atwood's obsession with getting away from his parents' watchful gaze is, as he learns more words, slowly replaced by an incessant need to chatter. he narrates his goings on, describes what he sees, takes delight in every new syllable captured on his tongue. running off alone doesn't hold the same appeal as trapping olive or seabreeze into an extended diatribe on the nature of a particularly pretty butterfly he saw, he finds, but there is still some pleasure in getting to explore. it's just that elysium is so, so pretty, and someone has to collect all the beautiful words to explain that.

might as well be him.

the baby blue of his eyes has finally begun to soften, taking on a greenish hue -- not dramatic, but strange to the boy, who is studying his reflection in a puddle with some intensity. they remind him of seabreezes, he thinks with some pleasure, and leads down to bump his nose against the puddle. today will be a good day.

a voice breaks his reverie and he lifts his head from the puddle, still crouched comfortably against the ground. another child, one he hasn't met -- not one of cam's siblings, he doesn't think. she's a little older than him, but friendly, which puts him at ease. "h'llo," atwood returns shyly, "who're you?"

she introduces herself as minnow, a fact atwood accepts with minimum acknowledgement beyond the flick of one of his tiny ears.  "a'wood," he answers -- still tripping over the t in his name, mouthful of syllables that it is. he leans back and regards her for a moment, deciding how social he feels like being; the answer is yes. "s'pretty today," atwood says dreamily, "don' you think?"

yes it is, she says; he watches expectantly but she doesn't say anything else. his eyes flick from her face back to his puddle for a moment. luckily for her, he knows exactly how to fill a silence. "esp'sh'ly the way the sun looks," he says, "an' all the dappled shadows, see?" he points to where the sun has shown through the leaves of the nearby willows, leaving hazy streaks of shadows on the ground, interpersed with light. "it's like -- like spots. but.. prettier, i think."

he feels unaccountably pleased as she speaks. this is something important, he thinks, a babyish ephiphany, the way words can change how people see, or, or feel even. "i wanna see things dif--dif - er - rent -ly," atwood explains, taking care to get the more difficult word right. it feels important, too, to be able to use the words he wants to use, to say them well and not stumble. stumbling frustrates him. "an' to tell everybody 'bout what i see." with a small, self-satisfied nod, he sits, his tail curling around his toes as he watches the sun set, too.