"Where's my little boy? Let's go take a bath," his mom didn't take long to come and save him, but her words left him horror stricken.

'No! Not the bath! Please don't bathe me!' the poor Laudat yelled, screamed and kicked. If he wasn't that small of a baby, most people would think he was suffering some kind of grave form of violence.
'No, please! Don't! I don't wanna die! Please don't!'
But, at least for him, bathing was a form of violence. After all, the expression 'to throw the baby out with the bath water' had come from about this period of humanity.
'Nooooooooooo!'

Laudat cried in silence, as his mom scrubbed his body up with her hands, the dark and murky water smelling like feet.

'I will grow up, and introduce basic hygiene! Jesus Christ! This is outrageous! And disgusting!' he thought to himself, with a grumpy expression, as his mom pulled him out of the water and onto a small linen towel.

"What is it my boy? Are you angry at mommy? You know you had to take a bath, right? Today is a special day," she said, making the small child mildly interested. But not enough to clear off his pout.

'I feel dirtier now than before… Couldn't we have just cleaned me with a wet rage like usual?' he asked in his mind, as he was taken out of the bathroom and back towards the room with his sisters in it. On the way there, he saw his father, sitting on a small bench, in clearly uncomfortable clothes that would for sure make him feel very hot. 'I guess we're going somewhere important, huh…'

He couldn't clear his mind from that thought, even as he was being dressed. By the time he'd gotten to the room, most of his sisters were now completely dressed, those who weren't, were pulling threads and tying up knots, except for one.

'Interesting, why is Zhay alone not dressed up yet?' he asked himself, looking forward to some kind of explanation, which came in just a second, as his mother began dressing him up. 

"Don't you find your sisters pretty? They are all ready to go, only the three of us will be getting dressed later. I'll get you all gorgeous first, then me and Zhay will dress very well because it's the day of her baptism," almost as if reading his thoughts, his mother started explaining things while using twice the usual amount of pins to secure his diaper. "I know you can't understand me this well but… please behave well in the church, and don't cry. I really wanna see the whole thing this time." Laudat watched as his mother's brows furrowed, her face becoming a little saddened. 

For being someone in her mid forties, his mother looked very much young. Her eyes were round, her lips plump, and her whole face was streamlined. She did have some pores and small scars from both the sun and the sand, but her face still looked respectable. What caught his eyes the most were the colors of her irises. Yes, colors. She had one eye that was a very dark brown that seemed to swallow all light, much like that of most of his sisters, and another which had a light green patch, almost like someone had put a droplet of bleach that made that small circle lighter than the rest. Laudat thought that was her charm, as the light green contrasted with the rest of her eyes, and ensured someone who saw her would look straight into them, captivated by the uniqueness. Her hair was similar to his sisters', wavy and brown, but hers was very dense, and she always had it tied, to make sure it wouldn't fall too much. 

"All of you, please wait outside for a bit," she turned to the crowd, making some of the girls leave with a disappointed expression. Laudat was sat down on the bed, and left to stare, as he saw his mother bring out a plain green box from somewhere in the bottom of the cabinet.

"You will be the sixth woman of this family to wear this dress on the day of their baptism, please be very careful with it," his mom told his sister, making Laudat very curious. The baby, unable to see more than the side of the box from where he was, dropped himself forward, and started to slowly crawl his way towards them. 

"You want to see it too, Lau?" his sister asked, grabbing him and putting him on her lap, much to their mother's delight.

"Here's the dress," his mother opened the box, letting the two curious kids peek inside. She used both her hands to take the dress out of the box, and it looked just a little more detailed than those his other sisters were wearing, however.

'Oh, wow…' Laudat soon noticed the embroidery. It was gorgeous, an amazing display of needlework, the same size of the mossy green of the dress. It was the kind of detail that is to be appreciated from up close, without picking too much attention.

"My mother sewed this dress for me. It took her over three years to finish the embroidery. She was a master seamstress," his mother spoke with pride, giving him a new bit of information he'd never heard before. 

Rather, 'It's the first time I'm hearing from her family at all…' this raised a couple of questions in Laudat's mind.

"When I decided to leave the city, and marry the son of a farmer, this was the only thing I was allowed to bring from home. My mother died during a difficult labor, together with my baby sister. This is the last memory I carry from her." Laudat realized this was both a tale, and a warning. And he felt his sister tense up behind him as she heard this. If she were to damage this dress, there would be no end to it in sight. "Now, let's get you dressed."

Laudat was put back onto the bed, to think about the story he'd just heard, while his mother finished dressing his sister and putting makeup on her. It was not the simple rice powder his sisters had used before.