1 year -

Several more months had elapsed and with each passing day my body grew stronger, I had truly begun to think of it as “my body” rather than “the host body”. The affection I felt for Mother and Father was no doubt a side effect of this form and the hormones of childhood, but did knowing the origin of an emotion make it any less real for those experiencing it? I couldn’t say.

In any case, things were progressing well. The duration of my full consciousness was increasing, and the gaps of fugue between them were shrinking at a similar rate. Soon my mind would be entirely mine once again. Though I had to admit, being able to disassociate at the drop of a hat had significant advantages so far. I didn’t need to worry myself too much though, my body had finally begun producing teeth!

My days of relying on Neia and Daniel for my sustenance were soon to come to a glorious end. The milk fiend would be dissuaded from humiliating me by force if necessary! Though, it should be noted that the agony of having my jaw split from the inside by force-able protrusions of bone was no small torment. I understood more than ever why children cry so much. The humiliation of diapers and the torment of teething, it was a fate I would not wish upon many.

On the subject of food, the nutritional density of my diet thus-far had proven rather substantial. Neia had humiliated me less and less frequently as my teeth came in, and I had yet to have to resort to violence against her milk tanks. I’m sure neither of us would have enjoyed that. As milk consumption declined, my parents began handing me other solid foods in more frequency. Most of them cubed, or cut into small pieces, but occasionally I received a vegetable or a fruit in it’s entirety to relieve some of my pain by teething.

In the past few months I experienced a rapid up-tick not only in the size of my body, but in muscular competence as well. I think I’d soon be able to approach the hurdle of walking. Mother would no doubt make a fuss about my first steps, but they were necessary if I wished to learn more of this place.

Achieving my first steps required me to clear several incidental milestones first. My languages was coming along fine, and was mostly unrelated to my physical endeavors. However, there was one literal barrier I could not overcome alone. The door. It was not only safer to try and walk outside with grass and dirt to cushion me, and no furniture to avoid, but it served a dual purpose of gathering intel.

When I looked up at Father and said “Owside?” for the first time, he nearly broke down the door in his rush to take me. Daniel was earnest if nothing else.

Once outside I was greeted to a visage I had all but expected, and even still it took my breath away. Deep green rolling hills and soft swaying grass pastures. The gentle peace and quiet of a rural farmland waiting just outside my home for all this time, finally greeted me like a friend.

I’d seen glimpses out of windows, and I’d even stood in the doorway before, but being held in Father’s arms at the edge of the yard was different. I could see the other houses scattered around at a distance, and the sun felt warmer on my face. The height advantage even let me see past the fence. I giggled in glee before I could stop myself, The horror, and set my full focus learning to walk.

Father set me down and I began to stand up, an endeavor of itself that I had only recently mastered. While standing unassisted had proven a trifling matter, if I attempted to move almost at all, I often found myself falling. The combination of an underdeveloped brain and sensitive inner ear.

Each wobbling step was a failure, and soon Daniel realized what I was trying to do. Grasping my hands from above me, he served as a stabilizer and I waddled my way in small circles around our garden. Effective, if embarrassing.

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I had to repeat this process for several days before I could take a step without falling over. Though a single step was all I managed at first, within a few weeks, mother and father were both going outside with me to watch me fumble for movement. I suppose without recording magic they wanted to see my steps and burn it into their memory.

The ruckus they caused at the end of the week when I finally managed six steps unassisted has even attracted the neighbor down the dirt path we call a road. I felt like I’d seen this person before, but I didn’t recognize them enough to know for certain. Before they could reach our gate though, mother picked me up and whisked me inside. I could hear father talking as the door shut behind us, but I was more concerned with our sudden flight. Was mother hiding me from the neighbors? And if I had actually met this person before, was mother hiding herself?

I couldn’t answer either of these questions on my own at that point, and I lacked the language skills to ask detailed questions. Thus, language would be my next goal as I continued to practice walking unassisted.

The language in this region was most definitely not Teraqi. I wasn’t even sure it belonged to a similar language group with how unfamiliar it sounded to me. I might even have been on the opposite side of the world to Teraq, since I thought myself well versed in our neighboring tongues.

Language was no barrier to my intellect however, and while sentence structure did still evade me slightly, the phonetic rules of word construction were simple. I had grown an increasingly potent list of words, most of them associated via observation of my parents, but each one another granule in my ability to comprehend others. The word for magic was not something I had heard yet, my parents both appeared content to live their lives entirely mundane. However, most cultures were similar in their word for it, so I would be able to extrapolate the word for certain soon.

When I finally achieved speech this nation, wherever I was, would be brought to heel for my endeavors. They would protect and worship the prodigy of a generation. For now though, I desired snackies. Gods dammit, why do my thoughts keep wandering like this.

“Mama?” I called out across the house from my seat on a coarsely woven rug in our central room. Neia, my mother, seemed to respond better to infantalized pronunciations than any grammatically correct words. Soon she came sweeping into the room like a summer breeze. Everything she did had a flowing elegance and rhythm to it, like she merely floated above the world rather than living in it.

“Hi honey!” She smiled brightly and lifted me from the floor into her arms. I couldn’t help but smile on my own in response, the warmth of her presence was a subconscious comfort to my body.

“Carrot!” I managed to shout out after a momentary fumble. The interior of my mouth was shifting almost constantly with these teeth, so pronouncing the “R” sound had been difficult. Plus, the vegetable in question was crunchy and made my teeth hurt less.

“Are your teeth hurting or are you just hungry?” Mother questioned as she carried me across the house to the kitchen and larder. I don’t know what this woman expected me to say, I’d barely gotten more than one word out at a time, but effort yielded results.

“Teef?” is the only answer I managed, accidentally inflecting my tone to sound like a question as I struggled with the sounds necessary for the word. It was close enough.

Soon I’m placed in a high chair at our only table, a freshly peeled carrot in my hands, the sheer size of the thing requiring both hands for me to manipulate it.

“There you go V̷̼̒i̸̫̅n̷̦̿c̶̦̓e̶͓̒n̴͇̉t̷̳́” mother cooed down at me, gently patting my back as she set off to do several small chores in the kitchen while supervising me. I wasn’t paying attention to her though. I was caught off guard by the word she spoke. I’d heard it several times now since my rebirth, and always at the end of a sentence. I hadn’t been able to place it’s meaning so far, but there are times when I didn’t hear it for days.

Just then, I understood most of the words in that sentence. Except that one. Mother was speaking to me, she’d handed me the carrot and then said “there you go” but that word was last. My heart beat began to race in my chest. No. Dear gods no.

I prayed that this was just a peculiarity of language, that it’s just a coincidental expression that sounds similar. I couldn’t bare the thought. I needed it to be anything else.

Was my name Vincent? I felt my new teeth gently pierce my lip, my focus shattered by the sudden revelation. For the first time in my living memory, I cried willingly.