Rise with the Sun; Cradled by the Moon

A is for Alicia

After experiencing ice cream for the first time and then crashing from all the sugar hitting her at once, she moped in Moon's lap up in the balcony for a little while, trying to overcome her stomach ache. It was weird to her. In the span of a day, she's already experienced so many new things that she never realized existed. It really put her life into perspective, now that she thought about it. So many things she was deprived of. She wondered what other things were out there that she'd yet to experience?

"Are you doing okay, starlight? I know Sunny shouldn't have given you that much ice cream but you seemed to really enjoy it. Didn't want to spoil your first taste."

Moon watched as the small girl flopped around with discomfort in his lap, groaning and whining. He tries not to laugh but her flailing around pulls a small chuckle out of him.

"If your stomach is bothering you that much, I can go get you some medicine for it. It'll take me a minute or so."

She thought about it. His lap was so comfy and she didn't really want to move. On top of that, she didn't want to be left alone. What if those people from this morning came back and they found her? They'd send her away or Sun and Moon could get in trouble and then it'd be her fault...and then they'd send her away!

It was as if she had no stomach ache at all because she immediately attached herself to him, not letting go. She looked up at him with pleading eyes that said "take me with you. Don't leave me alone." As if it took any convincing at all, Moon scooped her up carefully in his arms and went to hook up to his cable.

Strange, though. Yesterday, she wanted no one within a certain perimeter of her. No touching or anything. And in a certain sense, that was still the case. But with him, she was on him like white on rice. Any chance she got, she stuck to him. But he took that as a compliment. In a way, he attached himself to her, as well.

As they lowered down slowly, Sun and that child from before were there to meet them. The child stood directly beside Sun, who towered over him, clutching a piece of paper close to his chest. Moon looks to the child and then to Sun, eyebrow raised.

"What's this one doing out of timeout? Did he actually come to apologize?"

Alicia, who had been kinda slumped against Moon's shoulder and lightly clinging to him, turned her head just enough to catch the kid in her peripheral vision. He looked up at her and she immediately went back to hiding her face. Moon rubbed her back gently and glared at the child.

Sun nudged the child forward, who was a bit nervous. He took some shaky steps forward, eyes to the ground as he held out the piece of paper up to Moon. Moon took the paper and looked at it for a moment, making sure it was an actual apology.

Sun smiled as Moon looked over the note.

"James here worked really really really hard on the letter and even spent an even longer sentence in the time-out chair because he felt so terrible about how he treated you. I even asked him! He just refused to come out! We had a talk and he decided to write you a note to say he's super DUPER sorry!"

In child-like fashion, the boy had written out an apology letter in crayon with misspelled words and some variety of stickers, which we'll assume was a bit of Sun's doing. That bot always has stickers on him in one way or another.

The letter read:

"Im sory for bean mean to yu befor. I hop yu can forgiv me n we can bee frends. If yu wanna."

Moon handed the note to Alicia, who looked at it and took it carefully in her tiny hands. She stared at it, looking at all the stickers and scribblings...that were just gibberish to her. What did this even say?!