Chapter 1: Family

It has been close to two months now, and I realized that regaining control over my body was far harder than I could have ever imagined. I imagine this must be what it is like to revalidate after a being in coma for many years, completely revalidating meant I needed to get all my muscles in shape as it was impossible to exert any strength with them. I had to take very meager steps and slowly build up from the beginning. Getting up on my feet even now still seems like a distant goal. A normal baby would start crawling between 6 and 10 months, but I know that I can do better than that by conscious effort. What I have been training most are my pectoral muscles, for a little more than two months now I try to do some exercises that exert them to the fullest.  Thankfully my never ending efforts at least seemed to have some results, as I kept getting better at exerting force with my upper body.

There was however also some slight concerning developments taking place. As you can imagine, trying to act like a baby all day every day is mentally taxing and probably near impossible for even the best of actors. Unfortunately I don’t count among the best actors, so it is only natural that one would get suspicious looking at my behavior. I’ve been part of the natural science club since my school time, and have never been amazing at the more cultural oriented courses. I never imagined that would come back to haunt me like this though. I really try to do my best in keeping up the act, only doing ‘muscle training’ when I know mother can’t possibly notice and acting like a drooling idiot which seems to be the normal disposition for children my age. Even if I have never been lauded to be the most socially or even emotionally perceptive person, I do notice that mother is giving me some worried looks ever so often lately. What can I even do about that?

Mother becoming suspicious of me would be very troublesome, to say the least. Even if I have been able to deduce some things about my new living situation, there are still plenty of things I’m not in the know about. What I’m most worried about is how this society treats people that are out of the norm. Even if medieval -studies has never been my field of expertise, and probably never will be, the manner of treatment odd or exceptional people received in medieval Europe is far from desirable. If only to sum up a small list of things I want to avoid most at this point: being burned as a witch, being abandoned in the wilderness or being sold off as a slave among other things.  If all these things happen here is something I’m still in the dark about.  

As an act of precaution I upped my acting efforts, hoping to ease mother’s worries, pulling from reserves I never even knew about and hurting my recently often damaged pride even further. Like that daily life simply trudged forward at a snail’s pace, the unease between mother and me didn’t increase too much, but it was still always there. Like an uninvited guest that wouldn’t leave no matter what I did. As I realized I couldn’t do anything about it I decided it might simply be best not to think too much about, if my hairs turn grey out of stress at my age that would be something right? Haha.

I was starting to become extremely bored and tired having no other stimulations than eating, sleeping, interacting with mother and training. Even if I wanted to do something else, this weak body made me unable to do so. Somewhere deep inside I might have hoped for something to shake things up, to bring some new spice to this tedious daily life that was quickly becoming a chore.

Fate saw to it that I didn’t have to wait long. On an otherwise unassuming day my daily playtime with mother was suddenly interrupted by the harsh sound of our door knocker. It was still quite early, and mother usually didn’t entertain guests at this hour. Unsurprisingly, mother left to open the door with a puzzled expression, no doubt wondering who our clearly uninvited and unexpected visitor might be.  As she looked out of our window that puzzled expression soon turned into an overjoyed one. I do not recall if I have ever seen mother that genuinely happy, her smile looked so radiant I wouldn’t be surprised if she suddenly started shining. With incredible speed she rushed at the front door and practically ripped open the front door.  As she literally jumped to greet the visitor, she left my field of vision.

That brings me to my situation right now. I am trying my hardest to listen in on what is happening at the door, as I am unable to see what is happening right now. I can hear mother talking to a young man outside, and occasionally I can hear some strange clanking sounds, like a crescendo of metal cans. I can’t grasp too much of the conversation but I do hear plenty of laughing and giggling, making me assume that they both must be in a pleasant mood. I also hear my name being dropped, among other things. As mother says the sentence that I have recently began to interpret as “Please come in!” that peculiar sound of metal cans identifies.  Then ‘that’ suddenly entered the room.

It’s a knight, that’s what comes to my mind in this situation. Yes this is surely a full armored knight, why is he holding me up so high though? With my small size it feels like I am really high up, and heights have always been my one weakness. While desperately closing my eyes to keep my mind of my acrophobia, I try to imagine what is happening here. As I reluctantly peek to the side I see mom is watching me with an amused expression from the sidelines. If this would happen to a normal baby would cry right? Should I cry right now?

I must have made an amazing expression, as mother hurriedly gestures the armored knight to put me back on the couch. As he does so he slides back his visor, and a wave of recognition hits me. This man does look slightly different than back then, with his unshaved looking rugged beard and his relatively long dark hair, but I recognize him as the other human that I witnessed back in that cave, that was engaging that monster in close combat. He did not wear full plate armor back then, and he also looked somewhat younger, so I did not immediately recognize him. With all the things that happened it’s not hard to imagine who this man must be. Looks like father finally returned home.

After briefly going to some other room father returned in more casual looking clothes. Currently he is trying to amuse me by making various noises and playing with my hands. I guess something like this is natural. He might have been there at my birth, as I do not have recollections about that event or for some time afterwards, but I can tell he must have left on some kind of mission for at least two months after that, doing god knows what. If I came back to my family after such a long time and to the child left behind I would shower it with love too. I attempt to return his feelings as best as I can. Most likely I will spend a large part of my life together with these two so having a good relationship would be great. Maintaining this pleasant atmosphere throughout my childhood would be the nice after all. It seems my father is satisfied with my reactions as he turns away from me with a smile and hugs mother again. I can sense a lovey-dovey atmosphere permeating from this couple. I hope my mother’s mind is set at ease at least somewhat with this. She was getting increasingly stressed and seemed to be getting somewhat worried about me lately. Now that father’s here to support her things might get somewhat better.

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Still, that armor did give me somewhat of a surprise. A full costum fit plate like that must be quite an investment. I already had my suspicions after seeing this house, but it’s quite likely that my parents belong to the higher echelons of society. After all, the ones that could afford something like this back in the old world during medieval times were mostly noblemen. I already know that both father and mother are capable fighters, after witnessing their battle against the monster, but they probably aren’t some run off the mill mercenaries. Ahhhhh, I want to know more! Being a baby is so frustrating, I want to go investigate!

After that homecoming event, day to day life continued, with some slight adjustments. From time to time father or mother would leave home, probably going back to their jobs. Most of the time one of the two would stay home to watch over me. It was during these days that I first saw that our family were not the only ones making regular use of the house. Apparently we had some kind of personal attendant that did odd jobs around the house like cleaning, maintaining our food stocks and generally looking after the mansion I am living in. He is a somewhat burly man with balding hair and a magnificent mustache that goes by the name Eustace. He seems to avoid interacting with me however, leaving most of that to my parents. The first time I saw him was when he was pruning the trees in the garden. At that time I was still wondering who he was, but after spotting occasionally and seeing the small building in the back of our garden I figured out who he was and what kind of work he did. Another servant or hire that I became far more acquaintanced with was the wet nurse that would wean me if mother was off to work for a long time. She was a kind looking woman with a homely build named Gertrude, and she would often bring her own child with her if she came to look after me. Her own kid couldn’t be older than a year, so he became an excellent reference for normal baby behavior. As you can imagine, babies don’t make the best conversation partners, so I didn’t interact too much with the kid. She treated me kindly enough but from time to time she would have a somewhat complex expression or mutter something. Well, a wet nurse must now best how a normal baby should behave so she might have noticed something is slightly off with me. It never went to something like full blown suspicion fortunately enough, looks like my cover hasn’t been blown.

Perhaps the most important knowledge I have gained these past weeks might be the names of my parents. I am kind off embarrassed it took me this long to figure them out to be honest. When she was raising me alone mother didn’t mention something that might be her name too much, and even if visitors came increasing the likelihood of learning it when they would be addressing each other, my grasp on the language was still too shabby to separate names from words, or mom would bring me back to my room. But now I finally now them both; my father’s name seems to be Aidan, while my mother is named Deirdre. In my defense I have been thrown in a completely foreign country and have basically been tasked to found out its language on the go, so it is only natural that it took me this long to figure it out right?  I’m sure that is the case here. It’s somewhat like throwing a child into the pool to teach it how to swim right? Languages have never been my forte anyways. I might have been duo lingual but that was only due to constant exposure to media from the Empire from a young age, allowing me to pick up that language aside from my mother tongue relatively easily. Truly learning a new language was something I found very difficult. As you can imagine, I didn’t travel too much.

But enough about that. Besides these new pieces of information I’ve obtained I finally reached my first goal! It has been about 7 weeks since father came home, and I’ve finally done it. After tireless training and tons of trial and error, I can finally crawl relatively successfully! I would puff up my chest if I could. My technique isn’t too refined yet, at most I’m merely pulling my body forth with my arms, doing something that kind of resembles an army crawl. Crawling on hands and knees is still quite difficult for me, but I am sure that I will be able to do that soon enough. From there on it is training my legs and sense of balance, and the day that I am finally able to walk around might finally arrive!

But for now this is plenty. I can finally go to places on my own now, if my parents permit me to leave the fenced bed at least. After showing both my parents my achievement they showered me with praise. The cheering improved my mood even more. But the most exhilarating thing is of course the incomparable feeling of freedom I have obtained. Compared to being unable to do anything finally being able to move around, even if it is in a somewhat limited fashion, is amazing after all.

First things first, I am going to explore every nook and cranny of this mansion that I can get to. I do recognize that going outside is probably still too dangerous for me so I will lay that off for now until I am at least able to walk, but I am sure that there are still many sights here that I have yet to witness here in this large mansion. What’s in all those rooms that I have not yet entered? Where does that hallway lead to? What’s up in the attic and down in the cellar? Being close to resolving all these unknowns makes me very excited! They might count amongst the unknowns that are incomparably small compared to several of the baffling things that I’ve witnessed but don’t understand yet, but they are quite literally the baby steps on my journey for knowledge.  

My parents best beware, as now that I am mobile there is no way that I am going back to sitting still or laying down in my room. Let the exploration commence!

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I must apologize for the long time it took me to finish this chapter. To be honest I wanted to get it finished a lot quicker than this, but I am approaching the end of my current term in my studies, and excursions, practicals took a lot more of my time and energy than expected. Anyway, I present to you the first chapter of what I have tentatively called the childhood arc of the story. I hope I get the next part done somewhat earlier, but exams are approaching so it might take a while again. I can promise at least that it won’t take longer than a week or so.

Anyways, thanks for reading the chapter. If you find any grammatical errors or other strange things please let me now and I will fix it.