Welcome to Gaia! ::

Zekiel knew that his charge was not a small child. Not so old and weathered as the high priest or even the professors that ran their lectures and guided aspiring priests and priestesses in their studies, but not a child in the sense of those that hopped about and skipped in the street or clung to their mother’s skirts upon entering the Sanctum. Not of the age group that typically made use of the small, open-windowed and warm room of scattered toys that the Sanctum harbored for just the purpose of keeping the smallest children out from underfoot during serious and lengthy sections of worship.

In mid-afternoon, after service had already transpired and concluded, the play room was empty. Through its windows, sunlight poured like fairy dust, directly through the openings in the curtains and also filtering through the muted fabric, so determined in its quest to light the room. Zekiel stepped in, crossing the threshold and over several strips of light, maneuvering over the occasional stray trinket that had yet to find its way back to the main box. Upon reaching it, he crouched.

Numerous colored balls of varied sizes and consistencies, though none small enough to choke upon or hard enough to do too much damage if thrown. A sequined strip of colored fabric like a shawl. Several simple dolls and a stuffed likeness of a tintural. A wheeling toy simplified down from a carriage to a square block that rolled across the floor if pushed. On the shelf beside the box there were also a few books.

Zekiel took one, flipping through and inspecting. Mostly pictures. But that would do just fine.

He couldn’t have said how long he stayed, bathed in the warm light and parceling through the selection one at a time. He couldn’t take much. The objects had an intended purpose, of course, and he would not disturb that. But, donated toys were among the things the church did not have special difficulty in acquiring and there was no shortage. The children who were left here would not grieve the loss of two bouncing balls, one stuffed animal, and a handful of picturebooks, one on early letters.

When he came to Ottolo that evening, it was not empty-handed.

“A wondrous day,” Zekiel answered.

Smile bright as he slipped into the room dedicated to Ottolo’s recovery, Ze tapped gently at the door with his foot to shut it again behind him before moving in: arms full, posture poised not to let any of it fall. Upon reaching the bed, he carefully unloaded his collection out of the way of Otto’s feet so as not to hurt him, but near enough to him that he could show what each was.

“I do not know which you might like most,” he said, “and I could not take all that we had, so I took a little of different things and whichever you prefer you may keep here—or all of them, if you like them all—and if it please you later I could change some for others.” Mid-sentence he reached, taking up the two spongy, colored bouncing balls. “There are these—” He caught one up in a hand. “I think they are usually used quite simply, though once, I saw a woman who had five with her, and she would toss and toss and keep them all in a circle in the air but one, and it was—”

With the two of them, Zekiel attempted to pass and catch the two between his hands in a juggling imitation, but one fell, rolling to the bed and then off and bouncing down along the stone floor. Zekiel’s smile flashed, sheepish but amused.

“It was more wondrous when she did it, I think. And there are these!” Zekiel pushed forward several of the children’s books before darting down to fetch the runaway ball. “There are stories within them the words you won’t know, but there are also many pictures with color and if you’d like, as I told you I can tell you what the words and letters are and—” Returning with the ball, he set it beside the first, picking up the letter-book in its stead and opening it to gesture, “—this is a book of letters, where I can tell them all to you from if you wish and it would please you sometime to know them.”

“A tintural,” Zekiel said. “They’re wondrous creatures. They live here in these lands and grow large—” Ze stretched his hands, indicating the width and then length of a live tintural, “—with great shell backs and plodding feet and swishing tails. When they are young yet, they crawl and bury themselves often in the earth for safety from the jungle’s predators and dirt gathers up in layers on the shell, again and again each time until…” Ze gestured to the top of the plush, which had a few hand stitched flowers and leaves sewn on, “…plants make that their home.”

He smiled.

“They are very docile, slow and gentle creatures, and many appreciate finding them just for the herbs that grow there. I should think Fallon would love them…and Tacrith.” Ze trailed off temporarily, lost to the thought of his friends before realizing his distraction and shaking his head to clear it. He would have to introduce Ottolo to them at some point, but there was more to be handled in the moment first.

“Of course! I would love to read them to you—they won’t take long. And I can show you all of which words are what after, or during, if you prefer. Words are wondrous things. I will come to read for dinner. Which of the things that you have eaten here so far pleases you most?”

“Then one day I shall find one to show you,” Zekiel said with confidence—it couldn’t be that hard, once the other boy had healed enough to move about at least, he could show him many things. “I will show you tinturals, and all the flowers in Fallon’s greenhouse—do you know there are so many I have not counted them yet and do not know I could if I tried, but I am sure it could be done, and they are wondrously alive and beautiful—”

He shook his head, putting himself back on track.

“But, I shall show you tinturals when you can move about, and other creatures if it please you—there are many here, and many gentle enough you could see them without concern. I am glad you like the food…” He watched Ottolo, expression flickering for a moment because, though he couldn’t identify it specifically, he knew there was something there. He tucked the thought away for re-examination later. “I will bring all of my favorites and tell what I think is most wondrous about each. But you may think other parts are more so to you…oh!”

Without more than a half-second’s interlude to designate the next change in topic, Zekiel was climbing down, off the chair to crouch beside the bedside table and fiddling.

“There is another thing I had forgotten until this moment, I am sorry—”

After his fiddling, Zekiel drew out the product of it and set it where Ottolo could see and reach: a clean, bound notebook of numerous sheets of white-yellow parchment strung together by simple, waxed black string and protected by a harder cover and back, and beside it, a ceramic cup filled with two sticks of charcoal and several other wrapped sticks of dyed wax, colored blue, green, and a dull yellow.

“I know that you have what else I brought, but I had thought to myself that there are so many things in your mind which you cannot see here for they aren’t here, only in your homeland, and there are endless things you could say to a sewn tintural but you might perhaps like to do more than that and when my fingers are not writing but still holding something to write with, sometimes I make shapes and they aren’t as beautiful as the way some make shapes, but it is a way to put what is in my mind to paper or to see things I had not even thought to see before. There are many pages to it…”

Zekiel moved the notebook from the top of the bedside dresser to the edge of Ottolo’s bed, opening it and tapping the top of a blank sheet with a finger.

“And all of them are empty for whatever you might wish to put there, but if you should fill them all and wish for more I can fetch another and you can fill as many as you like if it please you. Even if you cannot read letters on your own without me, you can make your thoughts here in a different way…” He smiled, hopeful. “I have seen some try and the result is truly wondrous.”

At first, Zekiel wondered if he had made a mistake.

The gift certainly hadn’t meant to distress Ottolo, but the scowl that pinched his features initially suggested that it was not being received as intended and something about the presentation displeased him. Fortunately, that passed quickly. With explanation, Ottolo’s expression relaxed from offended to intrigued, to more than just that, and by the time he spoke, he looked and sounded pleased in all manner of speaking.

“I should like that very much I think,” he said, beaming and eyes alight with curiosity. “They sound beautifully wondrous…” Long, long noses. “And strange,” he added, imagining something akin to a tintural but instead of a hard rounded snout, a deeply elongated straight nose, much like a stick. “Do their long noses make travel difficult? Do they smell especially well with them? What are the beasts called?”

Then, at the thanks, a pleased flush rose into his cheeks.

“And you are quite and always welcome,” he said, “to anything I might do or bring that pleases you.”

So rarely did the other boy seem genuinely happy that, when his expression warmed, his smile bright and real in the wake of his soft laughter, Zekiel felt an answering swell of delight. This is what he worked for, what he wanted, and it was a good—especially wondrous—moment.

When Ottolo took the sketch pad, Zekiel sat back, watching with wide and curious interest, intent on seeing what the other boy meant. To him it was beyond fascinating to think on how much was out there in the world. Wide, wondrous and waiting, with beasts and lands of all manner of strange shapes and sizes. Though perhaps crude — if not in Zekiel’s eyes — the sketched likeness that came to shape under Ottolo’s fingers certainly was vastly different from what Zekiel had imagined. But far more entrancing, and his eyes widened, lips making a small ‘o’ of understanding before his lashes flicked up and his gaze pinned to Ottolo.

“It would be wondrous!” he said. “I imagine I won’t but I wish I might. They are so large they might be a small house of fur were it not for their legs and…” He reached, fingers grazing to hover over but not quite touch the parchment where Otto had drawn the ‘trunk’ and what looked to almost be two massive teeth or horns coming from its mouth. “All of it. I may dream of how strange and great they are. You have seen them so close?”

Zekiel listened fascinated as Ottolo spoke. His imagination, never one to skimp on details, hooked onto each portion of the story, building up the image as Ottolo went along. When he began to sketch again, Ze’s eyes went there, following the scritch and sweep of the charcoal as it made alien beasts come to life on the page, so great and furred. As his fingers crimped against the sheets, he could imagine soft, bristling hair under his fingertips and a massive, warm beast’s body, friendly enough to shelter a small child.

He could not think why a mother would keep blankets from her child, but then, persons were inspired to perform strange cruelties more often than he understood. So his gaze only flicked upwards at the comment, studying Ottolo a moment as he spoke before returning down to watch the charcoal make shapes.

Jevan had not been ‘kind’ in his youth. So, too, had Ottolo experienced struggle—and perhaps it was what had lead him here.

When Ottolo quieted and then finished, Ze smiled and reached, laying a hand gently atop Ottolo’s and lifting his gaze to his face again. “That will be a wondrous day indeed,” he said. “I anticipate it from this moment until the moment it is upon us. Do you still wish for me to read to you?”