Welcome to Gaia! ::

Amitai didn't really know how to deal with change. He had lived a rather uneventful life up until a few days ago, his days spent in a monotonous routine that somehow suited him just fine, but only because he didn't know better. He'd never really had a chance to explore the outside world because of his surrogate mother's warnings that someone would take him away and dissect him (and they might--he had seen something like that on the holovision once) and so his life had consisted of milling around the house aimlessly and trying very hard not to accidentally break things. That was not this, though. This was different, but he could deal with this, probably. He liked it here already, if only because Zaya said he could go outside, even if there was the warning of "don't go too far" attached to it.

He didn't mind that. That he was outside was enough. Amitai had spent his first few days on Gaia cautiously poking his head outside the HQ's door. There was nothing here that could harm him, he decided, no made-up mad scientists, no Teslan bullies to push him around, no noisy traffic--nothing.

And if it was safe enough for a fuzzy little small thing with a big fuzzy tail to run around the front lawn, it was probably definitely safe for him. Curious--always curious, everything was so new and bright and strange and really, the scarcity of trees in his Prague didn't allow for squirrels and the like--he took his first few tentative steps outside to see just what was up with that weird fuzzy thing.

The squirrel paused in its search for what was probably food to cast him a wary eye before deciding retreat was the better part of survival and promptly scurried up the nearest tree. Amitai paused for a moment as the squirrel ran away from him before following it. It wasn't an especially tall tree, and what did a few branches matter when he could reach up, move them out of the way, and still get up close and personal with the angrily-chattering little fuzzy thing anyway?

"Hey, little fuzzy little-thing, I can't get to you up there." That seemed to suit the squirrel just fine and it stayed just out of reach, shouting abuse in squirrelese, as Amitai contented himself with sticking his face as far into the tangle of branches as he could. Pointy twigs and new, sharp-edged leaves grazed his face, but he paid them no mind--it wasn't as if they could scratch him, after all.

Never observant even at the best of times, Ami didn't realize he wasn't alone until someone spoke. He didn't understand the words, but they startled him so much that he jerked away from the tree well before he remembered that he still had a few healthy handfuls of it. With a loud crack! the branches tore free from the trunk, giving the tree a large new bald spot and the squirrel a room with a view. Oops.

"Oops." Amitai looked down at the branches he held and wondered how he could fix this (hammer and nails? Wood glue? Would that even work?) before he remembered why he was holding them in the first place and looked down even further.

Hey, it was a little kid! A little blue-skinned, big-eared, weird-winged kid! Wow. Wow! Ami had been told that people here were different, but he hadn't expected something like this. "Hey," he said, eyes gone wide with shock and curiosity, "your skin is BLUE! How--why? And how'd your ears get so big? And how do you have wings? Are they real? Why are they so little? Can you fly on such tiny wings?" All in a rush of deep, gravelly Czech.

The words this strange new creature didn't have to be understood; the all-too-familiar tone did well enough. "Sorry," Amitai murmured, shoulders hunching and head drooping too submissively to fit right on a giant earthen teenager. As his gaze dropped, he realized he still had the branches grasped like over-large drumsticks in his hands. He quickly dropped them, hoping he hadn't committed some grave injustice against the poor, innocent tree for which this tiny little girl was about to dole out punishment.

She continued to spew loud and clunky words that he couldn't begin to comprehend, and he shook his head helplessly until she said "English." That was a word he was familiar with--Zaya insisted he abandon his native tongue in favor of this more commonly-spoken one, but it had been an uphill battle with no sign of surrender thus far. "English," Amitai repeated slowly. "Not many. Sorry. Uh...cheese monkey. Yes sir, ma'am," he added as an afterthought, exhausting almost his entire knowledge of English in one fell swoop.