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Goku would have missed Pan's voice, if he had the time. He was busy listening.
THOCK! THOCK! THOCK!
He flew closer in the thick clouds, until the sky gave way to dull brown Earth. Goku hovered closer to the side of the floating structure. Round, clay windows greeted Goku with their empty faces. His brows furrowed and his lips puckered like the question mark that would follow his inner voice.
'Heat rises. If it's burning, why's the smoke not here?', Goku thought.
Goku sucked the clean air into his lungs, just to exhale. His foggy breath held his attention. The eye drawing cloud drifted away. Goku field the pit in his stomach drift away too; urgency left him. The threat had passed and he knew that pan was tucked away in his little country cabin by now with Chi chi—clearly safe—clearly.
His tilted chin broke his trance. A window on a lone tower winked at him. Goku rubbed the air's moisture from his face and looked again, squinting his black eyes. He counted the seconds between each flicker.
One, two, three… one, two, three, four… one, two, three.
A nervous jitter tickled his spine as the white shimmer captured his mind's eye. It was a reminder of warm summers by the river, and the off white glisten of dead fish rotting under the sun. Winter suddenly seemed mild and fair.
Goku pursued the light, flying into the crosswind. The familiar knock of before, like a baseball card clipped to the spokes of a bicycle wheel, pecked his bruising eardrums. Planks of cherry wood beat the air below Goku's hovering feet.
What a weird windmill, he thought as the wheel hummed in the middle of the tower like a rusty buzzsaw.
Goku rode a gust of wind to the oval window.
"Hey there," he was elated, "I didn't think anyone was here."
The room in the tower was the same as before Goku arrived. The stooped over man's knobby knees knocked as he pushed the lever round and round the room, like a donkey in its yoke.
"I see you're real busy, but my name's Goku and I just wanted to make sure things were alright here."
"Busy, busy, busy," The small man grinned, like he liked the new word.
"Say, what is this place?," Goku said as he invited himself inside through the window.
"Green place! Red place! Blue place!," he snickered.
"Um okay," Goku cocked his head and watched the giant green lends spin round and round above his head.
"Too busy, too busy, too busy you see. Now you go free, free, free!," the pale man said, while briefly wiping his hands on his rainbow hombre tunic. His soft pink veins gave his white skin a rosie hue. As Goku stalked closer, he became sure; it wasn't a sickly shade of white but otherworldly.
"So are you an alien or what?"
"Not quite you see. That is not me," he answered, raising his pale pink eyes to Goku," we were born to make color. Before your world was born, we were here first! We gave nebulas their golden spark and whole galaxies their hues. Zeno saw that Earth needed rainbows, so we came to you."
Goku nodded his head at the chipper explanation.
"So, do you guys make fire too?"
"Do what?," The peddler shut down.
Air swooshed into Goku's ears as the sun lends over their heads slowed to a stop.
"Something's burnin' up out here. I just wanted to be a good sky-ground-friend… neighbor? Yup, that's the word."
"Burning!"
"Uh huh."
"Burning, burning?"
"You betcha."
"Burning, burning, burning!"
"Hey," Goku yelled after him, " Where you going?"
The cloud peddler's smile melted. His soft, down feather like hair sprung up on his head. The color black consumed the white shades in his translucent hair, like the roots of a flimsy spring flower, soaking up black pain. His pupils blended with his purple irises, like bruises sprawling above his flat nose.
The peddler's short legs daddled across the stone floor. He brushed past Goku like he was common place, like the air they breathed.
"Fast stranger fast!"
"The name's Goku," he said as he ducked under the Half-sized door.
Goku stormed down the spiraling stair well, watching the bobbing black head of hair in front of him. The shaped-by-hand stone walls soaked up their booming footsteps.
Goku's skin chilled in the open air although the sun beamed onto his back. Grass crunched beneath his feet. Goku peaked over his shoulder. Curiosity begged him to step back into the mouth of the tower.
A falling basket thrashed the grass. Goku turned his attention to the breezy plateau. Goku couldn't see the peddler's face, but he heard him panting. Many eyes watched from the field. The chest high people bundled the stems to their white chests and tucked their baskets against their hips. Their gawking, white faces faded against the asphalt sky. Grey smoke billowed up behind the grassy cliff. Goku had seen colorful flowers in his day; they were nothing new. He didn't bat an eye at chi-chi's pink tulips growing around his tool shed. To him, they were invasive little weeds tangling up the blades of his plow.
Not the peddler's flowers. They were Colidascopes with thick green stems. Goku wanted to take a bite out of one of the roses. The colors swirled across the petals like his favorite ice cream. Chi-chi would always crush blueberries and strawberries with a wooden pestle in a bowl of cold cream. Then, she would stir in the orange slices, mint, and peeled plums with her fingertips. Saliva pooled in Goku's cheeks.
"Fire?," the lends turner said, calling Goku back to chilly, wet reality.
"Wuh-oh. Don't you see all that?," Goku scratched his head.
"It's not fire, 'the name's Goku'."
"Just Goku, then where's all that comin' from?"
"'Just Goku' fret not. It's part of our floating lot. Have you met Mr. Ramu? Probably not."
"Goku," he said with his hand on his chest, "Who's this Ramu guy?"
"The fog maker."
"Alrighty then, I'll just be goi—"
"Go see him for us, please. We'll certainly be teased. Mr. Ramu's tongue can be mean."
"Then you could just ask this grouch to leave?," Goku tried.
"What an awful thing to plead!"
"You said he's mean," Goku groaned through his headache.
"Mean, but not a fiend. He's like a walking obituary… one that's necessary. Don't you see?"
"Uh no," Goku hummed as the clamoring faces crowded him, "Not at all. Nope."
"You dope," the lends peddler said.
Goku cringed as clammy white hands cupped his cheeks.
"On the darkness, hope floats!"
"Sure where do I go," Goku responded out of sheer desperation to flee.
"Down the hill of bow-roses, we'll follow the path like a river flows."
Goku ambled onto the hill with his fists on his hips. He turned to the shuffling crowd.
"Did you just rhyme… with me?"