"I'm sorry, Anne, just a few more minutes and then we'll set off."

"All right Mum. I'll go check on Beatrix while I wait then."

This caused Mum to pause her hustle to get ready and turn back to Daniel. Leaning down she hugged Daniel from behind and rubbed their cheeks together, tickling his face and making him laugh.

"You're such a good girl Anne. Go on then."

Heading out onto the landing, Daniel crossed into his parent's bedroom and approached the crib that held his younger sister. Sitting on the nearby chair, he reached out and took her hand, playing with her fingers.

At 8 months old, Beatrix was a lump. Admittedly, while quieter than an Earth baby, she could cry a lot, which was more than Daniel had achieved at that age. But that just made her a more annoying, crying-type lump. Honestly, Daniel found his lack of an overreaction to her arrival to be a bit of a letdown.

For a while there, things had gotten pretty far out of hand. There'd been some over-indulgent suffering, flirtation with sappiness, and occasional bouts of crying. At three years old, he had even managed to convince himself he had grown out of all that, until a particularly humiliating episode that ended in a temper tantrum. So Daniel had been worried that a new sibling would provoke his latest infantile embarrassment. But it was hard to get too worked up about a lump. For Daniel, those dark days of trying and failing to keep a lid on things were behind him. He was four and three quarters now after all. The three quarters were a pretty big deal.

Without emotional fallout to deal with, Daniel had tried to work out if his little sister was suffering a similar fate to his own.

Is this lump a reincarnation? Who knows? It's a lump! Even if it is, who cares? It's a lump!

It was enough to give Daniel some appreciation for the laissez-faire attitude many people here seemed to hold towards child-rearing. Problem? just wait for the next birthday, that'll fix it! Even his mother, who spend most of her time looking after Beatrix, seemed generally unbothered by her lumpiness. 'Less worrying, more tiring' was a phrase he had overheard, and at the time he had found it heartwarming that she had been worried for him, and that the silence he had struggled for had made things easier in some way. Of course, it was only natural that he had been far more tender-hearted and naive back then, before the three quarters.

Ultimately, Daniel had decided to help care for his little sister. It hadn't been that long since he had been a lump himself after all. So he would try to check on her in his mothers' downtime as he was doing now. He couldn't do much, just a little bit of stimulus to say hello and smooth out a potential rough patch. It was the least he could do, and even with the hobbies he had picked up, he still had the time.

He had chosen out three 'hobbies' to work on, with varying success, although two were fairly connected. His first thought had been running. Running as a child was just fun. No aches and pains, no bad knees, no struggle to build up enough energy to get started. There was a problem though. He liked distance running, not back and forth sprints in the garden. He did what he could but running was mostly on hold until he had more freedom. But that did help with his second idea. He had done a decent amount of running as an adult. But unfortunately, his unathletic adolescence, followed by many years of sitting all day in front of a monitor, had made things difficult. Which had led to wavering enthusiasm and a sporadic interest with many blanks started by minor injuries. He had done some research on stretches and yoga to help with that but quickly lost interest after trying them out. He just hadn't been invested enough to support extra maintenance busywork that he didn't enjoy.

But here though, he was actively looking for things to do, and as a child, he had the energy. He didn't know if it was backed by science, but he had the notion that work put in now could help his development and maybe raise his baseline for the rest of his life. It was appealing to him to think he could improve from always being so stiff and uncoordinated. So he started waking up early and doing the stretch routine he could most remember. He even tried to add in the little amount he knew of yoga, which he had quickly abandoned due to the surrounding spiritualism. Which was a shame since he was far more willing to give that stuff a shot in a world where magic existed.

Improving coordination was his next target. He didn't have much past practice to rely on here, but he threw himself into any game or activity that seemed useful. They were far better than playing with dolls, so he probably would have done the same anyway. He'd even taken up juggling using some pebbles he took from the garden. Rory had been intrigued when he caught Daniel at it, having never seen juggling before. Then he tried it himself and was instantly far better than Daniel, leaving with a glib "I guess goblins are bad at this." But Daniel found that he was not dissuaded. He didn't have endless enthusiasm but he recharged quickly. Given a quick rest and a small distraction it was very easy to forget any effort he had already put in and get back to it.

Mum showed up at last to interrupt his thoughts and came close to check on Beatrix. After a moment, she spoke.

"Alright, first we'll go to see the doctor, then we'll have a look around the shops and the lower town, and on the way back we'll pop in to visit my friend, Agnes." Finally, Daniel thought Finally I get to explore-wait what?

"The doctor!" he cried out. "What's wrong with you?"

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

"Shh. I didn't tell anyone yet, but part of our trip today is visiting the doctor to confirm that I'm pregnant again. If all goes well you should have another little brother or sister to take care of."

"Another one! Already? Urk!" Daniel made a retching gesture with added sound effects. More lumps for the collection

"If my mother caught you doing that she would make you regret it. I could send her a letter telling her, and she would come to put a stop to it, even if she had to walk the whole way," Mum said with an indulgent chuckle to rob the words of their threat.

"How many more kids are you gonna have Mum?" Daniel asked.

"Six or seven."

"Urk!" I'll have eight lumps with my tea please, vicar.

"Enough of that. What I'm really looking forward to is you growing up and giving me grandchildren one day."

Daniel resisted retching this time. It helped that the idea of grandchildren made his skin crawl. His mum took his hand and led him out the door.

"Are you ready?" she asked.

"Let's go!" Daniel cheered, raising a fist in a salute to show his readiness. His mother smiled and copied the gesture.

"Let's go!" she said. She's so silly, Daniel thought. It was clearly up to him to keep a mature head on their outing. Four and three quarters after all.

They went out the front door, across the yard, and through a people-sized door that opened in the larger gate. Outside was the town of Laston. The domain of the dread lord Daniel, the people who lived there worms crawling beneath his boots. They turned out to be quite charming worms, and Daniel was feeling cheerful enough to return their greetings. Of course, that didn't mean he wasn't willing to report them to the guards if they took advantage and tried to start a conversation.

Inspecting his domain for the first time, Daniel found it to be disappointingly normal. Nothing stood out to him as historical. No thatch roofing or Tudor style framework of painted wooden beams. Just white houses with red tile roofs. Daniel had been hoping to find a starving street urchin to take home as an indentured servant, but this was not the place to find them. Maybe he would need to let grandfather know people weren't letting things go like they were supposed to.

They turned a corner onto a street that ran down the hill, giving a clear view through the heart of the town. Laston was a walled town on a single hill but one that seemed to be split into two levels. The higher-end they were coming from was mostly townhouses, although their house was the biggest and the only one in its own walled-off compound. The lower portion was almost entirely taken up by three large constructions and their surroundings. Spaced out to the left and right were two similarly giant-sized slate grey squat square blocks. Each one dwarfed several larger than normal buildings around it.

"What are those things?" Daniel asked, pointing them out

"They're apartment blocks. It's a bunch of families all living together, each with their own small house inside the bigger building."

"But how did they make them? They're so big! And what about the ones around them?"

"Earth magic. The same way they made the walls. And the smaller ones are all places that help people there live their lives. You see that one there, that's the food hall where they cook food and everyone from the big block goes to eat."

"Why would they do that, can't they have a kitchen in their house like us?"

"It's easier that way. Did you think we only cook for the family in our house?"

Huh. "No of course I didn't. What's that then?" Daniel asked, pointing in front of them

"That's the market where we are headed."

In the open between the two blocks, straddling the road they were on that led to a gate out of town, was a similarly sized open square. The floor of the whole thing was covered in a vibrant pattern of tessellating red and white shapes. And it wasn't the clean but duller red and white of many of the houses. The colours sparkled in the sun like some kind of showpiece, even with the people walking back and forth across it. The square was bordered by a thick band of red, and then inside that by a row of shops that faced into the middle.

As they reached the square and started to cross it towards a shop in the corner Daniel noticed a smooth black stone obelisk standing in the centre. The obelisk was maybe the same height as a person, but twice as thick, and there was a couple standing by it talking to each other. Both had a hand reached out and held touching the obelisk and both had a piece of paper in their other hand. As Daniel inspected the scene, trying to understand what they were doing, a third person approached. Walking up to the obelisk on the side away from the other couple, he touched it and was suddenly also holding a piece of paper, which he started to read.

"Mum, Mum! What is that thing? What are those people doing?" Daniel cried, pointing out the strange going-on.

"That's the status obelisk sweetheart. They'll tell you about that when you start school. You can't use it till you are older anyway."

Status- Daniel tripped, barely managing to stay upright, distracted by a strange sensation. What was that?

"Are you alright?" Mum asked, her tone turning stern when he nodded. "Then pay attention as you walk. You could hurt yourself!"

"Yes Mum," Daniel responded dutifully, and then immediately stopped paying attention and let himself be guided by her hand.

There was a dip in his mind when he thought the word Status, like running his tongue over the gap of a recently missing tooth. He explored it with a sense he didn't know he had, similar to touch but clearly something else. It was as if there were a thin slice missing beneath the length of the word whenever he clearly thought it in his mind. There was a jagged edge at the bottom going up and down. He felt his way along that edge, mapping it with a sense of not touch, and when he got to the end, the thought completed, but louder, and a blue tablet appeared in his hands.

Status.

Not a stone tablet from god on the mountains. An electronic one, with a touchscreen, the same type someone might use to watch a film on a train journey.

"What the hell is this?" Daniel cried, just noticing they were in some kind of shop now. His mother turned from talking to an older man dressed in black to address him.

"What are you talking about poppet?"

"This! This thing here! Shouldn't this be wigging you out?"

His mum gave him an exasperated look.

"This shouldn't take too long. Can you be a good girl and keep quiet for me?"

Saying that she went back to her conversation with the shopkeeper. Daniel poked at her with the tablet and watched unsurprised as it passed straight through her. Ah yes alien god magic hello again!

Looking at the screen, there was a character screen there, like a status display screen from a role-playing game. His character screen. Daniel let go of the tablet, leaving it floating mid-air in front of him, and started to rub his forehead.