From Sirio's diary
Aging isn't fun at all, I would argue that the number of people claiming to enjoy this phase of life could be counted on the fingers of one hand. However, this doesn't mean that it is impossible to find some small positive aspects as well. For me, looking back to my past is one of those.
I was born many years ago in the centre of New Sixam, the young independent Country sixamians founded about 85 years ago, in a little town everyone was used to call by its old nickname, Strangerville.
Many humans would argue that every single sixamian is a weird alien being, but almost everyone would agree to say that I am even weirder than most of us.
I always had an incredibly close bond with my mom, while with Toq it was a challenge since the very beginning. First of all, the little me couldn't understand why I'd never seen for my first years, nor he could understand why he could always perceive fear and insecurity coming from him. Above all, however, the little me had noticed the way happiness suddenly started to enter the mix of his emotions starting from the very moment he entered the door and saw us.
Emotions can easily become too complex to be understood in detail, or at least this is what the little me thought. Yet, I decided to trust him almost immediately, and I've never turned back afterwards.
It took a lot of time to Toq before learning what being a terrestrial family meant, and to realise that it also was what he wanted in his life. On the other hand, also I and mom needed some time to learn how to be around him. It took us several more years than what most people would consider normal, but we finally fully consider each other as our family, the kind of family you can always trust in every moment of your life.
As you can see, my dear diary, I'm always been inclined towards spending time with others, I really liked the feedback I received whenever I managed to make them feel better. However, that rarely was the first feeling I was able to perceive from strangers.
People were always suspicious of me when they noticed the little tendrils on my head, I later understood they were afraid of the fact that in my eyes their emotions were as exposed as the clothes they had decided to exhibit that day. Nowadays I realise that this also led to many episodes now I can recognize as plain bullying, like when they started to nickname us "squid-heads".
I thus ended up rarely leaving the house, and when I did it usually was to hang around with Halley friends, or with Florian, the only other guy in our school sharing my same background of half-ancient sixamian.
The self-seclusion at home also meant a lot of time to focus on my hobbies, in particular on painting.
Accidentally, that was also about the time when my telepathic abilities reached their peaks, both in terms of perception and understanding. Toq taught me a lot about telepathy, and soon other people's emotions were so clear to me that I became able to even see them, in the form of colourful auras swirling around their contours. It's similar to how sixamians glow when feeling strong emotions, but much brighter and more nuanced.
Being able to see emotions made it easier than ever to understand them, to the point that I soon learnt how to interpret very complex situations. For example, a green and bright aura in the immediate surroundings of a person meant they were having fun at that very moment, but darker purple or blue shades lingering at the periphery of the same auras made me suspect that there was something bothering them that they were trying to push apart.
I could really get to know a lot about people from those colours, and then the way they swirled around everyone at any time, it was one of the most mesmerizing views I've ever seen. Was I really the only person seeing it? And was there a way to share what I could see with others, I wondered?
Nowadays I would say I didn't really know what I was doing, at least not at first. The dynamic way the colours in auras move around can tell a lot too, and I needed a long time before learning how to represent that marvellous view on a plain and static canvas.
The first painting I agreed to exhibit at the New Sixam's museum was very simple and naive, or at least this is how I would describe it now. But it was the best result of many disappointing attempts, and back then I was really proud of it.
So I and all my large family went to the museum, to celebrate my debut as a "real artist", whatever it means.
But that day was also when I realised something of very important: the museum would have been empty if it wasn't for us, no one in New Sixam seemed to care about art. I probably should have expected it, New Sixam rounded around fine technologies and electronics, most people worked as engineers, astronauts, or selling replacements for teleporting devices just like my relatives did. Everyone seemed proud of their rational productivity, and most people considered an art exhibition like that one a waste of their time.
Also, that's when I realised I was in no position to make them change their mind. If I wanted to make a living out of arts, I had to leave and show my point of view to someone who may have been interested in experiencing a different perspective.
And this is what brought me to decide to move to Sim City, the most cosmopolitan city in the continent and the capital of the Sim Nation. At that time Techna was passing through a similar phase as me, they needed to see new places and learn from other people, so we decided to leave together, aiming for the big city promising us so many opportunities.
Feeling so powerless was so difficult, and it also caused me to make a few quite bad mistakes. But if I hadn't taken that risk nothing of what happened later in my life could have ever occurred. Above all, I would have never met Maki, who is still by my side these days.
But there were always darker shades lingering around her, caused by a very specific culprit.
We lived a few years of relative calm in Sim City before the storm really hit us. Lily was growing quickly, my and Maki's first kid, Alba, was just born, and I was learning more and more just by staying in the centre of that artistic scene day after day. What more could have we asked for?
We had to turn around quite a few rules to avoid that verdict and put into action our plan B.
By then there was no way I could leave Maki and Lily, I would have done whatever it took to help them. Even if it meant putting myself between them and that unpredictable person who is Hotaru.
So I did the only thing I could think of: ask for help from my cousin Halley (who, luckily for us, became a very good lawyer), and move the whole family to New Sixam just to step out from the sphere of competence of Sim City. The laws are quite different here, and we were quite confident that those differences could have been decisive for our case.
However, we weren't really happy. Not as much as in Sim City, at least.
Maybe old age makes me focus only on happy memories, but I consider those as serene years. All the kids were growing so quickly, and the more time passed the more I could perceive how their personalities were growing into such different people, as well as how close we were becoming, day after day.
Years had passed again, before we really couldn't avoid passing through yet another trial for Lily's custody, this time here in New Sixam. By that point she had grown enough to understand better the implications of what happened between her parents, and to realise how bad it would have been for her to move to her father's place.
This is just another of the countless examples of what I can't understand how Hotaru never noticed by himself, I really don't think that the perception of emotions was necessary to understand what family Lily felt to belong to. Looking at her expression was probably more than sufficient, don't you agree my dear diary?
Luckily for us, Hotaru really undervalued our tribunals. Here my perception of other's emotions is as valuable as any other testimony, and also the judge didn't have any doubt when declaring him not suited to be granted the custody of a minor.
She asked me to marry her, can you believe it, my dear diary? At first, I really couldn't. But she told me this many times, told me about how I focus so much on not disappointing others to forget how much I am actually worth, that she couldn't hope for anything better. Yet, to me that day still felt so incredible and unforgettable, I'm really thankful to her, for everything.
Needless to say, I was spending every free moment I got painting. I didn't want to miss any of those moments, because that was my only way to share my worldview with others.
And Maki seemed to have decided to bring my message to all another level, organising the first art exhibition in New Sixam in ages, showing off my paintings and those made by other sixamians following my same artistic current.
The news travelled very far through the internet, surpassing the boundaries of this Country, and starting from the following week many human tourists started to pop out at our local museum, to observe and evaluate in person the new artistical current born among the sixamian and that was suddenly gaining so much momentum.
The improvement in the relationships between sixamians and humans has been very slow but quite constant since the founding of New Sixam, may this have accelerated the process a bit, I wonder?
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Time has passed, and my life is getting more and more comfortable and predictable as time passes. I don't remember exactly when I started to write this diary, but I suspect that it is becoming a more and more boring read every other day.
I don't even know why I'm writing this, for sure no one is reading my secret diary, that's the reason why it's called secret, right? Yet, if some possible readers were curious to know what happened next, I would suggest switching to Alba's diary, I noticed she's writing one as well. I don't know exactly what she's writing about, for sure I won't peek, but I would bet it's way more interesting than mine. Many people consider her to be too shy and she's always worried to be perceived as too boring, but I know her well enough to be sure that those pages will be full of interesting notes in no time!
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