He wasn't sure why but two things he'd always – from the start – been certain about. That his name was Sabo and that he didn't want to go back to Goa Kingdom, the place where the Revolutionaries that had picked him up suspected he came from. Heeding his wishes, he'd been accepted into their folds easily enough. He trained with them, he ate in their dining hall and he slept in the bunk bed they'd provided him with. Nonetheless, something was missing, and for the life of him he couldn't figure out what.
Sabo was fed, clothed and had a roof over his head, what more could he ask for? "Family", his treacherous brain replied, unasked, whenever the question crossed his mind. But "family" was a tangled ball of yarn inside his mind that he couldn't hope to detangle on his own anytime soon. There was that almost-expected feeling of "no, nope, not going back there again!" attached to some strings, where he most certainly knew that whatever had happened had not been in any way good for him.
And then there were some, rare and single, strings of yearning attached to the ball of yarn, too. It was a kind of longing that he had no idea how to make heads nor tails of. If he had to describe it, he'd put it under a "yearning without any specific goal". It drove him mad more times than it calmed him, to be honest.
His newest family was something to be proud of, though. They lived together, they breathed together and they celebrated together. Birthdays were something the Revolutionaries made a point to celebrate, if you were an amnesiac who didn't remember their family or not – and they tried particularly hard for the kid members of the fraction. Nonetheless, no one could tell him when his own was, could they? Well, his birthday was on the 20th, that he was a hundred percent certain about.
But was it in March or in February...? Funnily enough, when he tried to find an answer, he was always left with the feeling that both dates were technically correct. That couldn't be true, though, could it? Who'd celebrate their birthday twice? … on the other hand, that prospect didn't seem too bad. Suggesting it to Koala only brought him a slight headache as she hit him over the head for such a silly idea. But now that he had thought of it, the notion remained stuck in his head.
So, what happened in the end was a string of events that led to most believing that Sabo simply decided to celebrate his being found by the Revolutionaries a month before his birthday. It didn't matter in the end if the dates were slightly closer together or even that both were further towards the start of the year than the Revolutionaries had thought they were. No, no, that was aaaall true. From a certain perspective, at least. If you squinted. And looked through a kaleidoscope. Oooooh, shiny colours, aren't they more distracting interesting than the date of a stupid birthday of one of our members?
The celebration was nice. Sabo got a cake – twice a year! – and small presents. He didn't mind that he'd not managed to fool Dragon. Or Koala. Or Hack. It all played out in his favour, in the end.
And the itch that he couldn't scratch away all through the party they had? The one that made him look all around him searchingly, though for what or whom he couldn't say? Sabo would let a doctor have a look at that one, should it still be there the next day (he knew it wouldn't be).
While at the doctor's, he'd mention the smell of burnt alligator, as well, he decided. He'd had that in his nose all day, after all, and everyone knew there were no alligators anywhere close to Baltigo.
