1 The Gutu Empire! (1/2)
Every village in the Gutu Empire had an orphanage... or at least one orphan.
The Gumbo village, though tiny and on the outskirts of the empire, was no exception. It was perhaps due to the Gutu people's warring way of life or to the volatile times which encouraged such a lifestyle... This is what caused so many children to lose their parents.
That being the case however, the orphans' formative years were spent being fostered by villages so closely knit and caring. It was only natural the gossip mongers peddled their stories about Taku and his strange behavior, one could be sure that it was not prejudice towards his orphan status.
The villagers just found it slightly odd to see him react in amazement to the most mundane everyday events...
Just the other day he had betrayed his surprise at seeing one of the village women breaking the bones of an antelope with her bare hands as she prepared the beast for eating. He would linger just a little too long watching warriors grinding large stones between their fingers, and watch in fascination every time someone jumped from one end of the village to the other, which was often.
The astonishment on his face every time one of his peers returned to the village with a baby elephant slung over the shoulder was enough to raise suspicions. It was puzzling to the villagers why an eight year old who had grown up in this environment was suddenly looking at it as if it were foreign.
It would be a pity for Taku's behavior to intensify, as the village had little patience for those who lost their minds, preferring instead to release such people from their torment through death... Taku had become aware of this, and did his best to curb the fear, awe and wonder he felt at every turn.
Moreover, it did not seem wise to him to disclose to his village, though they were family to him, the reasons for the change in his behavior.
The Gutu people were believers in reincarnation, believing that death would not be a shackle to great warriors, who would instead live on and mark their paths once more in this world or another. Even the Gutu people, though, would probably attribute Taku's 'dreams' to a form of madness if he was to explain honestly.
The dreams he had been having were vivid – dreams of the strangest world for which he did not have adequate vocabulary to describe.
These dreams, over the year during which he had been having them, had evolved into stronger and stronger memories... so much so that rather than getting used to the marvels he was now seeing daily, Taku had grown more bewildered by them. He began to identify more and more with these memories... His viewpoint began to mirror that of the twenty-first century man from earth he was in his 'dreams'.
The magnitude of the change Taku was experiencing was not immediately apparent to the villagers. For one thing, as soon as he began embracing it, Taku did his best not to advertise the change. In addition, while the village took care of Taku, he was still an orphan...
Although they looked after him collectively, no one individually took it upon themselves to keep a close eye on him. It also helped that, in these unstable times, everyone always had one eye focused on the next battle and tomorrow's survival.