Chapter 7

Myo

Summer 22, 2005 (Thursday)

The intense heat of the Summer day is really wearing Trei out. He has gotten used to the work in the ranch, but the changes in the weather is brutal. Back in his hometown, he was either used to light work inside climate controlled buildings, or studying in the library where rain or shine does not interfere.

At noon, Trei finishes all the general work with the animals such as feeding, milking, and sheering. Some of the animals needs to be washed, and the crops has to be tended to. However it is lunch time, and he decides to put off the rest of the work until after lunch. Most people would welcome the short break in the middle of work. Trei on the other hand is not looking forward to going home and eating lunch.

“Lunchtime again. . ,” sighed Trei. “I bet Muffy is in the kitchen making something to eat again. I'll give her credit, she does try her best. But she will never learn how to cook properly. She just burns everything, then I have no choice but to eat it. On top of that, I am forced to compliment her and tell her how good she's getting or else she'll bite my head off. and all the dishes she accidentally breaks is really eating a hole at my income. I wish she would let me do the cooking, but she insists that it's a wife's duty to feed the family.”

Trei lets out another huge sigh and continues, “well, there is no use crying about it. I might as well get it over with.”

He places his tools in the shed and returns home for his daily lunch. But just as she reaches the front door, it opens and Muffy walks out with Myo in her arms. This time she is wearing a green dress with a matching hair band, white shoes and jade earrings. By now, Trei has already memorized all of Muffy's dresses and when does she wear them. She wears the red dress and blue jacket when she's at home, a blue dress when she goes to parties, black dress for funerals, and green when she's visiting friends. However, this is the first time that he sees Muffy wearing any jewelry other than her wedding ring, so he knows that she's dong something special.

“You coming Trei?” asked Muffy unexpectedly.

“Sure!” replied Trei. He has no idea where they are going, but he is just happy that Muffy is not cooking. Because Muffy did not cook, he looks forward to eating out at Ruby's Inn after they are done.

As they leave the ranch, Trei asks, “so, where are we going anyway?”

“We are going to Doctor Hardy's office to have Myo evaluated,” answered Muffy.

“Evaluated? For what?”

“Don't you remember?” answered Muffy. “When Myo was born, we agreed that we would raise a smart child. I've worked real hard to make her as smart as possible, and now we'll see how much it worked.”

“I see,” said Trei. He then whispers to himself, “must be something that I agrred to before I got here. Since Muffy knows better, I’ll just let her lead the way.”

At Doctor Hardy's office, he gave Myo a series of tests to see how intelligent Mo has become. Trei sits in the lounge with Muffy starving, but he remains patient. The thought of having some of Ruby's cooking over his wife's is enough to control his hunger. After several hours of testing, Doctor Hardy finally unveils the long awaited results. However, Muffy is pretty disappointed after hearing them.

“Average?!” yelled Muffy.

“That's right. Myo's intelligence is fairly normal for a three year old child,” answered Doctor Hardy.

“But I worked so hard. I read Myo a lot of books, played educational games, and everything. Are you sure that she is not at least above average?”

Doctor Hardy sighs and answers, “Muffy, please understand that children need a lot of constant attention to be average at best. Only gifted children can really rise ahead of others their own age.”

“But. . . Trei is so smart. Why hasn't Myo inherited his gift?” asked Muffy.

“I already spoke to your husband. the reason why he's quite intelligent is because he studied throughout his entire life. He doesn't have a natural gift, but something I would call dedication.”

“I see. . ,” sighed Muffy.

After they leave Doctor Hardy's office, Trei and his family heads over to the Inn where they can finally get something to eat. But no matter how hard he tries to enjoy his meal, Muffy's depression distracts him constantly. All she does is pout while she pokes the meatballs in her spaghetti.

Rather than watching her feeling down, Trei tries to cheer Muffy up. “You know, I'm sure that even if Myo doesn't have a talent for books and stuff. But she may just pick it up when she's older.” Muffy's mood shows no improvement, so he tries again. “I'm sure that Myo has other talents. . . and besides, wouldn't it be better if she just takes over the ranch when she grows up? You don't have to be too smart to do that.”

Muffy suddenly drops her fork. Feeling that he made her upset, he backs off. Muffy then says in an aggravated tone, “if we just wanted her to grow up stupid, then we should have decided that when she was born!” Things become silent for a moment. Muffy calms down after a few minutes, she picks up her fork and continues to play with her food. She then says, “I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that. But I really want our daughter to grow up to be more like you, not me.”

Trei knew where Muffy is going with this. Myo's personality resembles more like Muffy over Trei. Because Trei is far more intelligent than Muffy, she has little confidence in herself. So she always wishes that her daughter had the best of Trei's abilities. Every mother wants the best for their children after all.

Summer 23, 2005 (Friday)

The Harvest Sprites no longer need to help Trei around the ranch, so he is left to do the work by himself. Even so, work is still long and boring. Every day feels repetitive to him, feed and milk the cows, feed the birds and collect the eggs, groom and sheer the sheep, and water the crops. He still has no idea how does he can keep up the work for five years and not bore himself to death.

As he brushes the animals, Myo walks into the barn. She finds her father taking care of Bess and walks up to him. Trei quickly notices her as she tugs his pants. “Hi daddy.” said Myo with her cute high pitched baby voice.

“Hi there Myo!” said Trei feeling happy that she is visiting him in the barn. “Why are you here, what's mommy doing?”

“Brush! Brush!” yelled Myo pointing at the brush Trei holds in his hand.

Trei holds the brush close to Myo and asks, “do you know what this is?” Myo reaches out for it like if she wants to try brushing the cow. Trei is curious to know what she wants to do with it, so he hands her the brush. Myo starts to stroke the back of the cow gently with the brush. Based on how gently the cow mooed, Trei feels that the cow is enjoying it. He is amazed that at the young age of three, not only can Myo identify his brush, but she also knows how to use it well.

Trei is curious to learn how much does Myo know about farming and ranching. He carries her to the tool shed where he can test her on how well she know his tools. The first thing he grabs is a hoe that hangs on the wall. He shows it to her and asks, “okay Myo, what's this?”

“Ho! Ho!” yelled Myo. Trei is really impressed at her answer.

“Now, what do you do with it?” asked Trei. Myo puts her hands together as if she is holding something. Then she raised her arms over her head, and thrusts down like if she was tilling the ground. She tries to pretend that she's tilling so hard that she falls down. She cries for a moment, but she is fine.

Trei points at other tools in the shed to see what else she knows. Myo is able to identify each and every single tool that he owns and what they are used for. When he was her age, he barely knew where milk came from, let alone what each tool is called and what do they do.

It's getting late and Trei still has a lot of work to do. So he patted Myo on the head and says, “Myo, daddy needs to go back to work now. Why don't you go play outside?”

“Ok,” said Myo with a finger in her mouth.

They both leave the tool shed, and Myo runs off to find something to play with. Trei checks his watch, it is almost 11:00am. There is still a lot of work to do. He goes back to the barn, and continues to brush the cows. All he is able to think about is how amazing he thinks his daughter is.

A few minutes later, he hears some odd commotion coming from outside. He puts his brush away and steps outside to see what is going on. He finds the door to the chicken coop wide open, but no chickens inside. He turns to where he hears the noise, and finds all the chickens running around as fast as they could with Myo chasing them.

Trei panics and yells, “oh my god, MYO!!! Stop chasing the chickens!”

The clucking of the chickens are so loud that Myo cannot hear her father yell. He has no choice but to run after her and stop her himself. However, it is not as easy as it seems. He runs after her as fast as he can, but he cannot keep up his three year old daughter. Everyone runs in random circles around the ranch. No matter how hard he tries, catching up to her is impossible. After about thirty minutes of running, Trei gives up and collapses on the ground gasping for air. Myo notices her father fall, so she goes back to check on him.

“Daddy?” asked Myo.

Trei took a few moments to catch his breath before answering. He then says, “that's it, no more cake for you. You have far too much energy.” He then stands up, and patted his clothes down to remove the dirt off his shirt. He then looks at Myo and asks, “where on earth did you learn how to run that fast?”

“Daddy funny,” answered Myo. Trei knows that she responds that way when she doesn't understand what he is asking.

Trei carries Myo back into the house after collecting the chickens. Since it is close to lunch time, Muffy is already in the kitchen preparing lunch for the family. Trei leaves his daughter in the bedroom to play with her toys. Then he moves into the kitchen where he could talk to his wife about Myo.

“Hey Muffy, got a moment?” asked Trei.

Muffy turns around and says, “sure, what’s up?”

“Myo came to my barn earlier. I noticed that she knows what all of my tools are called, and what are they used for. Isn't that amazing?” bragged Trei.

Muffy nods and says, “Yes, you said that before.” Muffy turns her attention out the window, and look at the rustling trees of the countryside. “Myo was born in a ranch. Because of that, it's normal for kids to know things like that. But I still wished that Myo is book smart.”

“Yeah, I guess you're right,” said Trei. “But have you noticed how fast she is!? Even with her short legs, she can keep up with my chickens and outrun me!”

“That doesn't surprise me. When I was younger, I was a real athlete. Back in high school, I was captain of the track team. Myo inherited her athletics from me.”

“The track team?” asked Trei. He begins to get lost in thought imagining what Muffy must look like as a teenager. Remembering the girls from his high school wearing tight revealing shirts and bloomers, he imagines Muffy in one of them. His face turns red as he says carelessly, “so cute. . .”

“What were you thinking about?” asked Muffy who is looking deep into his dazed eyes.

Trei snaps out of his fantasy and notices Muffy staring at him awkwardly. “Oh nothing. I was just thinking about how you must have looked when you were younger, I swear.”

Muffy frowns and says, “you're acting strange again.”

Trei takes a deep breath and apologizes to Muffy. Last thing he needs is to have another incident with her. Muffy then walks over to the cabinet and sorts through some papers. As she searches, she says, “You do know that Myo has other talents as well, right?”

“Really? what else can she do?”

Muffy grabs a bunch of papers and hands them to Trei so that he may examine them. They are all fairly well hand drawn pictures. the first picture is of a cow that resembles closely to Bess. The others are of a chicken, a duck, and a sheep. the last picture is a drawing of Myo, Muffy, and Trei standing under a yellow sun.

“Myo drew these?” asked Trei. Muffy nods. “That can't be, she's only three! She should be drawing scribbles at best for her age.”

“I know, but she has been hanging out at Cody's a lot. I think he has been teaching her art. I didn't know that she is this good until Cody came by last week and gave them to me.”

“Cody? You mean the big guy who lives in the trailer?” asked Trei.

“That's right. I didn't even know she was even going there on her own. I'm not sure how or why, but it looks like Myo's best talent is art.”

Trei continues to look at the pictures. No matter how many times he looks at them, he cannot stop becoming amazed at Myo's incredible talent. When he met his child at the beginning of the year, he felt that she is just a normal child just like anyone else. His opinion about her greatly changed at that moment, and realizes that she is something special.

Summer 24, 2005 (Saturday)

Trei stops working in the barn and checks his watch. It is now noon, and it's time for his lunch break. Just like before, he agonizes the thought of going home and eating his wife's awful cooking. However, he finds the courage to step forward and eat her cooking like a man.

However, when he got to the door, Muffy steps out carrying Myo again. She is wearing her green dress like the day before which makes Trei happy. Muffy wants to go out with friends, and Trei thinks that Muffy didn’t make lunch.

“I hope you're plan on going with us today,” said Muffy.

“Oh sure! But, where are we going?” asked Trei.

“I have an idea,” answered Muffy. “If Cody is able to inspire Myo to be an artist, then we need to take her to other places where she can be inspired to be smarter.”

“That's a great idea!” said Trei. He really doesn't care about where they are going as long as Muffy is not in the kitchen. He has high hopes for another delicious meal at the Inn again.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” said Muffy. She points back into the house and continues, “can you go get the picnic basket basket for me? I thought that it was a good idea if we went on a picnic today, so I packed a lunch.”

Trei's tears of joy turns into tears of sorrow. He is overwhelmed with disappointment as he realizes that Muffy was busy in the kitchen, but she started a little earlier than normal. He sighs, he knows that he has no other choice but to put up with Muffy's cooking again today.

After leaving the farm, Muffy takes a look around deciding where should they go first. Then she asks Trei, “Okay, who doyou think is the smartest person in the Valley?”

“Don't you know that Muffy? I thought you've been living here longer than I have?”

Muffy looks at Trei and says, “Yes I have, but when I moved here, I have been working at the bar all the time. Not everyone in the Valley drinks, so I never got to know everyone. and when I married you, I became a house wife, so there are still people who live here I don't know too well. You're the social one, you should know everyone by now.”

“Okay fine, I get it.” Trei thinks about his answer for a minute and says, “What about Daryl? He's a scientist.”

“You mean the guy who stalks your cows? Are you sure he's a good choice?” asked Muffy.

“I don't see why not. He may be a bit odd, but he's pretty much harmless,” answered Trei.

Muffy thinks for a moment. Even though she does agree that he is strange, Daryl has not done anything to upset anybody. So she sighs and asks, “Where does he live anyway?”

Trei takes Muffy to Daryl's lab. Muffy's face turns blue at the sight of his Laboratory. the power generators, open sparks, barb wires, and other questionable objects are enough to make her tremble with fear. Trei doesn't find Daryl's lab rather normal.

“Well, here we are! Daryl's Lab!” announced Trei full of confidence. “Let's go talk to him and see if he can help us.”

“Forget about it!” cried Muffy.

Trei looks back at Muffy's sour face and asks, “What's wrong? I thought you wanted Myo to get smarter?”

“Now you listen to me Trei! I'm not letting Myo go anywhere near Daryl's big ugly doom castle! I want Myo to be smarter, not to end up like a guinea pig in an illegal science experiment!”

“What experiments are we talking about?” asked Daryl who is approaching at Muffy from behind.

Muffy turns around nervously unsure if he heard her. “Daryl, what a pleasant surprise. What are you doing here?” she asked trying to act casual.

“I live here. I have every right to be anywhere near my lab. May I ask why have you two come to my lab?” asked Daryl.

Muffy grabbed Trei's arm and quickly drags him back to the ranch. As he is being dragged off, Trei yells, “we were just passing by! See you later!”

At the gates of the ranch, Muffy stops to catch her breath. She may be strong, but carrying a three year old child in one arm, and dragging her husband with the other really took a lot out of her. “Muffy, you have to watch what you say in public,” scolded Trei.

“I know,” said Muffy while still catching her breath. “But that place was so freaky that I couldn't help myself.” After a few moments, she finally is able to breathe normally and get her mind back on her goal to make Myo smarter. “So, you know anyone else who might be able to inspire Myo to get smarter?”

Trei thought for a moment. the only other two people who are very smart in Forget-Me-Not Valley are Carter and Flora who are archaeologists. Without hesitation, he takes Muffy and Myo to the dig site to talk to Carter. Muffy is not happy with the dirty environment of the dig site, but she is tolerant enough to ignore it as long as Myo gets smarter.

“You want your kid to spend some time with us?” asked Carter.

“Yeah, I thought that it would be good for her if she could observe you two at work. She might even learn a few things if she did,” answered Trei.

“Sure thing!” cheered Carter. “She can even help us dig around for clues and old artifacts if she likes. She'll love playing in the dirt like all little children.”

Muffy pulls Trei to the side and whispers, “are you sure that this is a good idea? This sounds like free child labor more than anything.”

Trei nods in agreement. They walk back to tell him never mind. But before they say anything, Flora steps in and yells, “Professor Carter, I found something!”

“Really? Tell me what you found!” said Carter full of excitement.

Flora pulls out a human skull from her bag of strange objects. Muffy's face turns blue with fright as soon as she sees it. She screams, and runs out of the dig site carrying Myo with her.

“What's her problem?” asked Carter.

“I guess that she doesn't realize that the shiny stones that I give her usually come from here. She is very superstitious, so things like bones and death scares her.” answered Trei. “I better go check on her, see you around!”

Trei leaves the dig site to reunite with Muffy who is shivering outside. Trei put his arm around her which calms Muffy down. She takes a sigh of relief while Trei asks, “are you okay Muffy?”

“I'll be fine,” answered Muffy. “But I am not letting Myo back into that graveyard. It's scary in there, and there might be ghosts and stuff.”

“I understand.” said Trei.

Trei, Muffy, and Myo all start walking back to the ranch where they could end the day. On the way home, Trei notices that Muffy looks depressed about not finding someone that can inspire Myo to become smarter. He feels that it is his duty to cheer her up.

“Hey Muffy, why are we going home now? We still haven't eaten lunch yet. We can go to the pond and all three of us can eat your lunch together. what do you say?” Muffy remains quiet. Trei looks ahead and tries again, “You know, Lumina is pretty smart too. She may not be a genius, but I'm sure that she can inspire her to be smarter.”

“The only thing that she can inspire Myo is to play the piano.” snapped Muffy. Trei quickly realizes that even mentioning Lumina was a mistake, so he backs off and remains quiet. Muffy sighs and continues, “I really want a smart daughter, but it looks like that nobody here can help her out with that.”

Muffy's luck changes when they notice a new family close to their ranch. In the beginning of the year, there was an empty two story house very close to the ranch. Takakura told him that it was built last Winter, but no one had bought it yet. A new family of three are now in front of the house; a man in a business suit, a woman in Japanese clothing, and an eight year old girl. There are other people who are bringing their possessions into the house, which means that the new family are moving in. Muffy and Trei look at one another, they feel that it is a good idea to welcome them into the Valley.

Trei and Muffy approaches them. Trei smiles and says, “Hi. Welcome to Forget-Me-Not Valley.” The family notices them and return a gentle smile. “My name is Trei, this is my wife Muffy and our daughter Myo.”

Muffy continues, “we live in the ranch right behind your house. That makes us neighbors.”

The man in the business suit introduces himself, “Hello, my name is Grant. This is my wife Samantha, and our daughter Kate.”

“Nice to meet you all.” said Samantha bowing gracefully.

“Hello, I'm Kate. and I am eight years old!”

Muffy smiles and asks, “where did you all move from?”

Grant answers, “we used to live in the city not too far from here. But I felt that it would be better if if we lived in a safer community. We heard that this valley is a great place to raise children.”

“I see, so I take it that you're a businessman,” asked Trei noticing Grant's clothing.

“Why yes. I work for a legal firm in the city as an accountant. It's a far commute, but it's well worth it for my family’s safety.”

Muffy places Myo on the ground so that she could meet Kate personally. She gently pushes her to Kate, but she doesn't move far. Kate walks up to Myo and says, “hi there! What's your name? How old are you?”

Myo pulls her finger out of her mouth and answers, “Myo. . . Tree. . .”

Kate laughs cheerfully and says, “you talk funny. Wanna go play?!”

“Ya! Ya! Play! Play!” bounced Myo.

Muffy smiles seeing that Myo is getting along with Kate. So she feels like it is a good time to celebrate. So she snatches the picnic from Trei basket and says, “We are about to have a picnic. Would you all like to join us?”

Trei panics. He feels that it is not a good idea to have them eating her cooking. So Trei jumps in and says, “umm, maybe we shouldn't go on that picnic after all. I'm sure that Grant has a lot of work to do, and I really need to finish working on the ranch."

Muffy looks at Trei with an evil stare and says, “I'm sure that your work can wait. Unless there is 'another' reason why you changed your mind.”

Trei knows what Muffy is trying to say, so he gives in peacefully. He bows before Grant and asks, “Would your family like to join us for lunch?”

“Sure, we'd be glad to,” answered Samantha.

They all head to the pond near the great tree behind the ranch. Luckily, Muffy only made sandwiches and cold cuts that requires no cooking. This is the first time that Muffy actually made something that Trei can enjoy. Grant's family are having fun talking with Trei's family. Myo and Kate are also having fun playing around the tree. Since Grant is an intelligent man, Muffy is happy that she now has the inspiration she wants, plus they live so close to the ranch. This is a start of a good and lasting friendship.