Welcome to Gaia! ::

The Gaia Children's Museum was one of Taji's favorite places. Compared to other museums, it was rather small (and unglamorous for anyone 14 or older, apparently; her siblings never went with her) but was always a bustling center of activity, not only with visitors around her own age but -- best of all -- things she was allowed to touch.

A variety of events were always taking place there: story readings by well-known authors of children's books, etiquette lessons with free cake afterwards, pottery throwing, arts and crafts, and interactive stations set up various places for children to stick there fingers at or on or into things.

One of Taji's favorite things to stick her hands into was dirt. There was a lot one could do with dirt -- especially dirt with gold in it. The room itself was set up to mirror a scene from a Western dirt bowl, complete with tumbleweed and cow bones. A shallow (and artificial to the mature mind) creek ran through the middle of the room, and piles of pans and troughs of water stood by the ready; the idea was that children would use the pans, stick it into the water and mud, and then sift through the mixtures over the troughs in search of gold(-painted rocks.)

It took Taji a few tries to figure out that picking up handfuls of mud and flinging it at the walls was not the proper way to go gold prospecting, but finally the young toddler calmed down a little and was eagerly shaking a pan of mud over one of the low troughs. Even if she didn't find any gold in this batch, she could dig up the mud from the trough's water and use it for the mud-man she was making nearby. Her mother sat on one of the benches lining the room against the walls (not the one she had been aiming at earlier, of course), reading a book and occasionally glancing up to make sure she was behaving.

"Gold!" Came the immediate response, as the star spirit looked up from her panful of the squishy wet stuff to flash the newcomer a bright grin, her face smudged with dirt. Still staring at the other boy, she gave the pan a few more vigorous shakes. "In mud," she explained conspiritorially, as if this were not common knowledge to anyone who could read the activity explanation on the plaque outside the room, "Not found any yet though."

Finally returning her attention to what she was doing, she impatiently scooped up handfuls of the sandy sludge from her pan and squeezed them through her fingers to more quickly determine the presence of the elusive valuable shinies. Finding none, she then transferred the then-rendered-useless mud to a rather formless pile a few steps away. "Bob," she introduced, pointing to her mud man.

Belatedly, she finally turned back to the other boy and said very brightly, "Hi! I am Taji!"

"I love gold!" Taji grinned widely, throwing both arms up in the air for emphasis and sending tiny globs of water and mud alike flying everywhich way. "If I find any, I'm gonna.. make.. a crown." She nodded, allowing her arms to drop to her sides.

"I think Bob likes you too," she noted, dropping her pan and copying Ziya in searching through the mud with her bare hands. Finally she grabbed another handful and backtracked a little to slap it on the mudman, who was now beginning to look a little lopsided. "He has no eyes, cos I dunno..." She trailed off, visibly perplexed at this conundrum.

"Woaaaahh!" Taji dropped her latest handful of mud, placing her dirty hands on her knees and leaning forward to gaze at the gold in wonder. "You are like.. Magic gold finder!"

Clearly this was the case! Perhaps he spoke the language of gold, or knew gold magic, or was some kind of magnet that gold was attracted to, or was a long lost son of gold.

"Gold gold gold!" Taji abruptly burst out into song and dance, nearly tripping over her own feet as she twirled away to stomp in a tiki-like circle around the mudman. "Now he will see, and maybe with his gold eye he can help us find more gold!"

"Bob is beautiful," Taji noted, tilting her head at an angle and squinching one eye shut to better appraise the looks of their mudman. She skipped after her new friend when he left for the creek once more, plopping herself down on her knees and shoving her hands elbow-deep into the mud.

"Favoritest thing?" She echoed, pausing briefly in her groping of the mud long enough to give herself time to think. "Hmm... I have lots of favoritest things. Swingsets, Magic School Bus, kitties, ice cream with rainbow sprinklies... In the whole world though, I think my favoritest thing is stars!" She grinned brightly. "You c'n only see them at night, but they are shiny and glittery like.. like gold. They are nice." She nodded emphatically.

"What about you? What is your favoritest thing?"

Taji returned his grin, continuing her own efforts, and tilted her head at an angle as she listened. "I know sand!" She said proudly, puffing her chest out. "Lots of it outside my house. Beneath all the snow though, mum says I can play in it in the.. s'mer. It looks neat," she nodded, and brightened at the mention of stars.

"Can't see so many at my house -- too much light -- so.. so.." She flailed her arms in the water, trying to quickly think of how to best express her excitement. Stars! Stories! Sand! "YAY," she bellowed finally.

And with her hyperactive gestures churning the water and mud, there soon came the glint of another gold piece uncovered. Almost immediately catching sight of it, Taji pounced on it and tore it from its dirty prison, briefly washing it off in the water before holding it up to the light.

"Look! Bob is helping already!" She said happily, before holding it out to her new friend. "Here, you can have this one."

"Maybe," Taji agreed, splashing through the mud and water until she too had unearthed another piece of gold. She brought it close to Ziya's and mashed the two together before letting go of hers, as if expecting them to smush like playdoh or hold in place by magnetism or else sheer force of will.

Predictably, her gold rock clattered loudly to the ground.

"Huih," Taji blew her bangs out of her hair and gave her rock a very strange look. "Maybe.. if... we had glue?" There was mud, but it was not sticky enough to hold gold pieces together. They could maybe stack them like a pyramid -- but then how could they move them and put them on their heads?

The star spirit easily allowed herself to be led out of the play room, waving at her mother, who was barely paying attention, at the other side of the room.

She squinted a little as the lighting changed -- the museum had more windows and much more open space than the playroom had, and it also had very squeaky floors that Taji enjoyed dragging her shoes against. "Really? A real crown? A really real one?" It was only halfway through that Taji realized she should whisper too, if only because Ziya was doing so.

"Well, well," she reasoned, tapping a finger against her chin, "It says we can touch things here. I don't know but lots of people are touching things. I'm sure they won't mind if we borrow the crown for a little bit, an' put it back. Where is it?"