An Unbound Soul

Mum sat in her usual chair, knitting something that I assumed would turn into a scarf. I'd been left alone on the floor and was taking the opportunity to try to crawl around. It wasn't going well; I simply didn't have the strength to support myself. But when my strength ticked up the first time, it made an immediate and noticeable difference; one moment I couldn't even hold my head up properly, the next it was no trouble at all. I only needed to trigger some more of those, and I'd be running around like an athlete.

The opposite thought was terrifying; what if I missed something to trigger the stat increases, due to not being a proper baby? Would I grow into an adult, still unable to even crawl around? I definitely needed to go all out...

Some time into my practice, I noticed the clicking of Mum's needles had stopped. Looking up, she was staring straight at me. Uh-oh, I wasn't behaving like a proper baby here, was I? Did she notice something?

With a strange little smile, she put down her yarn, walked over, and scooped me up.

"Zua fup'v piif vu vsz vu jofi, movvmi upi. Zua lpux xi'mm emxezt muwi zua."

Right, I could do this one. She was talking about me. The second part was saying she loves me. That was something she said often, but this one was phrased a little unusually. The tense had been different. Referring to the future, rather than the present, perhaps? Always? That was my best guess; rather than saying that she loves me, saying that she will always love me. How sweet.

The first part was a little harder. Something I shouldn't do, or didn't have to do. What was 'jofi'? Actually, I was fairly sure I'd heard her use that word when we play peekaboo. Something to do with hiding? Wait... Don't tell me... Did she seriously just tell me I don't have to hide and that she'll always love me? She knew! I was screwed!

She burst out laughing.

Okay... Not the expected reaction. No, she said she'd always love me. She was giving me reassurance that she wasn't about to abandon me to be eaten by wolves in a forest, or hand me over to an orphanage or secretive government research lab. I really shouldn't be surprised. Why did I ever think that I could fool my own mother? She'd probably known for ages. I started giggling myself at the absurdity of it all. Well, since she knew that I knew that she knew, I might as well go all in. I'd been practising my speech recently, in the brief periods of time no-one was around, and while I wasn't great at it, it would probably be enough. I looked up into her eyes and put all my previous crawling effort into forming my first public comprehensible words.

"Nene, muwi!"

Waahh, careful, you almost dropped me!

Wait, was mum crying? Did I say it wrong? No, she started smiling again... What an emotional roller coaster. Hopefully, I hadn't broken her. Well, whatever, it wasn't as if I was getting anywhere with my crawling attempts. I might as well dedicate today as a family day.

I was almost three Earth months old now. Eighty-six days, to be precise, although I was now certain that each day was longer than I was used to, which would push my age up a little. I didn't think months existed here, or at least I hadn't picked up the world for them; they seemed to jump straight from weeks to seasons. Weather changes across seasons were certainly a thing, and it was noticeably colder now than when I was born. At some point, Dad brought out a bunch of red crystals that gave off heat and scattered them around the house in little pots. Now that I thought about it, the way he put them at ground level and didn't seem concerned at all about me burning myself should have been a clue that my baby impression was less than perfect. Or that my crawling attempts were even more pathetic than I thought and he didn't think I could reach them, I suppose.

And that was another good thing; I could see properly now. The lighting came from little yellow crystals and water from a blue one, so there must be some sort of magic involved. I could see my parents' faces properly, too. Both had slightly toned skin, Dad more so than Mum, both with dark brown hair and green eyes. We had no proper mirrors, but a mug of water was sufficient to confirm my hair colour was similar. No bright fantasy hair colours for me. The brightest I'd seen so far was Clana, who was ginger bordering on orange, but there were no greens, blues or pinks. Speaking of Clana, she was very visibly pregnant now. She was supposed to be due in winter, which given the temperature was probably soon.

I hadn't seen a good enough reflection to confirm my exact eye colour, but if genetics worked the same way as I was used to, they likely shared the same shade of green. Not that I was convinced genetics did work the same way; back to Clana again, what sort of genetics would result in her ears? She had a tail, too, although, unlike her ears, she'd always resisted my efforts to pet it. She was blatantly a cat-lady! Was that natural or magical? Could I get cat ears too? It was obviously a common thing, since half the people who visited us had either cat or dog ears.

Dad was a farmer and spent the days tending fields and animals. Mum was a tailor and worked at home sewing and knitting. She'd not been entirely housebound, though; she'd started taking me out once I was a month old. Less often now that the temperature was dropping, but I'd already had a chance to see around the village we live in. The total population was probably about a hundred, unless some of the houses were very densely packed. It was a small farming village, surrounded by fields and pastures. The village had a tavern, a general store, a smithy and a clinic, but nothing else that wasn't directly farming related. Even the facilities we did have were just extra bits tacked onto the sides of the houses of the proprietors. I hadn't been close enough to the fields to see what sort of crops we grow or if they matched anything I was familiar with from Earth. Same with the animals. I'd not seen any other babies or toddlers, either, but I'd seen older kids playing outside on the dirt tracks. And heard them, too. My ears were functioning at a hundred percent now, and it turned out our houses were not well endowed in the soundproofing department.

Calling them houses was a bit of a stretch, to be honest. Maybe shacks would be better. They were very simple wooden constructions with straw roofs and wooden shutter-style windows. The biggest mystery about them currently was how the bathroom worked. I didn't get to use it myself, so I'd not had a chance to give it an inspection, but I very much doubted we had sewers, and yet I'd never seen it needing to be cleaned, nor did it smell. If I had to sit on top of a toilet with some sort of slime living in it, I was totally going to freak. My potty training schedule could be at serious risk!

My time spent reminiscing was enough for Mum to recover. It would be a while before Dad returned from the fields. This could be awkward... Hmm? Why was she getting out a pile of coins? Were we going shopping?

"Topdi zua'si tadj ep opvimmohipv movvmi cuz, xjz fup'v xi tvesv zuas ifadevoup e movvmi iesmz?"

I didn't quite get that one. Since I'm something, we'll do something early? I watched on as she split the coins into piles, which was enough for me to extrapolate the rest of the sentence. There was one coin in the first pile, two in the second, three in the third. She was teaching me to count! Sure enough, she pointed at the piles in turn.

"Upi. Vxu. Vjsii. Guas. Gowi."

At which point she ran out of coins, but kept going regardless, switching over to her fingers instead.

"Toy. Tiwip. Iohjv. Popi. Vip."

I was glad she stopped at ten; that meant this world probably used the same base ten numbering scheme I was used to. At least I hoped so, and it wasn't just because she ran out of fingers. Didn't the Babylonians use base sixty or something? But they counted on their fingers differently. Anyway, I already knew all of those numbers, but it was nice to get them laid out for me. I did my best to count myself, trying to uncurl my little stubby fingers one by one. It did not go well. Not only was my pronunciation utterly incomprehensible, but I couldn't even move my fingers individually properly. Neither of us minded, of course, and Mum just smiled while watching me struggle. We moved on to learning colours and names for random objects around the house. Many I'd already picked up, but it was nice to get confirmation. Others I was sure I'd forget again by tomorrow.

We took a break from the tour of the house, and Mum started to talk at me. It was very much at me rather than to me, as if she was letting loose something she'd kept bottled up for a long time. She didn't seem to expect a response, so I concentrated and picked up what I could. Apparently, it wasn't today's crawling attempt that was the problem; I somehow blew my cover on the very first day. With my poor senses back then, I would never have noticed no matter however badly I had shocked my parents, so I had carried on in blissful ignorance. But she didn't seem to know exactly why I was weird, so my reincarnation secret was safe for now. She seemed to have a different theory about my intelligence, but I couldn't decipher what it was.

In my opinion, she was taking this whole thing very well. Suspiciously well. If you found out your child was as weird as I was, wouldn't you take them somewhere to get checked out? Given the fantasy world setting, maybe priests and purification rituals were a thing? Or appraisal skills? Staying alone with them in a house for months seemed rather risky. What if I was some sort of monster? I didn't know what sort of wildlife they had here, but mimics or changelings were things from Earth mythologies that you really wouldn't want sticking around your house pretending to be a child. One explanation would be if we simply couldn't afford the required help, but that wouldn't explain why Mum showed such trust in me. She'd never shown anything to me but motherly love. Given that she seemed to have some explanation for my behaviour, maybe this wasn't an uncommon thing? Maybe there was a 'born with the intelligence of an adult' trait.

Done talking at me, we started to go over body parts. Most of them I'd definitely forget by tomorrow, but hopefully at least some information would stick. Repetition would help, too. Alas, while I was poking at bits of Mum's face and making my best attempts at calling out names, a sudden yawn alerted me that I was running on fumes of my stamina. Why now? I was learning here! There was so much more to see, now that I had a co-conspirator! Why did I have to sleep? Despite my best efforts, my eyes started to close. Mum noticed and gently lay me down in my cot.

ding

Did I get new upgrades? Please be something that lets me not sleep.

New trait acquired: [Curious]

[Curious] - You look upon the world in wide-eyed wonder, ever eager to seek out new experiences and understanding. Awards soul points for learning and exploration. (Rank 2)

I wasn't going to turn down another source of soul points, especially since I hadn't earned any the traditional way yet. I had to admit that the traits I was ending up with were... appropriate. They did describe me rather well. But indulging my curiosity would need to wait. For now, I needed to nap.