I have horns.
Or perhaps I should say I will have horns… right now they were just little black nubs growing out of my forehead. I hadn’t even noticed when they began to develop a few months ago (apparently it was a 'normal' enough occurrence that my parents hadn't bothered to comment) until Mom started washing around their base, near the top of my forehead where the freaking horns were going to grow out of my skull. I finally saw them when I asked to be held up in front of my parents' dresser, where they kept a polished piece of steel as a surprisingly decent (if primitive) mirror. (They used to have an actual mirror, I was informed by my emotional mother, but it had been broken by monsters before I was born and proper mirrors were 'too expensive to replace while also raising a child.')
In addition to seeing my nascent horns in my reflection, I also noticed that my scales were starting to fill out as each one gained a bit more size and definition, helping their complex overlapping pattern become clearer. They were also turning a darker green than before, which I was honestly pretty happy about: My previous coloring had been a bright mossy hue, but my scales seemed to be heading towards a much more respectable evergreen-pine shade of dark green.
So... dark green scales, and... black horns. Right, then. Scaley green skin with some kind of horns growing out of my head. I stared at the hazy image of myself in the polished steel and began taking deep breaths as I did my best to remain calm. Why did the horns shock me so much more than the skin itself? I had pretty much taken the scales in stride, if I remembered correctly... but... green, scaled skin and... horns... was just too much. Could I even go back to Earth now!? I honestly couldn’t look more like a demon if I tried… actually, scratch that... I could have had claws, hooves, and a pointy tail. Wait-
-after a brief, panicked inspection, I confirmed that I did NOT have claws, hooves, or a pointy tail.
Honestly, I wasn’t even sure if having hooves was possible for... whatever my race was (claws and tails obviously were possible, however, and I had seen ample evidence of both). Maybe individuals with hooves still wore shoes of some kind, or I just hadn't been paying attention to people's feet?
I was in the middle of inspecting the tiny scales under my armpits in the mirror when I heard a knock at the door. I climbed down the dresser (Mom had set me down on top of it, knowing that I was plenty clever enough not to simply fall off and get hurt) and ran over to our short hallway so I could peek into the kitchen (which was at the front of our house).
I heard a familiar voice, so I smiled and made my way into the kitchen (while trying to put my brief existential crisis behind me), waving at my mother’s best friend (the lady with the anime-style eyes, which I had... mostly gotten used to by now) as she came in carrying a bundle in her arms. I hadn't seen her for quite a long time, maybe almost a year or so, although Mom had gone several times to visit her in the evenings after Jaws was home. I already knew that she had given birth to a child of her own, so I simply stood by silently as both of them cooed and fussed over the new baby.
“Heller, this is Zephyr,” said the large-eyed woman gently, kneeling down on the clean wooden floor of the kitchen so I could get a better look at the child. My eyes widened as I took in the infant's appearance: Her skin was covered in very fine coal-black scales, which contrasted wildly with her golden hair. And I mean metallic golden, not 'blond' – it truly was as if her hair was made out of finely woven threads of actual polished gold. She looked to be about four to six months old, but when she smiled at me she revealed a full set of sharp-looking teeth, with long fangs instead of normal incisors on both the top and bottom of her terrifying maw. Holy crap!
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Zephyr and her doe-eyed mother were frequent visitors, and I quickly grew to enjoy looking after the sharp-toothed little tyke. She needed constant monitoring as she was easily capable of biting off a finger (hers, or anyone else’s), and I had no idea how she managed to keep from severing her own tongue, but I was told there was no risk of that happening when I asked. I also had to hide my wooden toys (err… my dexterity-improvement-devices) from her, as she could chew them in half with just a little bit of effort. But - once you got past the teeth - she was a sweet and happy baby who was easy to entertain, and I usually ended up playing the role of babysitter while Mother and her friend chatted over boiled ‘enkra’ root tea (which has a strong ginger flavor).
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Other than those two, however, I interacted with very few others outside of my father’s crew at the Smithy. Mother didn’t seem to go out of her way to meet new people or introduce me to other children, and (discounting clients and other work-related people) nobody except for her friend (and Zephyr) ever came to visit us at home. Which was fine by me, of course, as I imagine that attempting to be 'friends' with a kid who was mentally the same age as I was physically would be pure torture.
Aside from that, I communicated with Mark often, but we remained unable to mention anything about how we were cultivating. He still saw his parents quite rarely, but they had started sending him tutors almost exactly after he turned three years old. He was now being taught the language in a much more formal manner than I had learned it, and had finally begun to truly pick it up. He also discovered his name!
I had been mentally referring to myself as Heller, not Alex, for a few years now, but didn’t mind using a dual name system with Mark,
I couldn’t help but chuckle in my head, picturing the scene of a sharp-toothed baby Zephyr hanging off some guy's arm like a hungry piranha, and I sent my sense of my amusement to him over the soul-link along with the image over a caption reading "Don’t leave me hangin', man!".
Mark much preferred to refer to my parents by their names, Isa and Toly, rather than using 'your mother' or 'your father' - he didn't even like to use the term 'your parents' when referring to them. It didn't bother me at all, and in fact I tried to help him make a joke out of the whole thing because I felt so bad for him. What was wrong with his damn parents, anyway? Who just abandons their child like that!?
I pondered this for only a moment before agreeing. It would be easier for both of us if we could try to move on, and this could be a big step in helping Mark (aka Wolfram) adjust to his new identity. We didn’t need to forget the past, but we couldn’t stay mired in it either.
After that, we discussed trying to use the language of our new people over the soul-link, but decided to stick with English for a few very good reasons - the first being that there was an enormous amount of words (and therefore concepts) missing from this new language, which could vastly limit any of the more complex ideas we might need to discuss. The second was that neither of us wanted to risk forgetting how to speak our true native tongue, which was probably not a very good reason, but we both agreed on it nonetheless.