. Our feet were soaked, but we didn't care.
We found a broken shopping trolley tipped on its side near the corner store. Of course, Tasha climbed into it.
"Push me!" she called.
"You'll fall!"
"Then catch me!"
I rolled my eyes and grabbed the handle. The wheels protested, squeaking as I pushed her along the sidewalk. She threw her arms out wide, yelling into the rain, laughing like thunder couldn't touch her.
Then the trolley hit a crack in the pavement and tipped forward. She tumbled out, landing in a pile of muddy leaves. For a moment, I panicked and thought she might cry, or worse, be hurt. But she just laughed. A deep, full laugh that echoed down the empty street.
I rushed to help her up, my heart hammering.
"You're insane," I said, wiping mud from her jacket.
"You're slow," she grinned.
Then she looked at me, really looked. Our faces were inches apart. Raindrops clung to her lashes. Her cheeks were streaked with dirt and joy. I felt something bloom inside me then, wild and unmistakable.
That was it.
That was the moment.
I was in love.
Not the love from books or movies. Not fireworks or violins. Just the quiet certainty that if I could choose one person to walk with in the rain for the rest of my life, it would be her.
Even if she never knew it. Even if she never felt the same.
It was still love.
It wasn't perfect, of course. Nothing ever is.
Even in our kingdom, the cracks began to show. They started small, the way she'd sometimes grow quiet when I spoke about my mother, or the way I'd feel jealous when she laughed a little too hard at something another boy said. Emotions don't ask for permission. They bloom where they want, like wildflowers, and they often bring thorns.
The shift came slowly.