I plucked a flower—what resembled a Bow and Arrow plant back home. It had a thick stem and a long bulge of flowers that took up the top quarter. I twisted the stem around my hand and under the flower. I snapped it forward so the head popped off like an arrow and sailed through the air, striking Cleb’s shoe. The flowers exploded like a flower bomb.
He beamed at me and plucked his own flower. He tried to do the same but it didn’t work and fell to the ground at his feet.
This was when most adults made a crucial mistake. They would rush over to help the kid. That was the wrong way to do things. You wanted them to come to you so they developed confidence in approaching you.
I plucked another flower and shot another “arrow” at him. This time, I aimed even higher and hit him in the chest. He tried again but did even worse this time, somehow making the “arrow” fire backward.
He plucked another one and approached me. I pretended not to notice him. He tugged on my shirt. I waited a moment, secretly itching to turn to him immediately. It’d been so long since I held a child and I missed it. I let him do it twice before I turned to him.
“Oh,” I said. “Hello, little man. Can I help you with something?”
He extended the flower to me. I crouched beside him and took it.
“What’s up?” I said.
“How do I shoot like you?” he said.
“It’s very simple,” I said. “Are you ready? Come closer and I’ll show you how to do it.”
I sensed Waev watching us. I wished he wouldn’t—there was a chance Cleb would feel self-conscious but I could understand his interest. Cleb was a part of the family and they were all concerned about him.
I held him close and remembered how good it felt to work with children, their warmth, and their happiness. There was nothing like curling up with a good kid for company.
I helped him and we shot the “arrow” together. It hit Waev’s foot. He hopped on the spot and pretended like he’d been shot.
Cleb giggled and I noticed immediately how the house workers snapped to attention. It seemed laughter wasn’t a common commodity for this kid. I wondered why.
“Great shot!” I said. “Were you aiming for his foot?”
Cleb nodded.
“Do you think you can hit his hand?” I said.
Waev held his hand out like a target.
Cleb took careful aim and poked his tongue out in concentration. He released the flower and it struck Waev’s extended hand and exploded in an explosion of petals.
“Well done!” I said. “High five!”
Cleb didn’t know what that meant. I guessed it wasn’t a thing with Titans but he grinned as he slapped my hand, and then Waev’s.
Waev shared an incredulous look with the other house workers and looked at me with genuine warmth in his eyes.
“Thank you,” he mouthed.
I shrugged my shoulders. If he was impressed with that, he was going to be amazed with my next trick…
Cleb opened up to me after that, walking with us and helping tend the gardens. It was a good thing to get a child’s hands dirty in soil, I always thought.
I struck paydirt when I told him I was from a far and distant planet that no Titan had ever been to before.
“Really?” he said. “I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true,” I said, not knowing if it was really true or not. “Do you want me to prove it to you?”
He nodded his head shyly.
“Okay,” I said. “If I am from a planet that Titans have never visited before, that means I know nothing about Titans, right?”
“Right.”
“So ask me a question. Something anyone who knows about Titans must know and I guarantee I don’t know it.”
Cleb thought for a moment before raising his hand.
“Have you got one?” I said.
He nodded.
“Great,” I said. “Hit me with it.”
“What is the emperor’s real name?” he said.
I thought long and hard and pretended I was going to answer a couple of times before shaking my head.
“I don’t know!” I said.
Cleb gasped and looked from me to Waev and back again.
“You must know!” he said.
“I promise you, I don’t,” I said.
He told me, and it sounded so foreign I couldn’t have repeated it back to him if he asked.
“Wow,” I said. “You must be very clever to know something like that. Say it again.”
He did, and I feigned my astonishment.
Waev smiled but pretended not to.
“I’ll leave you two to it,” he said. “I’m afraid I know all the answers to these questions and I might accidentally reveal them.”
He had a better sense of humor than I expected for a stiff head of the household. He also had a good sense of a developing relationship. He was my crutch when it came to being with Cleb. Now we were alone and I got to see if he would continue to trust me without his friends nearby.
Cleb sprayed the flowers with a liquid in a bottle. The flowers made a sucking noise and reached out for him with their leaves and petals. Okay, now I was astonished. They had actual living flowers on this planet?
“Ask me another one,” I said to Cleb.
We played like that for a while. We moved across various topics fast and it helped color in the kind of people these Titans were. Cleb focused more on his toys and his desire to show them to me.
“I promise, I will come look at your toys later,” I said.
“Okay!” Cleb said with a beaming grin.
And when he started asking me about games Titan kids usually played together, his interest turned to the games we had on Earth. I told him about Tag and he was hooked.
“That’s it?” he said. “You just chase each other?”
“Pretty much,” I said. “You can add extra rules if you want, but mostly it’s trying to catch each other.”
“But it’s so simple! That can’t be fun!”
“Wanna bet?” I said, putting my watering can down.
He
