“I’m a pirate! Rawr!” With that dramatic pronouncement, the four-year-old Seosten girl known as Saveniah leapt from the railing of the porch surrounding one of the cabins in the Atherby camp. In each hand, she held a pair of wooden toy swords. She dropped a good five feet or so before landing smoothly. Four years old or not, the Seosten developed their incredible physical prowess very quickly. Especially those descended from so-called Olympians.

Saveniah, or Savvy, was the daughter of the Olympian known as Aletheia. Though she had yet to demonstrate any of her mother’s Tartarus-derived special powers (something that likely wouldn’t happen for many years, if at all), she was already quite physically capable. The tiny girl was able to perform feats that any human children her age, and many who were much older, could never have accomplished.

And yet, even logically knowing that, Koren Fellows still made a sound of panic in the back of her throat as she saw the dark-skinned, dark-haired little girl standing up on the railing before she made her leap. Forgetting everything else for a moment, Koren lunged past the other three Seosten toddlers, all of whom were cheering, and tried to catch the girl. It didn’t work out, as Koren found her feet going out from under her in that blind rush, leaving her sprawled out on her stomach, hands extended while the little kid landed neatly just inches away.

Crouching down on her haunches and tilting her head, Savvy asked, “Kory fall down?”

Koren started to grunt a response, before being interrupted as sandy-haired Grisiniel, the other girl in the quartet of toddlers, dramatically threw herself onto the ground slightly to the side while blurting, “Ebil monsta! Sabe us from ebil monsta!”

That, of course, prompted the two boys to dramatically throw themselves down as well, proclaiming in their kid-speech that they, as well as Koren herself, had been struck down by a foul creature that only the pirate queen Saveniah could defeat.

Lying there in the dirt, Koren shook her head in wonder. She was supposed to be babysitting the kids here for a while. Though, to be fair, it was more like a play date. The Seosten matured very quickly once they were born and all, and their developing minds needed a lot of stimulation. They had tons of energy, huge imaginations, and were desperate for interaction with basically anybody and everybody. So, as many people as possible took turns playing with them.

All of which led her here, squinting up at Savvy, who was clearly trying to figure out how she should play this now that her friends had set the whole thing up.

Thinking quickly, Koren gave a long, drawn-out groan. “Oh pirate queen, we’ve come so far for help to kill the monster of the beach.”

The other three kids immediately jumped on that. Grisiniel as well as the boys, red-haired Penemue and brown-haired Kemetiel, all began long and hard to follow ramblings about all the evil things that this beach monster had supposedly done, and how this small group here had trekked for so many thousands of miles to find their savior.

Feeding off that, Koren pushed herself to a sitting position while conspiratorially informing Savvy (and the other kids), “But even the dashing and powerful queen of pirates can’t defeat the dreaded beast without the Sword of Risen.” She pointed dramatically into the forest. “It is hidden within the trees. We’ve come to take you to find it.” Knowing that, despite their relative maturity, they were still very young and she had to keep things simple, Koren added, “We have to beat the little monsters in the forest to get the sword so Savvy can kill the big monster!”

That prompted all the kids to hop to their feet and start jumping up and down while excitedly proclaiming that they could all beat the little monsters.

Eventually, and with some effort, Koren managed to get the four of them organized a bit and they set off together into the forest. With any luck, taking them for a long walk through the trees to find something that could approximate the ‘Sword of Risen’ so they could kill the big monster would wear the kids out.

They set off with Savvy at the front, of course. The other three were right behind her, with Koren bringing up the rear so she could keep an eye on all of them. Together, the five began their hike along the trail. Each of the kids continued rambling excitedly about what kind of monsters dwelt in the trees, and how strong they themselves were to face such beasts. It was, as far as their babysitter could tell, a mix of actual creatures (filtered through the lens of a child who only slightly knew what they were talking about) and things wholly derived from their incredibly vivid imaginations.

Nor did they only talk about monsters. As the hike continued, Koren listened to the four children essentially build an entire kingdom in their minds. The assortment of toddlers brainstormed together as they walked, inventing a city they called Fabeese (she was guessing on the spelling), a city built from rubies and sapphires, where a baron made entirely out of gold ruled over the people. Baron Snitz, as they called him, had the power to turn anything he wanted to into more gold. So the city was incredibly prosperous. He paid Savvy the pirate queen lots of that gold to attack ships who were carrying other gold so that Fabeese gold would be the only safe treasure.

Koren knew one thing for damn sure. Neither she, nor any of her friends, had ever actually come up with that kind of detailed story when they were that young. The Seosten brains really did develop fast, no matter how much they still sounded like the tiny kids they were. No wonder they always crave interaction and attention. They probably got really bored easily with anything that ordinary human children their age might have been expected to play with. Seriously, she was actually enjoying listening to them come up with this story together, and resisted the urge to input. She didn’t want to taint their story too much now that she had gotten the ball rolling. It was better to let them come up with these details and just marvel at them. It was like listening to a group of very skilled improv actors creating a scene. Damn the intergalactic empire of slavery, the Seosten had apparently missed their calling as filmmakers. Actually, come to think of it, Apollo was responsible for an awful lot of early mythology regarding the Olympians and was even a strong influence in later stories and movies in the modern day. So that made sense.

According to the story that the four toddlers made up as they walked, Penemue was a farmer/wrestler who fought giant bears, and Kemetiel was a guard whose entire village was killed by the monster. Grisiniel, meanwhile, joined her fellow girl in being ‘royalty’, though rather than a pirate queen, she chose to be a magical princess. In her general words, the queen of the planet was sad that so many people were dying, so she made a little rock turn into a girl (Grisiniel herself), gave her some magic healing and protection spells to use, and sent her to help the trio of pirate, farmer/wrestler, and soldier beat the evil monster.

It made sense for Grissy, Koren noted. The girl was always trying to help other people. Even the whole bit earlier with throwing herself on the ground and making up the story about the monster to spare Koren herself from being embarrassed for falling. Despite her very young age, Grisiniel repeatedly tried to give her own food to other people if she thought they looked hungry and weren’t eating, climbed up into the laps of people who looked sad and hugged them, repeatedly asked the adults who were doing chores if she could help, and so on. She had her own little broom she would use to sweep off the porches whenever she saw someone else doing so, and flat out loved to help with the dishes. She actually enjoyed getting dirty plates and bowls clean again so that people could eat with them. The fact that she would design her own playtime character around healing, protecting, and assisting others so they could do the more attention-grabbing things wasn’t surprising at all.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

As for Penemue being a farmer, the boy loved food almost more than he loved breathing. He liked every aspect of it, from the growing of it to the cooking of it to the consuming of it. The only thing surprising about him choosing to be a farmer was that he hadn’t chosen to be a chef. But according to him, farmers and those like them were where the food started. He saw them as the biggest heroes in the world. So, of course he would want his hero to be a farmer.

Then there was Kemetiel. The boy, as far as Koren could tell, was more interested in coloring, painting (particularly with his fingers), and playing with clay than any soldiering. But as the ‘story’ continued and he babbled on excitedly about what his character looked like with his big axe and armor, she realized he had made up someone he wanted to make a picture of. Not that he was quite skilled enough, despite the general Seosten quick competence, to translate the image accurately from his head to paper just yet. But he would do his best. And the other three kids would ooh and aww over it.

Which, of course, left Saveniah. She was their leader, the most outgoing one, the one who was so quick to charm adults. Savvy loved adventure stories, and one of the first of those that had been read to her was a children’s book version of Treasure Island. Followed, of course, by watching the Muppet version. Hence her thing for pirates. A ‘thing’ that had only been redoubled when she heard pirates in the Caribbean movies literally using the word ‘savvy’ so often. It tickled the kid to the point of delirious glee at the thought that her name was a ‘pirate word.’

That girl was naturally charismatic and brave to the point of total recklessness even at such a young age. Given a few more years and Koren was pretty sure Savvy really would be a force to be reckoned with. She was brave and confident in a way that would only grow with experience to back it up. Not to mention the fact that, for a freaking four-year-old, she was pretty tough.

With their minder bringing up the rear, the four Seosten toddlers took their walk through the woods. Each took turns making up new perils to face, new monsters or traps that had to be overcome. A simple fallen tree, thanks to Kemetiel, became a log across a deadly chasm full of lava and lava snakes. Koren wasn’t entirely sure if they were snakes made of lava or just snakes who lived in the lava, but the point was that they were very dangerous and the group had to carefully climb over the log to avoid hurtling to their deaths far below.

After that was the large moss-covered boulder that Penemue decided was a terrible rock golem trying to break its way out of the ground, leading to him (as the wrestler, of course), straining with all of his strength to hold the ‘golem’ in place while Grissy used magic to make him stronger and the other two beat the rock with their stick-swords until it finally surrendered.

When it was Grisiniel’s turn to create a new obstacle, the girl went in a somewhat different route than the others, yet one that fit quite well. According to her, a large tree that the group came across was making a ‘magic dream’ that made everyone who wandered past it get lost. But instead of needing to cut it down, the group had to talk to the tree and find out why it was so mad. As it turned out, the tree was upset because it didn’t have enough water. So the kids ran back and forth between it and a nearby stream, cupping water in little cups Grissy had brought along until she declared that the tree wasn’t thirsty anymore, and they were allowed to continue.

There were a few more challenges like that, games the kids made up in order to entertain themselves as they all walked through the forest. Again, for the most part, Koren tried to stay out of things unless they directly involved her. She played along with anything they made up, but didn’t direct or push things one way or another. She wanted this to be their thing, not her own.

Eventually, all four kids had to follow nature’s call, disappearing behind different trees. Koren kept an eye out, and noticed Grisiniel finish up first. Instead of coming out of the bushes, however, she dug around on the ground before finding something. Koren couldn’t see what she was doing very well, but the girl fussed with something from her pocket, then seemed to throw whatever she’d found on the ground off into the distance.

Then the kids all returned, and before Koren could ask what that was, Grissy said they should go that way. The others agreed, and the trek continued. For a moment, anyway, until Kemetiel loudly blurted a question about what something was. That something, as it turned out, was a long stick that had a pretty blue bracelet wrapped tightly around it near one end.

“You found it, Kemmet!” Grisiniel blurted happily. “You found the Sword of Risen!” Immediately, all four kids cheered and danced around, laughing and hugging each other as they talked about all the monsters and dangerous traps they’d had to go through.

That was what the little girl had been doing, Koren realized. She’d found a stick, wrapped a bracelet around it to mark it as the sword they were looking for, and tossed it before leading them that way so that one of the others could actually find it.

The cheers from the assorted kids grew even louder as Savvy picked up the stick, waving it around while making what sounded an awful lot like lightsaber noises. Everyone clapped, hopping up and down even more. Even Koren joined in with that, playing along with the excitement. Finally, Kemetiel pointed off into the distance toward the setting sun, declaring that the ‘dark monsters’ were coming because they were upset that the sword was being taken away. Which, of course, led to everyone, Koren included, running back the way they’d come. There was a decent amount of squealing and shouting as they raced along the trail, each loudly describing all the bad things that the dark monsters would do and that they had to get back home as quickly as possible. Despite their apparent headlong rush to escape, the kids were really good at staying right in Koren’s eyesight so she never worried about where they were. Part of her wondered who had taught them that, or if it was some kind of instinctive Seosten thing.

Either way, they eventually made it back to the camp, where Savvy produced the ‘sword’ (still making lightsaber noises), and held it high over her head while loudly declaring that the pirate queen would save everyone. With that, she raced toward the beach with the others hot on her heels, everyone laughing and squealing the whole way.

“There!” Koren declared, pointing toward an overturned, mostly broken canoe that had been long-since abandoned. “It’s the beach monster!”

That, of course, led to a massive and chaotic battle where everyone fought the beast. Savvy and the two boys traded blows with it while Grissy healed them. It finally ended when Saveniah dramatically drove her stick-sword through a small hole in the canoe, then made a loud explosion noise with her mouth while hurling herself away from it. Belatedly, the others did the same, throwing themselves into the sand while making more explosion noises.

Following suit, Koren found herself on the ground, listening to all four kids laugh and cheer over the death of the monster. They had saved Fabeese and Baron Snitz would be able to keep turning things into gold.

Before long, the cheers and laughter turned to yawns. Their adventure, though it had only taken a couple hours, had done a lot to tire the kids out. They’d gone for a walk through the forest, had run back out of the forest, and had their climactic battle on the beach. Now, all four of them looked around a bit bleary-eyed, while Koren picked herself up.

“Well, how’re the grand heroes doing?” The question came from Gabriel Prosser, who stood nearby.

With loud proclamations of ‘Gabey’, the collection of toddlers raced to the man. The two boys clung to his legs, while he picked up one of the girls on each arm. Holding them up, Gabriel chuckled, listening as the four excitedly (though punctuated with yawns) told him all about their adventure.

Between the two of them, Koren and Gabriel carried the toddlers together off to their beds while they were still tiredly recounting their whole tale. Soon, they were tucked in. All save for Saveniah, who hung from Gabriel’s neck, head resting against his shoulder as she finished telling the story in a voice that was essentially a barely audible and almost incoherent mumble.

Finally, she finished, and Prosser gently praised what a brave and cunning pirate queen she was, then asked, “Safe sleep?”

Savvy’s head bobbed rapidly, and she asked, “Safe okay?”

“Safe okay,” Prosser agreed.

With that, the Seosten toddler clung even more tightly to him, before completely vanishing. She possessed the man. Which, the first time Koren had seen, had freaked her out a bit. Now, she understood. The toddlers were old enough to safely possess people without fading away into nothing the way babies were in danger of, yet too young to actually control them. So, given permission by an adult, they would sometimes possess someone simply to fall asleep in a totally safe environment. And almost no one was safer than Gabriel Prosser. They essentially possessed people simply to take naps in a way that they couldn’t be bothered by anyone or anything.

“Aaaand she’s out,” the man announced, smiling faintly as he looked to Koren before adding, “You did very well with them, you know.”

“Eh,” Koren replied while shrugging self-consciously, “it wasn’t exactly hard.

“But considering how much Savvy wants to be a pirate, I feel sorry for any ships that are around when she grows up.”