Some Special Talks

A/N: Yes, another pre-series story about Mao and CC! This one takes place around three years after "A Day in the Life Plus Extra". I OWN NOTHING (no, not even the story CC tells Mao at the end. It's from a compilation by a certain Tasha Tudor:P)!!

*********

It was a lovely day in the spring, and CC and Mao were sharing some time in the shack where they made their home. Mao, nine years old, was reading very cautiously from the pad he had written on in Chinese. CC gave a grin of satisfaction. It was slightly more than two years since she had taken to teaching Mao how to read and write, and she was greatly impressed by his progress, so much so that she had often considered teaching him Japanese (as an extension of the characters he had already learned) and English for extra measure.

"Was that good, CC?" asked Mao, holding up the pad.

"Yes!" said CC, more enthusiastically than she had hoped, "Y-yes it was. Mao, you're just as smart as I was when I was your age!" Mao beamed in response. Of course he would consider that a compliment! To him, CC could do no wrong. "Come on," she said, standing up, "Let's go look after our garden."

CC and Mao had set up gardens to grow fruits and vegetables, and even a few types of cereals. They ate whatever was in season, and no longer had to rely on the unpredictability of their surrounding environment; but the plants required constant maintenance. CC insisted that Mao wear a hat to keep the sun off while he worked, and made frequent forays into civilization to stock up on sunscreen, which the little albino boy went through like nobody's business.

Except that Mao was, at this point, getting very big indeed. He seemed destined to be as tall as CC before he was even ten, and he hadn't reached puberty yet. To restrict the amount of square inches he exposed to the sun, thus making the sunscreen last longer, CC found herself dressing him in increasingly long clothes.

Once they approached the gardens, they immediately began weeding, programmed to do so by experience (they had gotten up before the sun rose in order to water them). It took them the entire morning to cover all their land, at which point both of them were very hungry. But they were used to this routine, and at this point had set up a reliable food storage below their home, where they kept salted and smoked meats, pickled vegetables, dried fruits and nuts, flour, bread, honey, and the occasional extra thing. They ate bread, meat, and fruit; and then returned to work.

"CC," said Mao, "Why don't we just build something that can get us water right here in the gardens, so we don't have to get up so early and go back and forth?

"And what might that be?" CC humored him. "How would you do that?" To her surprise, Mao's face lit up at once.

"It'd be easy!" he said, "I'd need enough tables to reach from the water to the fields, circles to use as wheels, some kind of belt, a handle for us to turn attached to one of the wheels, and some really strong string! And something to put the water in, of course!"

"You really figured that out by yourself?" said CC.

"Oh, well... yeah," said Mao, glowing with pride, "Every day for a month!"

"Well... that's quite something," said CC, swept up in the moment, "Maybe I'll just have to get those things for you." Mao was always coming up with new ways to do the chores, impeded only by a lack of materials. In another life, he might make a pretty decent engineer or mechanic. But it didn't do to think about that. "W-why don't you go get some more fertilizer?" CC suggested to Mao. He knew exactly what she meant. "And... see if you can find any more fruit while you're at it."

"Okay, CC," said Mao, running off. CC was glad to see him go. Now she could reconfigure her thoughts in peace.