Lying in what he assumed was some sort of crib a couple of days later, Daniel tried to take stock of his apparent new life. It made him miss having access to a pen and notebook since used to have a habit of scribbling notes and making lists to help think things through.
The top of his theoretical notes would be underlined and circled and simply read: "GIRL?" His initial shock had passed into vague disquiet at the idea. A test drive would have been nice. Maybe a week as an adult woman to try it out and then back to the character creation screen so he could switch back to male. Ultimately his sex shouldn't matter much as a child. Daniel had confidence in staying the same regardless of sex but also a burning desire to forget the whole thing. The threat of future female puberty in particular was something he did not want to think about.
Did a cross-sex reincarnation make him trans? He instinctively rejected that idea. He wasn't a fan of labels when applied to himself and he certainly was not going to be joining any sort of community. Besides, it was more intriguing to him to consider it as a separate level. For example, could a cis man be reincarnated as a woman in a man's body? The terminology would need an extra dimension. Or more depending on how far the reincarnation rabbit hole went.
The second thing to consider would be the abilities of his new body. He had little knowledge about the average newborn, but several things were not making sense to him.
He still had barely any awareness of his surroundings. Adding to that, Daniel found he lacked both strength and coordination to the point he could barely move. Now perhaps children were normally born with such weakness or poor eyesight. Room to grow you could say, and he was simply on the extreme end of that spectrum.
Except shouldn't the same apply mentally? Like muscle mass and hopefully functioning senses, you could expect memory and intelligence to start low and develop over time. Would a normal baby brain even have the architecture to hold an adult's memory and thought processes? Daniel found that doubtful. Maybe he would develop normally but from a head start and end up a super genius.
Putting aside problems he couldn't solve, he was still working at accepting life as a baby. He was surprisingly unbothered by having other people in charge of his bodily functions and cleanup. He just didn't seem to be embarrassed about a standard part of being a baby. Which was convenient since he had expected it to be deeply humiliating. On the other hand, breastfeeding was a struggle. Tolerance was a fine aspiration, but honestly, the mental association with some sort of man-baby fetishism made him cringe internally.
His mother picked him up and he sighed in release. It was strange how much his moods seemed to swing around her presence. More concerning was that his control over his emotions seemed to be slowly slipping, which was not a problem he had dealt with before. But it had been an insane couple of days, with time surely things would even out.
Looking up at the blur that was her face, from somewhere he pulled the impression that she was quite pretty. Rationally attractiveness shouldn't make much difference to suitability as a mother, but somehow it made him feel better.
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Time passed. By Daniels count, he was 160 days old. Things had changed while staying the same. Again he was stuck in his crib going over his mental notes. But this time he felt like screaming his head off. Where was his mother? What could she possibly be doing? He could feel the frustration and anxiety as a physical force bearing down on him.
But he was not becoming the thing he hated. And he had always despised people making annoying sounds to get attention. Loud music with no headphones. Motorbikes. Natural shouters instead of speakers. Car alarms. Drunks arguing in the street at 3 am. Anyone who ever used a vacuum cleaner. And there was no way to tell them to shut up and go away without engaging with them to do so.
So he lay there waiting, his face scrunched up in a bug-eyed grimace, silently screaming when it got too much. His emotional maturity was gone. Any built-up callouses were apparently still in his old body with his new one having extremely thin skin. Each time he tried telling himself that things weren't that bad but his negative emotions would still spiral beyond his control. He was quite literally being a baby about the whole thing, and he did not know how to stop. Being left alone was a pain that he didn't have any coping mechanisms for. Each day that passed saw him more worn down, less able to resist.
It didn't help that he was becoming increasingly depressed over his disability. His senses and physical mobility had not improved and were still barely functional. Honestly, he had given up trying to pick out details visually or aurally. At this point, his best guess was that the problems were permanent. Daniel was starting to think that, assuming reincarnation was repeatable, suicide was the correct response. But that was quite the assumption. And either way, he lacked the capability to act that choice out.
His blurred surroundings resolved into a blurred person as his mother picked him up. His anxiety broke apart and was replaced with contentment and a hint of hesitant affection. Part of him rebelled at even that much. The effect her presence had on his mood made him feel bipolar. But he was still sticking to the one-sided imposition theory. His lack of senses left him feeling like he was in a world of his own. In some ways, she felt closer to a stuffed teddy bear from his previous childhood than an actual human connection. Just something to hold onto when things got too much.
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Some sort of gathering was going on in the room he was in. He was fairly sure his mother was there, but so far he was left in the crib. His by now iffy count was at day 335. Daniel was mortified with himself. He was upset that no one was paying any attention to him. Only 335 days for him to degenerate into an attention whore. He'd become emotionally reliant on other people. Disgusting. It hurt but he dug deep into stubbornness and clung to not crying out at least. At this rate that bug-eyed grimace was going to grow into a permanent feature.
A pair of hands descended and seemed to be checking him over. It definitely felt more clinical than affectionate. A light shone in his face, adding credence to the idea. Probably a doctor checking his eyesight. Good now get to work fixing it doc.
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The hands receded and Daniel peered in the direction they came from. Blinking rapidly, Daniel was shocked to see the fog of blur recede somewhat to reveal a gray-haired man that he presumed was the source of doctor hands. It wasn't perfect, but he went from near blind to short-sighted over a couple of seconds. At the same time, the background droning resolved itself into mixed conversations in a language he didn't recognise. Daniel felt his gaze drawn to his left like magnetism, and to his wonder he found the strength to sit up and turn to look in that direction.
There was a young woman standing there. Blonde hair, blue eyes, fair skin. She looked terrible. Worry warred with exhaustion on her face leaving her seeming wrung out. Daniel started to wonder what was wrong with her but then stopped. He knew. She looked how he felt. He stared at her, searching for a way to offer reassurance. He smiled hesitantly and like a mirror a matching smile broke through the worry on her face. She said a few words that he couldn't understand. The mental speech gap still seemed to exist but regardless he would not have been able to articulate himself at that moment. Tears in her eyes she moved forward to sweep him up into a hug.
When she was done hugging Daniel sat on her arm and looked around the room. He felt unbalanced, not sure what to think. His mother's hair was in range so he grabbed a handful and stuck it in his mouth. She turned to him in mock affront to remove it and he smiled sheepishly. Was that an instinct or just him acting as he thought a baby should? He couldn't really be sure. Either he was turning into an infant or he was cosplaying as one. Both were pretty embarrassing. But he just needed to get over it. He was never going to be a natural child, so he might as well just do what he wanted. He had spent too much time only able to overthink things. Things were getting better and today was better off enjoyed.
The room was filled with a bunch of people who he got to meet, as far as a baby could meet someone. Daniel didn't think he had ever been interested in meeting people before, but nearly a year with no stimulus had done wonders. There were three young men in their twenties who were clearly brothers. Each had the same brown hair and eyes as well as a similar slant to their face. Brother 1 came with a mischievous smile on his lips and a slightly stressed woman on his arm. Brother 2 had a more stiff manner shared by his probable wife and had a collection of preteen children as well. Leaving brother 3 as a quiet single content to hang back, although the soft smile he was sharing with Daniel's mother hinted that he wasn't alone. Lastly, to round things out there was an older couple of potential grandparents.
The next morning Daniel discovered that whatever weirdness went on the day before, his parents were ready for it. His crib got moved from his parents, his diet got moved to solid foods and his schedule got changed to match his shift from disability.
The house they were living in was a large three-story home spread around a central hallway and staircase. The top two floors contained bedrooms and a living area, while the ground level seemed for communal use as much as anything else. In the mornings after breakfast, Daniel would be taken downstairs to a large room that ran to the left side of the hallway. Three separate groups from outside would come and spend time there. First, there were young children, from Daniels age to maybe 5 or 6 years old. Secondly, there was a group of older women watching the kids while mainly sitting around gossiping. And lastly, there were a couple of teenage girls whose purpose seemed to be doing any actual work and getting bossed around.
His family was not a part of any of these groups but would reappear in the afternoon and spend time in the upstairs living room. Daniel guessed that uncles 1 and 2 lived with their families elsewhere since their presence was quite sporadic.
Things in this house were not as Daniel was used to. There was no electricity, no modern appliances. The clothing, furnishings, and people's behaviors struck him as distinctly old-timey. Medievalish. Not having the internet really made identifying things a pain. He needed to learn the weird language so he could at least put names to things.
On the other hand, everyone was a lot cleaner, healthier, and happier than he would have expected from such a time period. Less busy too, if there was work being done it must be in that morning period since he never saw it. Perhaps the family was rich, and this was a life of luxury. He'd spotted other people coming to the house in the mornings and had gotten the impression that they were taking care of many of the household chores.
Now that he could crawl, and with his newly improved senses, Daniel was keen to explore. In fact, he was almost overwhelmed with enthusiasm for the idea. There was a silliness to becoming an amiable little terror that appealed to him, and escaping to do his own thing was the first step. He had to hold back his bubbling excitement while building an image of being friendly and passive in the downstairs daycare. And then with his carers guard down, he gleefully pounced on the first opportunity. His happiness lasted him to the end of the hallway towards the front of the house where he found a dead-end of doors he couldn't open. He turned to look up the stairs and dismissed climbing them as too scary. Actually, now that he was on his own out here this whole place was kinda scary, and he was starting to worry about people being angry when they caught him. Just as the thought occurred to sneak his way back in, he heard the front door open behind him. Before he could turn back around hands reached down and picked him up. Daniel froze in terror until he was turned around and was relieved to see it was his father. By the time he had recovered from his shock, he was back in with the others and his father was already gone. Daniel keenly felt his father's absence, and downstairs playtime suddenly seemed less exciting a prospect. He ended up counting the moments until his mother came to collect him.
After a couple of months, things got warmer, which Daniel took to mean they were coming out of a winter. Other people appeared less often upstairs in the afternoons, but Daniel was still mostly housebound. The downstairs playroom had a couple of doors open up to the outside revealing an extensive garden with a large lawn area backed by a head height stone wall. When the weather allowed Daniel would end up there instead of indoors. It seemed that his grandmother in particular had a gardening obsession, and was out there pottering about most afternoons. Daniel's initial urge to explore had been mostly replaced with a desire to stay close to his parents, particularly his mother. He was still on a knife-edge of emotional instability, but sticking with his parents gave him a better chance to reign things in. They were a safe haven of calm in an ocean of immaturity, and he found himself very aware of when too much distance was between them.
As the year passed Daniel tried to pick up the language. He was probably butchering it, stopped by his previous knowledge from seeing new concepts. It was slow going with no way to speak to confirm his guesses, and none of the adults seemed interested in teaching him. Nouns in particular were hard to figure out without context. Eventually, Daniel managed to piece together that his second birthday was approaching, and that people were expecting him to start talking at that point. Which implied that whatever was going on at his first birthday was both normal and going to be repeated somehow. Daniel was looking forward to being able to observe things from the outset this time around.
Uncle number 2, the mischievous one, was missing along with his wife most of the year but returned with winter. He quickly set about trying to take bets on Daniel's first word. He was convinced it was going to a specific word, the meaning of which Daniel could not figure out. He also kept saying the same word to Daniel when others wouldn't notice. Other popular guesses were the standard mummy or daddy. Daniel was still mulling over his options but he at least had enough self-illusion of pride left that it wasn't going to be one of those two.