Kabos and Cosplay
Summer is drawing to a close, so today we set out for one last hike in a local park and she insisted on bringing her monstervore costume so we could take some pictures "out in the wilderness."
Superheroes continue to invade the back corridors of her brain, but she’s still regularly dropping monstervore tidbits. Most importantly, after a conversation about continents, she finally gave the lands of the Monstervores a name: Kabos. (But only after I told her that she probably shouldn’t just call it “Asia”, no matter how much she loved that name.)
She’s told me more about monstervore expeditions, which go out with a Leader in front who is in charge and decides where they’re going, followed by Lookers who look out for danger, Cookers who carry extra stuff like pots, a Mapmaker who records their path and draws notes, and then a Helper who walks at the back and makes sure everyone is keeping up and healthy. When traveling, they like to sleep on “burrow beds”, a shelter they build in or on top of the homes of friendly monsters. In houses, kids can also sleep in raised beds called burrow beds, with their pets or monsters that they’re raising sleeping underneath. (Can you guess that she got a raised bed recently and loves the playspace underneath it?)
Monstervore expeditions are also always on the watch for pottybushes, trees with thick, low branches to sit on and soft, overhanging leaves you can use to wipe, as well as large, wet fruit you can either snack on or squish to wash your hands. Bugs like to live on the ground below a pottybush and eat poop, but they don’t bite people or animals. (And you are likely now as unsurprised as I was at how wildly offended she became when I made her use the park’s restroom today rather than the bushes.)
I’ve also heard about a few legendary characters like Ivioa, a girl who died from “a blood owie” on a big pretty rock that got broken up, with parts of the rock carried away to build buildings and sometimes as decoration. Whenever you see bits of the rock in a wall you can talk to her ghost and she can see and hear and talk out of all the other bits of the rock. But she will only talk to you and pass along messages if you are her friend, and it’s very hard to be friends with a wall. There's also Tinbin Wanderer, an old (immortal?) explorer who can't enter houses and buildings for some reason, but I haven't heard his who story yet.
The bestiary continues to grow as well. My notes now include the glowing plants called the nightbiter, the mean horses, the beach-dwelling mudgrubbers, and the trumpet flower. The bagjan appear to be a whole class of creature, magical spirits that reside in animals that travel in groups—Bagjan’itzi are fish, bagjan’tuzu are insects, and bagjan’wufu are wolves; the bagjan spirit can divide the animal up into many smaller, younger, and brightly-colored creatures who are quick and fierce, or combine into a single, dull-colored creature that is wise and tough but slow. The Eliotay are ghosts that like to eat hair, preferably human hair, in the hopes that it will bring them back to life as a puppy. They can be convinced to take up residence in a bowl made of clay with pieces of metal baked into it, which is then put onto people’s heads and used to trim their hair. It’s unclear if eliotay actually can actually come back, but dogs who act kind of crazy are accused of being the spirits reborn.
Her attempts to crash together animal and plant reproduction gave birth (ahem) to the Teenyo, a group of half-plant, half-animal people with wooden stomaches that let them eat anything, especially magical plants. Discussions of the water cycle led her to imagine the Swirlpool, a giant vortex sucking down the oceans with the “fishheads’ “ Shusha City on the dry spot at the bottom, and the Waterclimb, a big upspout on the other side of Kaybos that shoots water back up into the atmosphere so it can rain again and forms the stormy Saltclouds where the Rain Queen lives in Castle Darkboom and her daughters the Lightning Girls raise baby rainbugs out in the fields.
I help her spot her ideas when they come (“You’re friends with that particular rock in that wall? Why?”) , and I ask the questions that help her draw them to life, but the shape and size of the answers are all hers, and they just keep coming.
I’ve asked if it’s okay to turn Monstervore into a book, and she’s given her permission. (“But you’ll do all the typing on the computer, and I will tell the stories and draw some pictures.”) Next week she starts (!) kindergarten (!), but once she gets settled in….it’s time to get to work.
