Prologue 3: Nascence
While reading the paper I’m interrupted by the sound 2 pair of tiny feet running down the stairs. With a slam the door opens and my cute daughter and one of her friends storm into the living room.
“Dad? It has been 40 minutes! Is the cake done?” She and her friend both look at me with eyes full of expectation. I slowly put away my paper and stand up from my chair.
“It should be about done by now yes. If you guys set the table you might get a bigger slice of it…” Before I even finish my sentence Gerda and Frida run to grab the necessary objects from the cupboard. As my daughter and her friend are standing on their toes to place the plates and the cutlery on the table I move to the kitchen. The smell of freshly baked cake steadily intensifies as I move from the living room to the dining room, until I finally arrive at the kitchen. There is no door between the dining room and the kitchen and as I enter the fragrant smelling room I spot Ingrid carefully decorating the cake with some self-made whipped cream.
She must have heard me coming as she turns questioningly turns her head. “What is it dear?” She asks me with her sweet voice. Her normally long sleek black hair is bundled together in a white hair net, which make her ash-gray beautiful eyes even more pronounced. She is also wearing that one cute apron I bought for her as a present some time ago. Her near professional getup all for baking a cake does kind of show her perfectionistic nature.
“Nothing really pressing, honey. The children are really looking forward to your cake, and since I expected it to be around done by now I just thought I would check on how it has turned out.”
“Ha, you always downplay your own motives Frits. In truth you want to eat it just as bad as the kids do right?” I could only smile wryly at that remark. She can always see right through me somehow, even though others often think of me as a somewhat sly and reserved person. I take a look at the cake and see that it has risen to a good height and it seems to be perfectly baked. After waiting for Ingrid to finish decorating I move the piece of confectionary to the dining room while she changes clothes. The girls have already prepared the cutlery and the plates, and are watching me in anticipation as I move the cake towards the table. It’s a modest table adorned with a colorful cloth with a red stitches on white pattern, large enough to accommodate 4 people and some guests if necessary. I can almost see the drool falling from their mouths as the girls wait in anticipation on their chairs. When Ingrid is done changing and takes her seat I finally declare that it is time to dig in.
“I’ll leave the honors to you Ingrid, you made it after all!” I gesture at the knife meant for dividing the cake. While smiling she proceeds to move it towards it. “Is something like this enough?” She asks the two children. “No bigger, bigger!” They respond in kind. It kind of reminds of myself as a child, with my endless appetite for confectionaries. Ingrid starts cutting the cake.
As the sharp knife digs into the cake along the lines of the cut a red liquid oozes up, and a queer smell enters fills the room.
Suddenly a sense of unease takes a hold of me, but Ingrid just continues slicing the cake until two slightly largish slices have been formed in the mold. The children raise their plates in anticipation and Ingrid serves the slices. At the sight of the ‘cake’ on their plates, an overwhelming feeling of disgust washes over me, nearly making me puke. Two gross writhing humps adorn their plates, resembling bloody pieces of meat writhing with maggots. Despite this grotesque scene the children start eating it all with delight. As they shove it down, writhing maggots and drops of blood spill all over. As I am watching the children while feeling disturbed and baffled Ingrid’s voice suddenly manages to capture my attention. Like nothing strange is happening she holds up a big slice of ‘cake’ above the mold and is trying to get me to cooperate. “Dear, please give me your plate? I sliced quite a large piece since you always love sweets, so I hope you are satisfied with this.” She says to me in a lovey-dovey tone. The disparity between what I’m witnessing and what I’m hearing is quite unsettling. What the hell is going on? This isn’t right! I need to get out of here this instant! Immediately and without responding to her I stand up from my chair, and under some sounds of distress from Ingrid I desperately bolt for the exit.
This isn’t my family, this is some horrible freak show. While trying to move the door handle in great desperation suddenly I feel a powerful grip on my shoulder. With a staggering amount of force I am spun around and forced against the wall. “Where are you going husband? You Know you can’t leave! You promised me we would be together forever!” Ingrid pins my arms behind my back with an unnatural amount of force her face warped in a sad expression.
“Stop, you are hurting me…” I try to free myself from Ingrid’s grasp to no avail, where is this strength coming from? I feel her nails digging into my flesh. “You can’t leave! You can’t leave! You can’t leave! You can’t leave…….!” Ingrid keeps saying those words, rattling on like a broken record. Because she is pretty much pressing her body against mine, I can smell her breath. It is an all too familiar scent; the scent unburied corpses, of illness and festering wounds. The scent that belonged to the scenes I witnessed on that one day. It is a horrible stench that I can still clearly recall even to this day.
“We belong together Frits, why are you trying to leave my side!” Suddenly she embraces me tightly, too tightly. Thoroughly undaunted by my struggles, she clamps down on me like a vice. Under the great strain I feel something break and I lose consciousness.
..........
I awaken in cold sweat. After taking brief note of my surroundings my heartbeat finally calms down a bit. It had been a dream after all. Wait, heartbeat?
I desperately struggle to move my head and take a look at myself, but somehow I can’t move my body well. The most I can manage is to fling my head around to get a grasp of my current location, but since I’m lying on my back and am unable to coordinate my movements I can’t take a look at myself. I seem to be lying in some sort of huge room, in an enormous fenced off bed. Since I am touching the bed it seems my days as a wandering incorporeal being are over. The one thing that does not seem to have changed however is my vision. Even now, all I see is shades of gray. How peculiar. I marvel for a moment about the return of my senses and feeling sensations that I have not felt for some. Another welcome change is that the chronic pain that had been caused by my previously sick body is gone, and feeling everything without that filter of pain is amazing. It nearly brings a tear to my eye. After the initial excitement is over I seek to make sense of my current situation.
It seems like lately I’ve been doing that very often. I mean what is with all these incomprehensible phenomena right after the other? If there is some arbiter above responsible for my current predicaments, it probably thoroughly enjoys toying with me.
Earlier I noticed that I am in some fenced bed-like contraption in a large room. I have seen similar contraption back in use back in the empire, fenced off beds, but since that situation seems unlikely I discard the thought.
I might be in some sort of hostage or prisoner situation. If so it might be worthwhile to alert others to the fact that I am awake. At best I might get saved by some random passersby, at worst my captor may come in and do something bad to me. Even if that happens the fact remains that I am powerless, only my mind seems to fully function. If my captor does come I might get to know who is responsible for this situation. I try to articulate a normal call for aid, however all that passes my lips is unintelligible whining and high pitched shreaks.
Am I partially paralyzed? What is going on? Even though the message shouldn’t have been delivered with that, the noise did not go unnoticed. After a short while I could see the door being opened through the fence. A woman walks into her room. She has somewhat dark hair that is twined into a braid that reaches to her shoulder bones, and her slightly sharp features and her figure give me a very fit impression. Suddenly I recognize her, it is the woman that I had saved in that cave with the monster. It does however look like she has grown exponentially since that time. With her size she dwarfs the fenced off bed I am resting in, and she approaches me in large strides. I have no clue as to what is happening. Unconsciously I had tried to back away but my body doesn’t move as instructed and only stumbles about. I already hate this weak and useless body, and I’ve only just regained my lucidity.
“****** **** *** ******* ***** ** * ******.” The woman starts talking in a soothing tone. It appears that she is addressing me, as there is no-one else in the room. Unfortunately I can’t understand a word of what she is saying. It certainly sounds like she is speaking some European language, but none I have ever heard before. Against my better knowledge I try to give her an answer, but once again only gibberish leaves my lips. I rack my brain, have I heard that language before? It seems to sound like some kind of mix between Germanic and Romantic languages, but it is like none I ever heard before. If I don’t even know the language then where the hell am I? Another unknown is added to a steadily increasing mental list that I've started compiling.
While worrying about my current situation the woman arrived at the edge of the fence, and while I powerlessly lie on my back her massive arms lift me up to her chest. While humming a soothing song in a foreign language, she cradles me like a baby in her arms. Despite feeling humiliated by this situation, somewhere within me I feel nostalgic, as I remember my parental home in a rural Village near Leiden. As I am reminiscing about my childhood suddenly my train of thoughts gets interrupted by yet another startling event. Without any warning suddenly the woman moves aside the top of her garments and bares her moderate mounds. Baffled by the situation I can’t help but stare intently at what is shown to me. A large part of the top half of her body is exposed and one of her modest breasts is in full view and in fact very close to my face. As I try to avert my gaze, which is made even more difficult because of this infuriating body of mine, I can’t help but take note about the state of her body. I could see it from her figure before, but the woman is indeed very muscular, and I can also that various scars adorn her skin. Is this what an amazon’s body would have looked like? Well, aside from having more than one breast of course.
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In light of these current events, I finally come with a highly probable explanation for what is going on at the moment. Being treated like this along with the evidence of the fenced-off bed, which very much resembles a play-box, clearly indicates that I currently have the body of a baby for some reason. And this woman that is presumably my mother or wet nurse, although I’ve never seen such muscular wet-nurses before, must have thought that my sounds of distress where an indication that it is time to nurse me.
Is this all happening as a result of my rash act back in that cave? Might the method that I used to save her back then have caused all this? In truth I still do not know how I pulled off what I did back there, how I managed to prevent her death. Even if I don’t know the exact reason I can still act on a hunch, and I feel very strongly that my current predicament and my action back then are connected. All manner of hypotheses start springing up in my head but I’m pulled back to reality as a soft sensation against my right cheek.
I hesitate for a moment, I know what is expected from me but there is still that aversion that I have as adult for being babied like this. I feel like I’m being looked at like I’m acting oddly however. No wonder, if a child makes a fuss suddenly I too would come to the conclusion that it’s hungry. Or that its diaper has to be changed, o god please don’t let that happen to me. Anyways to her it would seem like I cried out in hunger, and suddenly I show no signs of acting on that hunger. Even if it is humiliating as an adult man to be babied like this I imagine that it might be best to play the part of a normal baby. A baby with the intelligence of an adult can only be seen as a freak at best, and demon possessed at worst. With my body being weak like this I don’t want to be abandoned.
I decide that it is best to do what she expects me to do. Hmm, so mother milk tastes like this, huh? Even though I have gained a newexperience, it somehow feels like I've lost something in exchange.
.........
Like that my humiliating days as a baby started. All this time it has not even been possible to move my head the way I want it to and my body is still like an immovable brick. It was somewhat like mental torture for me, I felt like a prisoner in my own body. Looking back even wandering around like a spirit might have been better. Several times a day I would be fed in the same way as that first time, but after a while I noted that that was one of the less humiliating things about being a baby.
Perhaps even worse than being a helpless baby however where when my thoughts would turn back to my homeland. I often feel anxious about a lot of things. Had we managed to save the empire for example, where we on time with the fabrication of the generator? What happened to my comrades? How are those that were still alive doing? What happened to those that died, what happened to Ingrid? Ingrid…
Sometimes it felt like a mockery that someone like me would be given a second chance like this. Surely there were people that deserve it more than me. One horrible hypotheses for my current state of being is that I might even have snatched this body from someone else, and the thought of having snatched the body of an innocent child makes me feel horrible.
The only thing that could distract me from those negative thoughts was the time I spent with my mother, and learning about this new place. This new world even, apparently. I still call her mother for now as I still have not managed to get her name yet. I’ve since deduced that she definitely isn’t my wet nurse. I still have not seen my father yet though.
Often mother would carry me around the house, and that gave me some insight into where I am. The house I live in now is clearly like one of those stone and wood houses you would see in the cultural centers of really old cities. It has a very rustic feeling to it. Having quite a few more unopened doors, leading to rooms I still haven’t seen yet. The rooms that I have seen are the living room, the kitchen and my bedroom as well as the master bedroom on the second floor. We also seem to have a small garden in the back, and mother seems to enjoy doing garden work. It looks well-kept and pretty, even though I can’t see the colors of the various plants and flowers. The furniture looked very handcrafted and strongly resembled furniture that I had witnessed in a , was it not for the fact that it seemed to be brand new, or fabricated less than a few years ago. The various tools that were used for mundane tasks also seemed quite low tech compared to the ones that were used back in the empire, but some had a strange twist to them. After seeing that deformed creature and that dwarf use it before in the cave I came to acknowledge magic seems to exist here, but it seems like magic has all sort of unexpected uses for day to day life too.
Everything in the house from the magic tools, the normal tools, the furniture and even the stone slabs and wooden planks that hold the house together have a very handcrafted feel to them. Nothing like the factory produced products I am used to. If I were to summarize the technological level of this place it seems to be about equivalent to that of the late middle ages, although with the assistance of magic some things are far more advanced than that. I also deduced that my financial situation must be pretty good if we have all these tools and such a large house.
Yes all those things are well and good, but I also learned that I actually do have something to complain about. When I first confirmed it, it was almost as big a shock as the fact that I have somehow been reborn as a baby. It was my first day as a baby and I had decided to attentively listen to what my mother said to me while she was interacting with me in an attempt to learn the language. Not long after that I had somehow started to guess what some of her words might mean. I already deduced the word for ‘mother’ along with several other easy ones. Naturally I also sought to pry my own name from her, and I noticed that she kept saying ‘Elaine’ while interacting with me. Back then I had an ominous premonition. The name Elaine was not strange even in the Empire, among those originating from the Frankian territories. What bothered me about being called Elaine however, is that it was a name that was pretty much exclusively used for women. Even though I almost felt like it was inevitable back then, I still wouldn’t back down until I had one hundred percent confirmation. But because my body still refused to listen to what my brain would order it I couldn’t check to see if this premonition might in fact be true. I decided to bide my time, and wait for a good opportunity to confirm it.
It was during the first time that I underwent another humiliating fiasco because of this accursed body that resulted in the need for new underwear that I finally got to do the anxiously awaited check. Despite having mentally prepared myself beforehand, the shock I received because my fears were true was intense. I do not even know what to say of this, but it seems I will have to live with being female from now on.
I also have had quite a while to think and sort things through by now. Thinking about my past, thinking about my future. Because other actions are impossible, I've had a lot of time to sort out my feelings.
Frits Anders died in honorable service to the empire. I will never forget the things I have experienced in that life, the knowledge I have gained. Neither will I forget my deeds and the sins I have committed.
Even if I vow never to forget those things, that does not make it alright to live in the past. I’ve been given this unexpected chance, perhaps undeservedly even. To dismiss such a huge boon out of hand would be nothing less than preposterous, an affront of the highest order against all those others that deserve this just as much if not more than I do. If I can’t pull through and make something of this new life that would be a monumental waste. While thinking about what I can do I came to a conclusion.
It has been a wild ride that has brought me into this situation, and along the way I have witnessed things I still can’t explain. Even now there are many unknowns about my situation: Why am I alive again? Where is this house located, and what exactly is this world? Why has every other sensation returned to me, but am I still unable to see colors? After I died, what were those things that I witnessed? Those are only a few of the things that I want to learn. I am planning to accumulate knowledge and strike out these unknowns. As Elaine I vow to myself, that I will get to the root of all these mysteries.
If I want to do all that however, I need to get this body properly under control first huh. This might become an unexpectedly arduous task. Perhaps I should slowly learn to move each muscle one by one?
………….
That was how my life started anew, as a girl in a strange new world.
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Author's note:
Well, hello again. Sorry that this one took slightly longer than the other chapters. The thing is, those other prologues were already done, and while I was in the midst of writhing this final one I was having some second thoughts on some of the story-boarding and the direction I want to take with this story. I hope you enjoyed this final chapter of the prologue.
The next chapter might take a while longer, as I still have to write it from scratch, while these ones already were mostly done. It will probably take a few days, but who knows, I might finish it quicker than expected.