noprobllama | Chapter 3: Making Waves

Aveau grew into a confident, cheerful, playful child. She always had energy to spare and loved playing any kind of games and pranks.

For all her playfulness, she had a more responsible side as well. She was a good student and even joined the Turtle Club, a local scout club for children and teenagers, where she earned several badges. It probably helped that Roketi tried to encourage her to get good grades and to set an example for her of hard work and dedication to knowledge.

He even found the time to help her with any school projects and listen to all her stories. Here they built a model of the solar system together.

Finding the time to raise Aveau wasn’t easy for Roketi, either. He finally, finally became an astronaut. A rookie one, certainly, but he was now living his dream. Now that Aveau went to school and had some independence, he also resumed his project of upgrading his ship and exploring outer space.

His proudest moment was helping a rebellious colony on a Moon fight an oppressive planet. he’d always had a tendency to sympathise with the underdog, and he couldn’t help but remember the way this story was familiar to so many people like him on his own planet.

For a child, Sulani was a great place to grow up. Aveau was never bored and there was always so much to do. She’d play for hours in a waterfall near her house or swim in the sea.

She tried to explore every nook and cranny of the islands.

Every day was full of new things to see, like this time she found a pineapple plant on a deserted beach she had no idea existed.

She could build sandcastles for hours and really enjoyed collecting shells and other things she found on the beach. One time, she even found this huge conch! She wasn’t sure what it was for, but she really liked it.

When she wasn’t playing outside or socialising, Aveau loved doing crafts. She went through a whole stage of making crafts and drawing for long stretches of time. She did have a tendency to add too much glitter to absolutely everything.

She always tried to go to island events, and even got Roketi to be more involved in the social life of the islands, like this time she made him go with her to family day. That was also the time she met her best friend, Marco.

Sometimes, howver, Aveau suspected something wasn’t right. Roketi had never minded when she shifted between her alien and Sim forms at home, but other people were often surprised. One woman was even rude to her. Most people didn’t say anything to her face, but it could make things very awkward. She just knew it.

At the time, she wasn’t too bothered by that. Even if some people, especially those meeting her for the first time, could get surprised, maybe they didn’t mean any harm. She wasn’t exactly lacking for friends and people who seemed to love her no matter what. There was her dad, of course, and Marco. She also befriended various people around the islands. Here she was at the Kealoha’s. She was friends with Lilliana, who often invited her over when Roketi was working late.

More than that, she had a good dolphin friend. She eventually named her Giana. Aveau loved her; they could spend hours playing and talking, and Giana never really seemed to care what form Aveau was in.

Her love for the islands encouraged her to try to make them better in any way she could. She’d often have a kind word for anyone who was sad, and she began a whole effort to clean up Mua Pel’am. She knew it would take a long time, and she was just one kid, but why not? Maybe one day future generations would be able to enjoy the island the way it had once been.

She did have bad days and strange phases, like any other kid. Here she was angry because she’d had a bad day and school and had just entered a picky eater phase – which Roketi didn’t take into account while making dinner, not that he knew for sure what Aveau now considered “weird food”.

Nothing made her angrier than people who tried to ruin her work on the island. It seemed that with every day she spent cleaning, more animals appeared. There were even seagulls now, even though they had an unfortunate tendency of pooping on her head. The worst were the poachers, litterbugs, and anti-environmentalists who constantly showed up.

The first time she tried to stop one, she’d noticed a poacher walking stealthily on the path from their farm to the beach. She ran out to confront the woman.

The woman wasn’t intimidated at all. Aveau later got better at chasing off those types, but on this occasion Roketi was drawn by all the commotion and made the poacher leave. After, he tried to cheer up his daughter.

That was the first time they stargazed together and it became one of Aveau’s favourite things. Roketi could tell her where any planet was, and he’d point out all the constallations and tell her stories about them.