Well I woke up the next day and my routine went as always, I’m still uncomfortable with Dina helping me, went to have breakfast and like I saw the previous time father spoke to each of us telling us about our schedules, he went through each of my brothers and finally it was my turn.
- Well Carter your schedule will be a bit different, you will be learning math, language, etiquette, geography and some history, in the afternoon I want you to go out run for a while do some exercise, after tea come back and your mothers will decide, we won’t start your lessons in magic until your meditation is successful, your older sister Caroline will teach you about meditation.
I saw the surprised face of my sister Caroline, who was really surprised to be given that responsibility, then the breakfast ended and we all moved, when I enter the office we were going to use for my lesson I find my third mother there.
- Hello Carter, how are you? Take a sit and we will start our lessons.
- Fine third mom – I say and sit down at the desk, finding the desk quite nice and being able to have 2 people sitting down one beside the other.
- Ok to start, I need to test what is your level in math and in language, the other subjects I will teach you myself, about magic your Selene will take charge of those lessons once you have learned how to meditate, and don’t worry you will know when you learn it because it will appear as an active skill in your status screen. – She says and wait to see if I have a question.
- So I can check my status screen?
- Yes you can, you can summon your status screen in your mind by calling it, that way you can check on your own, ready for the test or do you have more questions? – She ask me.
I stay quiet and my test start the math part I scored perfectly for about 9 pages of the test, on the 10 and onwards I had some questions I did not know, but on some pages I was able to answer everything even though some questions were obviously at the college level the only issue was that I could not read the words, I could recognize the numbers they had adapted the Arabic numerals from earth, but I did not know how to read, some question I had to ask my third mom what the question said, and well what can I say about my language test, it went blank, no answers.
- You are fine in math for a long time, may need some supplements way later but you don’t know how to read?
- If you ask me about the heroes’ languages, I can answer you, but this one I do not know it – I say whispering.
My third mom suddenly understand, and she smiles and start my lessons in earnest.
Later that night after playing on the yard and finishing dinner I went to my room and I see my sister there ready to give me a lesson.
- Carter, ready to begin? – ask Caroline
- Yeah what should I do?
She goes towards the window and I see a couple of cushions near it, they are a not soft but comfortable, she sits and start to teach and explain.
- First you have to sit in a way you find comfortable, the cushions are made so that you can sit easily for long periods of time, after you are comfortable you will have to focus on your breathing, you need a good rhythm, and once you enter meditation you will be able to use your magical sense to feel the magic. – Caroline tells me
I sit and follow her instructions, is hard and after a couple of hours of trying to meditate she interrupts me.
- Well that’s enough for today carter.
- But I did nothing. – I say
- Don’t worry this is normal, it will take a while before you can do it but we will help one another each night, go to bed brother. – She tells me smiling.
And this became my routine for quite a while, almost a whole month, I was having success on my normal classes and I was finally falling into meditation but the skill did not appear yet and they told me that I was missing something and to take it easy, after another 2 weeks finally something changed.
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I was meditating when I suddenly felt something different, I was able to see without opening my eyes, I could sort of see like in some videogames of my previous life, my room became all bluish black, and I was able to see lots of tiny points of lights like little fireflies I saw easily 7 different colors and it was strange, some of the red ones appeared more often close to the torches, the blue ones appear everywhere but very faintly, green ones also appear everywhere, the gold ones appears close to the ground, there were some white ones that appears everywhere, some of those looked black but when I focused a bit I saw that they were more ebony color than black, and finally some silver ones that lasted longer before disappearing, it was really amazing and I could not control my excitement, this was magic? I did not know but it made me excited, and this messed me up and I interrupted my own meditation due to the excitement, my sister should have felt the change too.
- Carter you did it! – She says with a smile.
- Yes I did but is that really magic? It looked like a bunch of fireflies – I say.
- You will have to wait for second mom to explain to you the importance of what you saw, but for now you need to go rest, your head is going to hurt. – She says
And then I started to feel how I was gaining a headache and this looked like it would not be fun, but suddenly it stopped building up and I was confused, my sister seeing my face decided to explain a bit more.
- Carter our magic muscle needs training just like any other muscle, and the more you use it the more it will grow, there are some exercises to do while you meditate that will help but at the beginning you need to be able to enter meditation for at least 2 hours without your head hurting, for now you had 5 minutes. – She says
- But you how? – I ask
- Carter I now understand why they asked me to teach you, I’m also training myself to not only focus on my magic but also outside, I had to keep an eye on you while I meditated and it’s not easy, this is also my own training, and I was able to find the time because that is another exercise you will do in the future with your meditations, but for now I’m here to teach and to keep you from overexerting yourself and harming your own magic muscle – she says while smiling at me.
- So more work but not today? How fast I was? – I ask
- Well you were faster than the average by a good bit, most people take around 3 months before their first look at the fireflies – I see she laughs at the name I gave the motes of light – so a month and half for it, is a very good result.
- How long does a genius take? How long did you take? – A bit of my competitive side comes out, maybe it my own boyish side.
I have felt that now over the last almost 2 months that my emotions and my way of reacting is more like a kid even with all my memories, I suspect it has to do with either the gods or maybe the state of maturity of my brain, but hey I’m not going to worry about it, is fine being a hyperactive squirrel on crack, I have lots of fun learning and doing all kinds of things.
- Well my sister says, geniuses have taken as little as one week to see the fireflies – she giggles – while I did it in twenty six days, your other sisters are all around the month mark, but you should not feel too bad women do tend to be faster in this specific exercise, I do not know why, your brothers on the other hand all took around between a month and a half to two and a half months, you would have to ask Adrian what was his record since he is the only other boy that was close to the month and a half mark, he should remember how many days it was if you want to compare, your own record is forty four days.
I deflate a bit and I see that she comes and hugs me, I enjoy her hugs a lot.
Well after that experience I went to bed, and to continue my studies and practices, I was able to pick up the written portion of our language fairly fast, at one point my third mom ask me if I want to learn dwarven and elven and I say yes I also ask her the name of our language and surprisingly is human, I laugh and my third mom looks at me funny.
- What mom? Why are you looking me funny? – I ask
- Well because your reaction is the same as the one the heroes have in the historical record. - she says – and this is one of the things that some of us do not understand, is not this the human language?
- Did the heroes not explain this, is a very easy explanation?
- Maybe they did, but I could not find it yet maybe they did not consider it important, also why is it that you do not have the skill translate on your status page?
- What is that skill?
- Well when the heroes came here they got some skills with their blessing most of them were different but there was always one that was translate – my third mom says.
- Well when I did recover my memory what it did was add my memories of my previous life to this life, and in this life you already taught me how to speak the language – I say, then I continue with her previous question – and well why do we find it funny is because on earth, the world the heroes came from, there was a lot of languages easily more than 20 different ones, and remember all of us in earth were humans, it was the only race there so we did not call our language human, most of us used the name of a country to identify a language.
- Do you remember the languages from earth? – She ask
- Only two of them, the two I was proficient with. – I tell her.
Another thing I ended up learning was our geography we lived close to a mountain range it was super weird because the mountain range sort of formed an x and the strange thing is that we had 4 human kingdoms around the x it looked weird and it looked a bit impossible, until they told me that this 4 kingdoms have moved and made backup cities in this locations with advice from the gods, we were close to most of the resources to keep the kingdoms going and maybe even making them succeed against the invasion, and this connected with my history lessons.
We had been at war for a long time, not only us but the dwarves and elves too, the dwarves were helping the gnomes and the elves were helping the unicorns, and us humans were helping the pixies, when the war started to go south they created this secondary capital cities in this area by advice of the gods and moved a lot of documents and other stuff here for safekeeping, nowadays most of the continent we live is taken by the demons, I asked if there were world maps, and she told me that there was some on the royal archive, Important part of the story is that our current city was only made around 100 years ago and it was a family tragedy, we had some family issues and we got overwhelmed, but at the end our family rallied together and saved all the civilians, ensuring they would be remembered by their heroics instead of their issues, she did not explain more than that. Another important point is that when I asked for dates, my third mom insisted I waited until my tactical lessons, they did not teach the dates at this moment because telling the kids that we were slowly losing and had been losing for a long time is not good, I have a way to deal but most others do not, I told her I understood and left it be, they were still going to give me the info just in the future so why would I be impatient about it.
I studied hard and finally after another month of practice in my meditation I was able to be in the field of fireflies for two hours, it was time to start my studies with my second mom and my own mother on magic, I could not wait for these lessons.