Toward the end of the season, strange things start happening; PapaGuá starts discovering worlds around him he never noticed before. The trees change colors and the ocean is alive with secretive creatures murmuring among themselves. They tell of alien worlds and distant struggles and gradually, almost against his will, PapaGuá starts to understand their primitive language. The novelty excites him, but the mystery frightens him. It makes him wary of what else he might not be noticing.
Lately, PapaGuá finds himself zooming every morning to the ocean, just to make sure it's still there and still loud with murmurs and sounds of life.
He can remember a time when he did no such thing -when he just slept peacefully right through until the afternoon- but that seems like a distant lifetime now. Now he barely sleeps at all.
In fact, he hasn't slept a wink since the day he realized the unseen creatures were talking about him. Right out of the blue, he heard his name -not once but three times, like an incantation: 'PapaGuá PapaGuá PapaGuá.' And then the sounds got lost in the stream of gurgles and whoops that come from the deep like white noise; but he had definitely heard it. He heard his name being thrown around by these horrible things -and they didn't sound happy.
PapaGuá spent as much time as he could by the water now, listening for his name. They're plotting something, these terrible things, but he's not sure what. All he knows is he needs to stay vigilant, and listen. And eventually he'll be able to figure it out.
'PapaGuá!'
He hears it, clear as daylight, blue and clean. Then again, and a third time.
Followed by nothing. Silence.
None of the birds sing. All the other whoops and gurgles stop. In the void, PapaGuá hears something like a festival drum in the distance and it takes him an eternity to recognize it as his own heart beating.
'Hello,' he says. His madrina had taught him to be friendly to strangers. Especially when they sounded angry. 'I am PapaGuá.'
'Papaguá!!' cried the creatures in unison, one horrendous chorus of disharmony. 'Why didn't you answer sooner? We could see you out there the whole time.'
'I was scared,' the boy answered. 'I don't know what you want from me.'
'Oh, then why didn't you just ask? All I want is...' and right there at that moment, the voices once again exploded into an unrecognizable babble of whoops and sibilance and strange little 'oohhmmphh' noises. PapaGuá stayed and listened until it got dark, but the white noise never made sense to him again.
Eventually he grew tired of waiting and zoomed back home to sleep.
