6: A Little Bit of Everything
Alice gave a languid stretch, squeezing her eyes shut tight as she smacked her lips together. Then she rubbed her eyes with the back of her hands and wriggled her toes before pushing herself up onto her elbows and looking around at the empty cave. “And I thought Carol was usually the last one up.” Pushing herself to her feet, Alice mumbled “Maybe I’ll have a little bit of time to explore on my own,” as she grabbed her shoes and socks.
She hated to go behind Gau’s back, especially with what happened that first day of their long weekend, but she wanted some really good samples. Of course, instead of going to the deep Veldt, she could go back to the beach with her stuff to get the samples she wanted.
Alice smiled when she remembered the look on Gau’s face at the discovery. He deserved hope for his home, and that flower-patch definitely gave it to him. To them both, really. “If I could just figure out what did it,” she mumbled, “I would be able to do that for his entire Veldt.”
She padded groggily toward the mouth of the cave. The brightness of the late morning sun made her squint her eyes and raise her sock-burdened arm up to shield her face as she exited. She smiled and leaned against the outside wall near the cave mouth in order to put on her socks and shoes. “It’s going to be another lovely day,” she told her socks. Then she sighed. “Too bad we have to go home.” Giving an absent shrug, Alice struggled with first one sock and then the other, occasionally having to brush a bit of fallen dirt from the cave wall off her shoulder. “First boot. Second boot. Laces all the way up. Pant legs adjusted . . . ahhh.” Alice straightened with another stretch and moved a small step from the cave wall.
Normally Alice wasn’t a morning person, but since spending the weekend on the Veldt she found out she wasn’t a city person. Too much noise and civilization made her cranky. She pushed her hands deep into her pockets as she took in a deep breath of air. When she stayed alone in her room or in her backyard she usually felt better after a while. Pretty soon, people would be accusing her of being unsociable.
“Yeah, like that’ll be a loss.” Alice sniggered and moved forward--But her feet couldn’t move, which caused her to topple forward. She caught herself with her hands and knees. “Ack!” Alice rotated to sit on her butt and stared in consternation at her laces--which were tied together! “What in the world?” She leaned forward to untie them. “There’s no way I could have tied them together on accident.” Alice hesitated, worrying her lower lip before quickly shaking her head with a muttered “nah” to tie them again. She even caught herself double checking to make sure they were very much separate. That done, Alice pushed herself to her feet, dusted off her butt and hands, and then turned toward—“Ack!” she yelped, stepping back.
Gau grinned, wearing nothing but his hide shorts. “Morning.” His tone reeked of mischief.
Alice frowned, hands on hips. “Were you the one who tied my laces together?”
Gau’s grin melted into a reproachful scowl. He crossed his arms. “Alice say going on Veldt by self. Not do without me.”
She opened her mouth for a retort, thought better of it, and lowered her hands to her sides. “Who says I was going to do that?”
“You.”
She flushed, clearing her throat as she lowered her gaze to the browned grass at her feet. She kicked at a tuft of dry grass. “Oh yeah. I guess I did. Whoops.”
“What I say?” Alice didn’t answer Gau’s question, so he took a step closer. “Alice, what I say?”
“You said I shouldn’t go onto the Veldt by myself because it’s too dangerous,” she repeated dutifully.
Gau lifted his chin in a curt nod. “Good.”
Drat. Alice crossed her arms. “So where’s Carol and Eric?” She kicked at a rock. Next time she would investigate silence when it came to being stealthy.
“Gone to beach for swimming and hiking. I took.”
Alice met his gaze, slack-jawed. “Gee. Thanks. What about me? Didn’t you think I’d want to go?”
Gau's lips drooped, and his ears reddened. “Sorry, Alice. I thought you want see Veldt.”
Alice mouthed an ‘oh’ as she knee-kicked her sensitivity into action. “I didn’t mean to bite your head off. Of course I want to see the Veldt.”
His expression still showed hesitance. “No angry me?”
Alice emphatically shook her head. “No angry,” she said, smiling.
Gau’s expression lightened, and he gestured over his shoulder. “Little walk do morning grump good.”
“Hey,” she said as she fell into step beside him, “if you think this is grumpy, you should see me on the first day of a school week.”
Gau shivered. “Too scary to think. Me stay home tomorrow.”
Alice laughed. “And have Ms. Aimes classify you as a slacker? Better not. It’s always best to be on her good side.”
He nodded. “I try do this thing with all.”
“Yeah, well, don’t try so hard with Paytha and the others. They’ll eat you alive.” She peeked at him in time to meet his furrowed brows. “Figuratively speaking, of course. Although I have wondered . . . .”
Gau’s chuckle purred in his chest as they made their way to the west. A cool breeze whipped along the ground, and Alice noticed the tang of the ocean. It also smelled fresher than the air over the dryer part of the Veldt. Her brow dipped as she clenched her hands behind her back. Hm. When she heard another chuckle, she shifted her gaze to Gau beside her.
He smiled, his eyes still focused off in the distance ahead of them. In fact, they almost seemed to be looking into the past.
“What’s so funny?” she asked, smiling.
Gau briefly met her scrutiny before gesturing ahead of them. “This place. It remind me of day first see friends.”
“Really? When? Who?”
“Four years in past. That when first met Sabin.”
Alice shifted her gaze to the flat expanse ahead. “Sabin Figaro? Wow.”
“Very scared first time see. Never seen big people like him in all 13 years of life on Veldt.”
“What did you do?”
“I run very fast,” he told her, his smile twinkling in his eyes.
She laughed. “I’m not the least bit surprised. In fact, I am reminded of the very first time I saw my grandparents. I ran very fast myself.” Gau chuckled. Alice looked back to the Veldt. “You met up with him again though, right?”
“Yes. Meet Sabin and Cyan outside home of Mobliz before . . . before Veldt get hurt.”
“What made you decide to go with them?” Alice asked, though she felt as if she pried into a secret stash of memories. Carol would have given her right ear to hear these stories.
Gau rubbed his bare stomach as he sent her a flash of white teeth. “When boy very hungry and people feed, boy get very nice.”
Alice laughed. “I guess you would, wouldn’t you?”
“Then I help Sabin and Cyan get from Veldt to . . . N . . . Nikeah,” Gau struggled out. “With help of my shiny.”
“Shiny?”
He halted and crouched, drawing a picture on the ground of something which resembled an upside down fishbowl. Then he made a motion like he placed it over his head and held his breath. Alice opened her mouth, tilting her head back with an “Ah. Shiny,” before they once more walked toward the fresh air of the ocean.
“We went under water for long time,” he continued. “Never see before. Lots fun. Lots monsters. Get strong.”
“Not that you weren’t strong before though, right? I mean, living on the Veldt for 13 years by yourself takes some talent, Gau.”
His ears flushed pink, and he cleared his throat as his gaze examined the grass at his feet. “Do best.”
Alice smirked, clenching her hands behind her back. “So, what was it like to travel with Sabin and Cyan? Must have been an adventure every second.”
He nodded. “Feel good to not be by self. We talk. We laugh. We share many thing and become friends.” He gestured to the two of them.
“Like us.”
She smiled. “Like us.”
“Sabin almost not like me,” he confessed.
“What?”
“When try show where shiny, Sabin go too close to edge and . . . I want be funny. So scare.”
“Uh-oh.” Alice snickered. “He got you back, didn’t he?”
Gau shook his head. “I made Sabin lose all money. Dropped pouch when I scare.”
“Oh, geez. That's awful.”
“He also not like I call Mr. Thou.” Gau shrugged. “I knew Cyan only one say, but liked Sabin’s red face when call him Mr. Thou. He very funny.”
Alice laughed. “I’m sure he got over it.”
Gau nodded and cast a sidelong peek and smile toward Alice. “I still call Mr. Thou. He make like mad, but I know he laugh inside.”
“Inside joke between friends? Those are always good to have. Makes the friendship special.”
His eyes brightened with a question the same time both his eyebrows rose. “Special? How ‘inside joke’ make friendship more special?”
Alice noticed his usual intense expression of listening. This time, he actually watched her speak. "Well, anything that only two or three friends share makes their friendship special because of the fact they’re the only ones that know about it. It . . . I don’t know, it’s almost like sharing a secret. You know?”
He thought about it long and hard, moving his gaze back to their scrutiny of the Veldt ahead of them. Finally, he nodded. “I understand how this work. Make sense.”
“Whew,” Alice teased. “I wouldn’t want you to think I didn’t know how to explain the deeper things of life.”
He shot her a grin. “You do good in all ‘splain, Alice.”
She was about to thank him when he put an arm out to keep her back. “What?”
“Look first.”
Arching an eyebrow, Alice did as asked, moving her gaze to the bare beach. The cool breeze felt great, and the ocean glimmered a somewhat normal shade of blue. Alice smiled. “This is awesome. Much nicer than the other one.”
Gau smiled. “Let’s walk and see if can find crab or shellfish.”
Alice fell into step beside him. “That’s right, we didn’t find any on the other beach, did we? Hm. It’s amazing what a couple miles will do to the eco-system.”
The two traversed their way down the slight incline to the beach below. Alice sat on a rock to take off her shoes and socks and immediately discovered the sand to be warm and soft. She grinned, wriggling her toes into the sand. Gau smiled just as wide while immediately doing the same with his own toes. Then he grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet, leading her to an outcropping of rocks to the south.
Alice eagerly followed, hoping she would find something unusual for her collection. She did, but it looked more like a fossil than a rock, so she carefully tucked it into her pocket and followed after Gau, who hopped from boulder to boulder like the native he was.
“Hey. Look at this.” Alice steadied her footing before carefully kneeling. A bit of green grew from a deep crevice of the cracked boulder she had jumped onto. “There’s a plant growing out of this. It doesn't look familiar to me at all.”
Gau leaped back onto the boulder to crouch beside her. “This good, right?”
Alice nodded. “Very good. It takes a hearty little thing to grow out of a rock. But it also means that it found the nutrients it needed to get started. That and it somehow got dropped here in the first place. It could have been dropped by a bird, or even been blown into the crevice from the wind. I’ve noticed that the wind here seems to smell better than farther inland.”
Gau rested an arm on his leg as he stared up at her. “Could more seeds be growing on these rocks?”
“Sure. If one can do it, others can.”
He returned his intense scrutiny to the little puff of greenery and gave it an encouraging touch. “Grow strong,” he said softly.
Alice smiled. Now that is adorable. When he looked up, she gestured up ahead. “You want to go some more, or did you want to start back?”
“More. Have plenty time to explore,” he said as he straightened.
Gau led the way, occasionally glancing over his shoulder to make certain she brought up the rear. “You do good,” he commented.
Alice smirked, leaping to the boulder directly behind him. “Thanks. It’s been a little while since I did things like this, but it’s nice to know it hasn’t been forgotten. I’ve already tripped and stumbled around Mr. Graceful enough in my life.”
Gau leapt from one boulder to another, and then another. “Mr. Graceful? Who this man?”
Alice laughed, nearly toppling over. She grimaced and concentrated on her footing. “You, you knucklehead.”
He laughed and gave a slight shake of his head before hopping to another boulder. “You be graceful too if practice.”
“While it’s tempting, Gau,” she said as she hopped to the next boulder, “I’m going to pass. Studying always takes first place with me.” Much as she would have loved to traipse around the Veldt from dusk to dawn.
He faced her, carefully watching as she moved to yet another boulder. “You already much smart, Alice. I know from how you talk of Veldt. What else you need to study?”
“Lots of things,” she said absently. The rock was a little wobbly. “If I’m going to fix the Veldt I need to understand a lot of things about a lot of different things. It’s always been that way.” She pressed her lips together and jumped. Once she landed and didn’t fall, she shot Gau a smile of triumph. His thoughtful expression melted her smile. “What?”
He shook his head and then turned away to leap onto another boulder. “Almost there.”
Alice arched an eyebrow. “Almost there? Almost where? I didn’t know we were going someplace specific.” Gau didn’t respond, but the next time he leaped, he disappeared. Alice gasped, "Gau!" while hopping as fast as she dared without risking breaking her skull open. “Gau! Gau, are you all right?” With her last hop she nearly dove straight into a split in the rock into the cavern inside. “Omigosh! Gau? Are you down there?”
His smiling face appeared then, and he held out his arms. “Jump, Alice. I catch.”
She released a quick breath as she sat on the edge of the boulder to dangle her feet into the crevice. “You nearly scared me to an early death!"
He wiggled his fingers at her. “Jump, Alice. Must see.”
“Oh, all right. Keep your britches on.” She adjusted her position, held her breath, and leaped down.
True to his word, Gau caught her at the waist and set her on her feet. He gestured around her. “See?”
Eyes wide in awed wonder, she blinked around her. The walls of the cave were a translucent blue and white that glittered with the little bit of sun from the outside. Alice released a slow whistle. “Now this is gorgeous.”
“Find very soon after breaking of world.”
“Wow. That means this must have been underwater before. Awesome.” She made her way to the wall to touch it. It was cold and smooth. “What do you call it?”
“Call?”
Alice looked over her shoulder at him. He still stood in the middle of the cave, brows knit together in puzzlement. “Yeah. What do you call these stones? You found it. That means you get to call it whatever you want.”
Gau looked around him before focusing those eyes back on her. “I . . . I don’t know.”
“That’s all right. You don’t have to call it anything. I’m just glad you showed it to me. I’d love to come back once I graduate from the Academy. Maybe you’ll have a name for it then?”
Gau turned away to scramble back up through the crevice. “Maybe,” he said.
Alice stared back to the gem-like walls before making her way back to the crevice. She took careful hand and foot holds to propel herself up, accepting Gau’s help the last couple feet. Once satisfied with her footing, she brushed some gem dust from her pants and met his gaze.
“Where to now?”
He gestu
red to the beach. “Not yet find shellfish.”
“Ah. Right. Well? Last one to the beach is a yellow flan!” And she scurried by him with a hop and a “whoop!”
Gau was nice enough to let her stay ahead most of the way, but then he kept even with her clear to the beach. Alice laughed all the way down to the shore, squealing when it looked as if he would pass by, then laughing harder when he didn’t. When they made it to the shore, she splashed up to her knees into the ocean.
Now soaked to the bone from the waist down, Alice sat on a flat stone several feet from the water and released a deep breath. Gau sat beside her, resting his arms and elbows onto the knees of his bent legs. She sent him a wide smile.
“That was fun,” she confessed. “If Eric saw me he would have blackmailed me for years.” She wriggled her toes into the sand and stared out toward the calming activity of the ocean. “But I don’t care. It’s good to get out and do stupid stuff every once and awhile. I guess life’s too nuts to take serious all the time.”
Gau didn’t say a word.
She peeked at him, noticing he stared down at the sand between his bent legs. “You all right?” He nodded. “You sure?” Gau nodded again. She reached out to rest a hand on his shoulder. “Gau? What’s the matter?”
He shrugged and picked at a little piece of shell. “Thinking of what you say before. About study more to help Veldt.”
“Yeah?” She crossed her arms around her knees. “Are you thinking about going to the Academy, too?”
Gau raised his focus to hers. “You think I be good to do? No one knows Veldt more than me. ‘Cept you. Veldt be more helped if we both learn. Right?”
“Well, sure, but are you sure it’s such a great idea for you to be away from your home for so long? Wouldn’t city life get on your nerves?”
He lowered his gaze again. “You leave home. You no think I can do?”
“I didn’t mean that, I just know you’ve been living here a lot longer than I have. You’ve got more of a connection with it. I wouldn’t want you to get homesick.”
“I sick for home whether leave or stay,” he said quietly. Gau lifted his gaze to the ocean waves and let out a slow, long breath. “Don’t know what best. Better to think and stay home.”
Alice nodded before changing her focus back to the scenery. “Yeah. That’s always a good idea.” She felt his eyes on her. “What?” she asked without looking.
“Where you live before here?”
She watched the sand squished beneath her heel. “A little place that doesn’t exist anymore. Over by Doma castle.”
“What life like?”
Alice shrugged. “It wasn’t anything special. We had a farm. We raised animals. Sold them, too. My mom made clothes for the store near Doma. My dad built things with wood.”
Gau remained quiet for a bit before asking “Had to leave when poison come?” The softness of the question belied his concern he asked the wrong one, but Alice had dealt with the issue a long time ago.
She picked up a little red pebble and rubbed it until it shone. “Seems like a thousand years ago.”
“That why you want fix Veldt? So poison no kill new home?”
She nodded again, peeking at him and then surprised when the gaze held. “You’re pretty smart for a country boy.”
Gau’s smile blossomed, and then he looked away. “You smart for city girl.”
Alice laughed. “Hey, sticks and stones may break my bones, but if you ever call me a city girl again, I swear I will tickle you to death.”
Gau’s face puckered into a confused frown as he blinked at her. “Tickle? What this thing ‘tickle’?”
Alice’s jaw dropped. “You have got to be kidding.”
“Never heard this word. What tickle?”
She smacked her forehead, shaking the temptation to show him from her the thoughts in her head. “I can’t do that to you, Gau. It would be cruel.”
“Tickle be bad thing?”
“No,” Alice said, laughing, “nothing bad . . . just cruel if you happen to be very ticklish.”
Gau wouldn’t accept the answer, and his expression seemed to shout that he felt she intentionally kept a secret. “What tickle? Show.”
“Oh man,” Alice groaned, “why can’t I keep my big mouth quiet?” She cast him a sidelong glance, noticed his expectant look, and raised her shoulders in a shrug. “Oh, why not. I’ll never live it down, but who cares.” She stood and motioned for him to do the same. “Come on, Mr. I’ve-Got-To-Know-Everything. On your feet.”
He stood and faced her. “What I do?”
Alice restrained a smile. “Nothing. Just stand there.” She rested a hand on her hip, the other rubbing the back of her neck as she regarded him. One never knew--She spied a likely weakness and gave another shake of her head as she met his expectant gaze. “Now, whatever I do, please don’t hurt me.” Gau raised an eyebrow. She took a slight step forward. Gau didn’t move. “It’s nothing painful,” she told him, still trying to figure out how to do it.
Finally, she threw caution to the wind and pounced, fingers making contact with the sides of his chest to begin their instinctive wiggle. His muscles twitched and then, as she knew he would, he bent his shoulders inward and his stomach away while giving a true Gau laugh.
Though his hands went in search of her wrists, a person raised around multitudes of children who played tickle-wars on each other got good at keep-away. When Gau tried to step back, Alice moved forward with what must have sounded a maniacal laugh as the twitching and convulsing of his muscles picked up the pace.
“Stop,” he howled. “Stop, stop, stop.”
“See?” Alice said, laughing, “it’s more of an obnoxious kind of touch that makes someone laugh their butt off!”
Gau laughed so hard his entire face flushed, tears trickling from his eyes as he continued to back away from her. Alice tenaciously followed after him. Then he tripped on his own feet and went down, grabbing hold of Alice’s wrists to pull her down with him. She squealed, barely missing landing directly on top of him.
Then she sat up, her cheeks hurting with the force of her grin as she stared down at him. Gau still laughed, arms wrapped around his middle in protection from a possible second attack. “That, Gau, is a tickle.”
Shaking his head from side to side with an ear-to-ear grin, Gau gasped “No more, Alice. No more tickle.”
“Very well. I will take pity on you and leave you alone.” She pointed at him. “Just don’t ever ask me to show you something when I tell you that you’d be better not to know.”
He nodded and took in a deep breath, releasing it slowly. Finally, he pushed himself up to his elbows to pinpoint her with his usual intense gaze. “You ticklish?”
The grin vanished. “Well, now, that’s usually not a very nice question to ask someone.”
“Why?”
“Because . . . because being ticklish is . . . well, it’s a vulnerable spot that people could take advantage of.” She pushed back a little, hoping he wouldn't take it as the confession that she was, in point of fact, extremely ticklish.
Gau nodded slowly and thoughtfully as he continued to watch her, seemingly thinking on and processing what she said. “I see why that be truth.” Alice wasn’t sure if she should relax or run away. Then Gau lay back, positioning his hands behind his head as he stared up at the sky. “Good thing we friends.”
Releasing a quick breath of relief, Alice lay on the soft sand beside him. “Yep. Good thing.” And she promised herself to never tickle him again. She already had a sneaking suspicion he could have easily gotten himself out of it, but that curiosity kept him vulnerable.
She stared up at the blue sky, an unexpected silence of awkwardness descending like a swarm of locusts. It successfully devoured the peace and pleasantness the two had shared the entire morning. Alice cleared her throat and watched a great winged something-or-other glide by, turning onto its back to tease the clouds with its feet. Alice worried her lip. Boundaries of things to be ta
ught or not taught flitted in and out of her mind like those same previously mentioned locusts. She didn’t much like the guilt that came with them. Gau hadn’t really been around people his own age, so he didn’t know anything about teasing and flirting and tickling and wrestling just for the fun of it. That was why Alice worried about his reaction to Carol’s attention. Now she had done basically the same thing to him by—
“Alice? You well? Much quiet.”
She twitched and peeked over to meet his golden-green eyes. “Hm?”
“You look . . . .” He pushed himself up onto his left elbow as he searched for the right word. “Troubled.”
Alice flushed and looked away. “Oh, well, um . . . don’t worry about it.”
“Alice.”
She cleared her throat. “What.”
“You feel bad because tickle? You think you take . . . ‘vantage?”
Alice released a deep breath as she brought her hands up to the sky. “Look. You caught me red handed.”
Gau reached out, taking hold of one of her hands to bring it toward his face for an intense scrutiny. Then he released it with a shake of his head. “These . . . similes . . . .” He shook his head again.
Alice smiled, though it felt hard to hold it in place. “I guess I’m too eager to protect you from the not-so-nice things that can happen to us kids.”
“Alice, I not need you do this. I want to do life with friends. How do this if you not be self?”
“I know, I know.” Alice sighed and cast him a glance. “Sorry.”
He smiled. “Thank you, Alice, for thought of keeping me safe. But life is adventure I want to live.”
“You certainly have had that, haven’t you?”
Gau laid back again, knitting his hands behind his head as he watched the same bird-like thing dance across the sky. “Sometimes wish life not so busy all time. Those days I come here and watch ocean, listen to breeze, feel sand on toes.” He gave a slight shrug.
“Helps you think?”
Gau nodded. “Helps do many things. Keeps mind at peace.”
Alice stared up at the sky. “I wish I had a place to do that.”
He turned his gaze to an examination of her profile. “You no place be away from thoughts and people?”
Alice lifted a shoulder. “I’ve got my backyard, which is nearly on the Veldt, and I’ve got my room. I just shut the door and pull out a book. It usually does the trick good enough.”
“That why you go so much onto Veldt?”
She smiled. “Caught in the act.”
He chuckled and looked away, adjusting his hands behind his head. “Veldt good at bringing peace to worried soul. You good to come for that. Keep coming, Alice.”
Alice’s smile remained. “Thanks. I will.”