Challenge #00535 - A160: Reve-rie

“Yes, I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can find his way by moonlight, and see the dawn before the rest of the world.” - Oscar Wilde c/- RecklessPrudence

Everyone who met her knew that there was something wrong with Sai’dut. She would talk to herself, or stop her appointed tasks to stare at something irrelevant, she would grow forgetful or latch on to some asinine entertainment and learn everything that nobody wanted to know about that thing.

Her fellow Cheletes tried to help her. gave her constant lessons on being one with her fellows. Or at the very least how to pretend to blend in with the greater hive.

Little ever took hold.

Sai’dut couldn’t help being the way she was, and drifted to the corners to do those things that she found satisfying.

Which was how she found the humans.

Only it wasn’t that direct.

It began with a cautioned file. Warnings abounded on a traded relic of a broadcast from a distant planet she had never heard of. It had lingered in the data equivalent of a back drawer for some time. Not important enough to remove and not vital enough to be accessed.

Sui’dut opened it to see why there were so many warnings on it.

Someone had taken the time to translate the human words into GalStand subtitles. But the important part was the puppet frog who told her that though being what she was was not easy, it was its own kind of beautiful. And then the same puppet sang about the wonders of rainbows.

She devoured all related information with a voracious hunger that she hadn’t known until she’d accomplished that little taste. In passing, she learned of Jimhenson and Muppets and Sesamestreet… and all the wonderful things that the humans did.

She learned of Harryhausen and Generoddenberry, and hundreds and thousands of other dreamers.

People who made pretend worlds. And shared them. And made things interesting. And made art.

Other Cheletes scoffed at her efforts. They called her mad. They said she was wrong.

But in the end, when the collision happened between the ship she was a passenger on and the malfunctioning Terran vessel from a planet called Britania, it was Sai’dut who made contact and succeeded in communicating with a human named Harry.

It was broken Sai’dut and a tea lady who wound up saving the day and improvising a way to keep everyone alive until help arrived. Because dreamers also live in nightmares, and ponder daily how to conquer them.

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