Stardust Sapling: Chapter 7

The world was so big and so orange.

Taimi was still wondering about it. The sky was huge and blue and stretched all over the place, and there was so much warm sand. There were human creatures everywhere, and they were pink and brown and not green or purple or blue like Taimi. It was so different from the dark, safe place or the white rooms she had been in before. But there was a safe place here as well. The adult who took care of Taimi – the green-haired human lady named Mila – called it home and told Taimi it was her home too.

It was nice. Much better than the white rooms with the people in white coats, even though there some of her siblings, the bizoopagoto and the bizoobagoto, had been with her.

Still, Taimi liked home. It had walls and floors, even though they weren’t as colourful as Taimi would like. She liked to paint them so they would be prettier, though Mila didn’t like that. Sometimes Taimi listened when Mila told her not to paint the floors, but usually Taimi didn’t. Why should she listen to Mila if Mila didn’t understand that colours were good?

Mila’s friend Johnny, the one who sang, visited sometimes, and he didn’t yell at Taimi about the colours. He did, however, smile kindly and always clean up the floors if Mila hadn’t done that yet. It was not nice either. Then Taimi would have to start all over again! But otherwise Johnny was nice. He liked Taimi and seemed to hear music in the world. He was nice to Mila too, and Mila talked to him often.

The home may not have had enough colours, but at least it had beds and a bath, and toys. Taimi especially liked the yellow thing she played with almost all the time. Mila called it a car. It transported people. It reminded Taimi of ships, though she wasn’t sure if she remembered being in a ship. The dark place was on a ship, maybe. She had been told that she had been in a ship that had crashed. Crashing sounded fun, but also sad. Taimi knew that because of the crash the bizoopagoto were alone and lost and scattered all over the place.

She missed them. She missed their voices that had sang to her in the dark place. When she was still asleep but heard so many things. Now she was awake a lot of the time, and she could only hear very faint singing. She tried to sing back, but she didn’t think she had enough words in her head. She was still so little. Too little for the big world.

She was afraid even in the safe place sometimes. She had nightmares of things and voices she couldn’t make sense of. Of dark, not-safe creatures.

She cried at nights often and usually went to Mila because Mila was there to keep her safe.

Mila wasn’t very big either compared to the world, but she was much bigger than Taimi. And she wasn’t afraid of anything. She just worried because she wanted to keep Taimi safe. Mila told Taimi she was her caretaker. Like a mother. A bizaabgotojo. Taimi’s real mother was gone. Or had she even had a mother? She didn’t know. But now, Mila was a new one for her. She gave Taimi food and clothes and baths and read books to her and comforted her when she had a nightmare.

Mila wanted Taimi to be happy and to laugh. Taimi liked that. And she liked it when Mila became a ship and bounced Taimi around and it didn’t end in a crash but in hugs and cuddles.

Mila even got a little house with dolls for Taimi and played with her. The dolls were like little versions of the human creatures that now surrounded Taimi’s world.

They were cute and nice, and Mila was telling fun stories with them, using the human words that were still so unfamiliar to Taimi.

Taimi hoped Mila could use more familiar words, but she also knew that she had to make the new words familiar too because she would need them.

It made her mad sometimes. Why couldn’t they use her words? Why couldn’t the bizoopagoto find her and talk to her with more than just faint songs she had to struggle to hear? Why couldn’t she hear them better?

She sometimes walked outside, into the yard where Mila grew some green things. There she could hear the songs a bit better. Most of the voices were older than her. Maybe she was just too little to hear them properly yet. She caught a word here and there and strained her mind to hear better.

She cried out and let out a quick series of words, trying to answer the songs the best she could:

“Bizoobagoto paya-shishi Taimi. E yopayaki. E Taimi E sanghi. Oo sanghi?”

Then she felt like she ran out of words and the song became another wordless hum.

Why couldn’t she be older and better at this? She wanted to hear them. Her siblings.

Luckily Mila was good at finding Taimi whenever she became upset. Mila must have some mind-singing powers too. Or at least mind-hearing powers. That was probably why she was so good at the machine box in the kitchen too. It sent and got messages from far away. Like a mind-song.

Mila said the box paid the bills. Taimi didn’t know what bills were, but Mila said she used the box for work. She called it a comp-oot-er. It hummed and sometimes beeped and almost sounded like a laughing child. Taimi wished she could hear more laughter of children. The human children didn’t really want to laugh with her or play with her because she was blue.

It wasn’t her fault she was blue! And Mila said blue was good!

But then… why did the other children not want to play with her?

Taimi wanted to ask Mila that, but she didn’t have enough words to understand the answer yet. Sometimes that made her so angry. So angry that she just wanted to yell at the world and break things.

Where were her goto? Her little siblings and her big siblings? They wouldn’t think that blue skin was wrong and could tell her about nightmares and songs.

She got so angry that she did break things.

But breaking things just meant that things got broken. Taimi sniffled and cried. She may have been safe and at home, and Mila may have been a nice bizaabgotojo, but Taimi was still so very alone.

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Author’s Note: Yay, I managed to write some more! Have a chapter from Taimi’s perspective!

I hope you enjoy and have a lovely time!

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