The Academy: Astarte! It's been so long.

The thing about slowly growing into adulthood is that sometimes there are no parallels from childhood to grasp at. The flea was certainly grasping. The invisible talons of her mind were reaching out and snatching at thoughts, and certainly this was what the academy was for. A place for thoughts to condense, become tangible, graspable. A place where one brought their thoughts and shared them with others. In that sense, it was indeed timeless, for this coming together of thought can happen anywhere, without any bounds or specifications. It only needs minds, and minds are everywhere, in every being, and thus wherever anyone is, there is thought.

The flea was by no means unintelligent or slow, she had just never really thought of babies before. Her mother didn’t love her as a child. For all the delight and care she put into her everyday being, the flea felt very little for relationships, even that of friendship. Love was for stars and simplicity; she didn’t really understand that usually this emotion was projected towards others. And she was certainly never connected enough with another to learn about babies. Her first instinct was to tell Astarte, Maybe you should spit it out? but that didn’t seem quite right. She knew the thoughts were flying around her ears, all she needed to do was reach.

So she reached her eyes, and her memory. Staring at her friend and teacher’s swollen sides, and trying to find them somewhere else. Could swallowing a heart make you sick? But no, she already knew that wasn’t it. She stared hard at the other’s slightly bloated, reddish sides with her thoughts and memories, and found something extraordinary. She was not thinking of the boring mother she left, and the warmth of her filly youth. She was thinking of the range, and realizing she had almost lived as long here as elsewhere. Nyota once had swollen sides, and then Anatole happened. The thoughts had come into her fist, mostly, some of them, and her eyes fell closed with relief.

Growing doesn’t happen all at once, but sometimes it happens enough that you can feel it. The flea had been growing in a way she couldn’t feel, a slow ripening of her body and voice and mind; she was more collected, and contained a deeper well. Maybe she had noticed the way her dancing had changed from stumble hopping to glide frolicking, and how she spoke with some sense now and then when she wanted, but still she felt far from adult. Astarte was in that world of adult, with another heart inside her. That world was far and close, the flea was slowly dancing towards it, while looking backwards. The flea didn’t want to give up her delight and wonder, stars and dancing.

But maybe she didn’t have to. Maybe she could keep her wonder stars, and dancing delight, and share her child smile, and glowing eyes, warm with understanding and knowledge. Her thoughts would be all the more full, for understanding childside, and adultside, and truly belonging to neither. That was the place she was looking for.

“Many things lie between us. Years, and flying whizzing thoughts, and a heart.” For all the things between them, the flea danced close, still touching in a barely way, and an affectionate way, her eyes and nose, and flanks. “Who’s fire heart did you take to grow inside you?” The flea was curious where second hearts, and little ones with spindly legs came from, and nudged Astarte’s side gently, “Whatever lies between, we can still lean over and touch. That’s what reaching is for, and holding. And standing. Standing is taller than lying.”

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