#ploops

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There were kids in the town square. About twelve of them, passing a ball around in a game they called Wake the Sun. Even after watching them for a full hour, Frederick still had no actual idea how you won the game, but they seemed to be having fun. Heidi especially, playing with the other kids who didn't fully seem to understand just how important their playmate was.

Laughter filled the air, and he was nine again, and there were kids calling him Freddie and asking him to play soccer in the yard. Abbie and Nickie, Little Josh and Kathy, dragging him away from his studies to chase each other in the woods, getting lost on a Saturday afternoon as they pretended to be bandits or princesses. Often times it was both, and Abbie was always the knight and Nickie was always the bandit king, and he was always the dragon.

They were his people.

They were all important kids. But out there, they weren't important kids.

In the woods of his youth, they were just people.

With a jolt, he yanked himself back to reality, one hand on his head. He was used to the strange, dream-like memories of Kasvilla, pulling him back into places he had been a long time ago. Part of him thought they would've stopped once he found their merry band of misfits. These 'keepers', as they tended to call themselves.

Part of him should've known better. That planet changed him mind and body. He'd known that for a long time.

Frederick sighed, going back to his woodworking. It had been months by this point, and he still couldn't get used to the stars. The night sky had been full of them when he was a kid, beautiful and ever blinking. And then one by one, he watched them go out, snuffed out with as much care and thought as someone putting out a candle.

They were all dead. All of them, snuffed out with those stars.

Didn't mean he didn't miss them.

"Mr. Frederick?"

In that way only Heidi could muster, she had snuck up to him, peering over his knee and looking at the bit of carved wood in his hands.

"Hey kiddo," he said, picking her up like she weighed less than air and setting her on his lap. "Having fun out there?"

She giggled, smoothing her large skirts out and settling comfortably against his chest. "I am! You should come play with us."

He snorted, delicately carving out the eyes on his figurine. "Hm, well, I could, but I think I'm too tall. And if I played, I'd lose every single time. And that isn't very fun."

"But everyone likes Wake the Sun," Heidi said, face pouting in a way that was absolutely weaponized. "We can all be on the same team. Then you can play, we can teach you, and everyone wins!"

"I don't know, I haven't played with anyone in a long time." Ears and nose were next, clean shavings gently falling on Heidi's dress. "I might mess it up."

She thought for a moment, eyes going distant in a way that could only be described as oracular. Heidi had always been a special kid from what it sounded like, dreaming visions and strangely wiser than her years. "You were alone back home, right?"

"Yeah." Kid was observant. Almost scarily so.

"That must've been hard," she said, looking up at him with a somber expression. "Because you cared about the people you knew before, right? No one is born alone."

Tail next, long and curly. "You're right, I wasn't. There were other people, but we all had jobs to do out in space, up in the stars. And then, well..."

"The Angel Came."

"Yeah. Yeah she did," he said with a slow nod.

Heidi kicked her feet, taking one hand and reaching up to his face. Her fingertips brushed his chin, and her eyes went lost and distant again, as if she was looking deep beyond his soul. In anyone else, it would've been deeply disturbing. In her, though, it was almost calming.

"I don't think they're all gone," she finally said, face brightening in the way only a child can know hope.

Another shave, another notch. "What makes you say that?"

"Your world sounds really big," she replied, pointing out to the stars. "Even if a lot of places are gone, there's probably more out there than we can see. That's what the astronomer says. And even if the Angel is really big, you'd have to be even bigger to destroy everything."

He chuckled. "That's a pretty big if."

"Maybe. But I like believing that," she said, hopping down and tugging on his hand. "It's no fun thinking you're alone."

Well damn. He couldn't argue with that.

"You're not going to stop until I play with you, are you?"

She grinned like a cat that had eaten an entire fish. "No."

He set aside his tools and the carved wood, the piece slowly taking the shape of a small cat curled around in sleep. Ah well, he could finish it another day. His own little cat wanted to play.

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