A child's bloodied stuffed animal signifies a monster.
TW: descriptions of murder and blood.
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"Can we play now?"
Young Maia bounced on the balls of her feet, little round eyes staring up at her older sister in anticipation. She grinned, two deep dimples peeking through her cheeks.
"Not today, Mai," answered Sloane. She shuffled some papers on her desk, just out of Maia's eyesight. "I have some things I need to take care of."
Maia knew the finality in Sloane's tone, so she slinked off in disappointment. She turned around once, to give her sister her best set of puppy-dog eyes to date, but Sloane didn't even look up from her work.
"Stupid Sloane," she grumbled under her breath, knowing if Sloane heard her, she'd be scolded. She grabbed her stuffed tiger from the floor by the door. "She's always busy."
A man, trembling and blinking twice as often as he should, paced by the door. He used a cane, clacking against the tiled floor with each step he took.
"Hello, sir!" she called out.
The man turned and Maia recognized him.
"Mr. Pat!" Her smile lit up the hallway. Mr. Pat just peered down at the girl, worry passing onto his face.
"Aren't you a little young to be here?"
Maia, being small for her age, hardly paid him any mind. "I'm seven and a quarter!" To her, seven and a quarter was nearly grown. And no one had ever given her any indication to believe otherwise.
Mr. Pat slowly crouched down, all of his weight supported by his cane. "Why were you in that office?"
Mr. Pat was her friend when Sloane couldn't be. He allowed her to stay in his room sometimes. He made up stories for her to pass the time until meals. The stories he told her of included princes and princesses, swords and dragons, and after finishing one, Mr. Pat would always watch her prance around pretending his cane was a sword.
Maia crossed her arms over her chest, stuffed tiger dangling from one of her hands. "I want to play. But Sloane is too busy." Her nose crinkled at the last words, and she stomped away. Her frustration got ahold of her, otherwise she would have dragged Mr. Pat along with her, away from Sloane's door.
He stared after her for a while before leaning his cane in the corner by the door and disappearing into Sloane's office. The door swung shut behind him.
Maia skipped down the halls, whistling cheerily to herself. She smiled at people as she passed them, and a few earned waves from her and her tiger. She came to a stop at the end of the hallway, pressing her nose to the glass of the window.
There was the sprawling expanse of space. She stared out in wonder. Even though she'd been born on the spaceship, Maia treated every look out the window as if it were her first. Her wonder of the world around her had come from her mother. The little Maia remembered of her was in the way her eyes lit up when she looked out the window of their tiny cabin aboard the ship. Maia on her mother's knee, Sloane perched on the couch reading, they'd been a picture-perfect family.
