LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 5: Elves
Since early on in this new life, I have started trying to track how long we have been here by the days and nights. I am not fully clear on how long it has been since I was born, I did not start this effort soon enough to be that precise about it, but it has been around a month or so since I started tracking this.
In terms of teaching this new body to do the things I was able to do as an adult in my past life, my efforts to become mobile were going very well. Levin and Rolwen were a huge help in this area. One of the biggest impediments to self-propulsion for an infant is gaining the muscle strength to simply lift up your own head, and the coordination to roll oneself over onto their front side. However, with their help, I was able to just skip this entire step of development by saying my best approximation of the word "front" to them and making gestures with my hands to indicate they should flip me over.
I still couldn't lift my head, which meant I wound up pretty much dragging my face on the floor as I reached my hands forward and then pulled myself forward. While it was not the most dignified or comfortable, it did develop muscles and neural connections that allowed me to get back toward a state of mobility faster. After some time, I even found it actually helped me in developing those muscles to flip myself over, and even improved my neck muscles.
And so, while I am unable to really be certain on how much time has passed, I managed to learn how to crawl before I learned how to flip over, and I think I very well might have been ahead of the curve even on the flipping myself over benchmark.
However, while I was abnormal, my sister (and indeed, I have discovered the both of us are girls in this life,) was in the realm of straight up alien in terms of the way she went about her early methods of self-propulsion. I have no idea how, but she had managed to develop some kind of absolutely insane core strength and managed to combine it with some even more insane feats of flexibility.
She would not even bother using her arms for much more than stability, and she would simply fold herself in half like an inch worm, and then push her face forward like a mop. I know I was dragging my face across the floor, but she was doing so with a lot more force and seemed to not even notice the fact at all.
It was to an extent where I was starting to wonder if she really was from Earth like I was. This looked like it could be the kind of thing a toddler might do when imitating someone else as they learn a new skill. But then again, that was the actions of a toddler. She was a newborn. As such, that kind of advanced capability really did suggest reincarnation from Earth was likely.
We mostly did this mobility practice at night in order to avoid interference from our caretaker. I had noticed my absurdly good dark vision before, but it's in situations like these where it really proved it's worth. However, this also lead to me making a rather surprising discovery. It seemed I had absolutely no need for sleep. This was strange, considering our care taker put us to bed every night as though she expected us to sleep. This suggested that my lack of sleep requirement was not a normal thing for my race.
Really though, it was probably more odd that I was able to sleep before if I really never actually needed it.
On the subject of our race, Levin and Rolwen have decided we are elves. I can see why they came to this conclusion too. My sister and I have pointed ears, as does our caretaker. And, from what I can tell, we seem to be living inside of a giant tree. The room is circular and the floors and walls are all made from a single piece of wood without a single seam to suggest boards stuck together.
I've never heard any stories about elves eating the energy of young children though. But, then again... the concept of being kidnapped by the fey was part of a lot of early Ennglish lore. And, the original Germanic lore about Elves had them kidnapping people who wandered off into the woods, especially children. Although the whole energy eating thing was not a part of those legends, perhaps it's not all that far fetched to imagine this as their reason.
Well, whether or not energy vampirism is plausibly a part of elven biology, while my training in communication was not going as well as I would like it, it was coming along, and communicating with Levin and Rolwen about this whole energy consumption thing was one of my chief concerns in regards to what we needed to discuss.
I would need to get a lot better at talking before that though. I had considered bringing the subject up with them before, but ultimately stopped because it was too nuanced an issue to discuss before I got good enough to be clearly understood and avoid misinterpretations.
At present, I was only a little behind those two in terms of my ability to form proper speech, and according to them, me and Tia were less than two months old. This was clearly an absurd level of development in terms of hitting all the bench-marks.
I had been at least able to communicate enough with them to have them inform me that they were both boys. It seems somewhat odd that our caretakers would pair a couple of girls with a couple of boys, especially at this young of an age. And if we aged like elves then there's no way it could be for any sort of "future arrangements."
There were a few other things we'd figured out, including that my name in this world was apparently "Asaren," or just "Asa" for short, and my sister's name was "Tiaren," or "Tia." So, we were the twins, Asaren and Tiaren. In other words, we'd been given matching names... fantastic.
The four of us had developed a sort of unspoken agreement that our training sessions in both speech and mobility were for the night time only. During the day, we would all play the roles of normal infants and toddlers for the sake of our caretakers. We were all incredibly strange for certain, and letting on just how strange could warrant unwanted attention.
Me and Tia especially. I did not know what was a normal development benchmark for the elf-like race the two of us belonged to, but we were doing many things a human one month old should never be able to do. I'd have to assume an elf would develop slower than a human, not faster.
After my eyes had started to focus, removing the blurriness I'd had to deal with after first being born, I was able to note our caretaker had rounded ears, not the pointed ears of an elf. This indicated she was likely human. It seems humans and elves actually live together here, but since I haven't cleared the energy vampire suspicion I am forced to wonder what kind of capacity they are 'living together' in.
Levin and Rolwen told me they were kidnapped from their house in the middle of the night about two months or so before we were born. As such, 'slave' seemed like it was the most likely option for the living dynamic. Although, if they were slaves, the elves seem to trust humans around their children an awful lot.
We are frequently visited by other children from the area. They come in sets ranging from two to two dozen, but at least they seem to respond to our caretaker well enough that when she yells at the crowds trying to mob the place they seem to settle down and take their turn.
The reason they never come in numbers lower than two though is because every last one of the children who visit are a pairing of one elven child and one human often around three to four times older in physical appearance. Of course, this age comparison is most noticeable with the elven toddlers, because that's how young they have to be for the human to actually be anything one would consider a child.
The humans, often teens or adults, seem to always hover around their elven companions, caring for them primarily, but although I do not understand exactly what is being said, I can tell their behaviors are somewhat subservient even toward these very young elves.
So, it does appear slave is indeed the correct comparison. But, if I'm reading this situation right, these humans likely grew up together with the elf they are partnered with, much like how Levin and Rolwen were introduced to us almost immediately after we were born.
This would suggest that even if we are energy vampires of some sort, our feeding does not harm the humans enough for it to be life threatening. Even if it is harmful to them, the level of harm likely ranges somewhere between a blood transfusion and a baby breastfeeding on their mother. That second one seems an appt, if slightly disturbing, comparison considering how young we are brought together.
It is rather annoying, but it does at least give me plenty of opportunities to pay attention to their conversations and pick up bits and pieces of the elven language.
As for why all the children seem so thrilled to come in here, it seems it has more to do with Levin and Rolwen than it does me or Tia. All the elven children seem to keep gravitating over to the boys and gushing and aweing over them. There are a few words I hear them repeating several times, such as "Ipar abzum lati," or just "abzum lati" repeated again and again in awed tones. Whatever these words mean, it seems it has something to do with these two.
One day, a group of four or so elven children decided to start playing tug-of-war with Rolwen's body and he decided he'd had enough. He just shouted, and suddenly a couple of those children, a girl who looked to be around eight to ten in human physical maturity standards, was flung all the way across the room by the toddler Rolwen and the rest had been easily cast aside like rag-dolls.
Rolwen was just as startled as everyone else at this. The human companions of the children were all rushing over and showing concern, and our caretaker immediately started ordering everyone out.
She then said some very apologetic and consoling words to Rolwen, seemingly accepting his bizarre show of disproportionate physical strength without much issue. However, she did seem a great deal more cautious around him.
It was strange. It was like this was all expected. Another strange thing was that there didn't seem to be any consequences for Rolwen, which seemed odd if humans were considered slaves. One would think they would be treated more harshly for harming elves. Perhaps they gave some consideration to his age or the situation. I'm sure it was not that the children didn't tell anyone, because from that day on we saw considerably fewer children visiting, and when they did come in they were a lot more cautious.
In the meantime, Levin and Rolwen also started engaging in contests of physical strength such as arm wrestling or athletics such as ability to jump. The wrestling showed their degree of strength was roughly comparable to each other, and the jumping verified that they really were a lot stronger than would be normal for a child from Earth, or anyone from Earth for that matter. They were able to leap as high as an adult was tall.
That just seems to remove all doubt. They are absurdly strong.
