Something was definitely off about Mark’s new 'family' (if you could even call them that). We had been living on this new world for well over a year (as far as we could tell), but he had still only seen his parents a half dozen times - and while he was taken out for occasional indoor walks by the maids who cared for him, he wasn’t really exposed to anything in the way of familial love or affection. Mark didn’t even seem to notice the lack of (what I would consider) a normal family life, but the difference between our two households was just too large for me to ignore.

Experiences helped shape expectations, and since neither of us had ever experienced being reborn on a new planet, to a potentially alien race, before it happened this time, we didn't have much of a baseline on how reincarnation usually went down. As it turned out, both of us ended up preferring our own situations over that of each other, but again I felt pretty certain that Mark was only so content with his lot because he didn't have such a cool family as I did. That said, since I knew that I was unable to change Mark's situation, I never pushed the issue too hard whenever it came up since I didn't really have anything to gain by 'winning' the argument, and worst case scenario I would just make him upset and depressed that he was born into such cold and lonely circumstances. Our conversations on the topic generally went as follows:

<... Well, I told you about maybe becoming a blacksmith, right? My dad still takes me to the smithy once a month, and I gotta say they do some pretty cool stuff there.>

<... Yeah... I mean, sure! Obviously I'm not gonna give up on getting back... home. We got this, no worries!>

Mark was also having a lot more trouble with the language than I was – mainly because he didn’t have a purple-haired whirlwind of pointy-eared energy as a mother – so I did my best to try and help him out. We still weren’t even sure what his new name was supposed to be, partly because he didn't really care about it but mostly because the maids always called him something that I was nearly certain was a title, not a name; perhaps it meant ‘young master’ or something? He did seem to live in a castle, after all, but the main reason I thought it might not be a name was that it was clearly a two-word form of address, and it was bracketed by grammar that was used for honorifics (it was hard to explain to Mark, since grammar like that didn't even exist in English), like with "The Merrik".

I made a huge mistake when I asked Mom what the words meant, acting as if I had heard it somewhere in the village and was just innocently curious. She had a stunned look on her face for just a moment before she freaked out and started questioning me so intently that my baby instincts almost took over and made me cry (baby emotions are janky, trust me). I could tell that she wasn't upset at me, and she didn't even seem suspicious over the fact that I had 'overheard' the words somewhere... no, what was really freaking her out was who I had heard it from, and (to a lesser extent) when. She even asked what they looked like, but then didn't even give me a chance to answer before she started describing a bunch of people at me rapid-fire, as if she already had a list of suspects who might be guilty of feeding her kid strange words. What the heck was going on!? Was there some kind of plot or conspiracy going on that I had accidentally discovered?

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

At least she wasn't suspicious of me, although I was concerned that might change if I wasn't careful. My grasp of the language still wasn't absolutely perfect when it came to speaking, but my listening skills were good enough by then that I felt quite sure I didn't recognize a single one of the people she mentioned-

-wait, what was that last one!?

"She would look like your momma, but less pretty and with long pink hair instead of my obviously superior purple tresses, oh and she might have only one arm after the attack, or maybe instead of her it was a man who..."

"Pink! Pink, like momma, but not pretty like momma! Pink lady visits forge, uhhhh... but dad is too busy and not see her... maybe she say it. What do words mean, momma?"

Yikes, that was close. I didn't know if it was a great idea to throw the pink-haired soldier under the bus like that, but I had kinda just acted on instinct and begun talking before I really had a moment to think about it. I'd never been questioned like this before and it caught me entirely off-guard, plus the pink-haired woman was the person on her list that I had even vaguely recognized.

My mother narrowed her eyes off into the distance and clenched her right hand into a fist while muttering something under her breath, and I gasped in surprise when a tiny gout of flame shot out of her closed hand. Wait... was mom having a super-villain moment? What the heck was happening!!

She quickly turned her head to look at me when I gasped, her pretty purple hair flying through the air. Her eyes were wide and her mouth was hanging open in shock as she looked between me and her fist a few times, before she abruptly let out a long laugh and leaned back so far I worried she might fall over.

"Oh, mommy is so sorry, Heller! Did I surprise my cute little amazing baby boy?" she leaned in and nuzzled her face against mine, tickling my face and neck with her hair.

Should I... should I mention the fire?? But maybe now wasn't the time...

"Momma is the most pretty!" I said as I ran my little green-scaled hand through her hair. Compliments will get you everywhere with Mom, a trick I learned early on from watching Jaws in action. The man spoke little, but he had a way with words the few times he did decide to use them.

Mom picked me up and spun me around, seemingly having gotten over whatever had her so worked up. But... she, unfortunately, hadn't completely forgotten, "My brilliant handsome heroic Heller! Such a good boy! Heller, tell momma what you saw the plain, unattractive one-armed woman with the drab pink hair say, and who she said it to?" My mother was... verbose, to say the least, and very fond of overdramatic descriptions, which probably explained why I picked up the language so quickly even though I only really had her and Dad to speak with.

I had to lie to her again, of course, saying I didn't really remember and then trying to distract her with other questions on different topics. And I hated myself for it.

Constantly pretending to be younger than my true mental age was starting to seriously wear on me, and I often found myself wishing I could go back to a year ago when I was too young to talk and didn't really understand the language anyway. At least back then I hadn't had to put on such an act all the time! I’d heard the saying "the truth will set you free", but I hadn’t fully understood it until then.

Eventually, she was satisfied that the pink-haired woman probably hadn't even seen me, so it was most likely just an accident and not some plot (not that I understood what the point of the plot would have been, or why she would have been so upset about it... although, on second thought, adults teaching strange words to other people's children did kind of sound like it should be illegal). Relief was obvious on her face as she relaxed back into her chair and finally began to answer my question about what the words meant: They were indeed a title, I had been right about that. A very rare and significant title that would translate to something like ‘Chosen One’ or ‘Blessed One’, and was reserved for only the children of the very highest nobility; but she also made it clear that this title was no good thing, that if anyone ever said it to me they were a bad person, and I should run away to tell either her or Jaws - but to never mention it to anyone else.

Well, crap in a hat and sit on it! This did not bode well for Mark...