JAROD
It had been a month since I had learned how to walk, and I have never felt so free. Crawling had been an occasion; I would be the first to admit. Being able to move around on my own though, that gave me such a sense of satisfaction, I cannot fully describe it had anyone asked.
I know that Rachel and Erin were sad about my sudden leap, and I could understand why they were so dismayed; however, I could not turn back now. And honestly, I could have been walking months ago if it hadn’t been for the fact that it would raise a big ass neon sign saying, ‘come one, come all, wunderkind right here!’.
I should say that Rachel was quick to react to the situation. Apparently, she went to see Keefe about an hour after I walked. She likely would have gone sooner, but she had been crying.
This was like a stab in the heart as I knew how much I meant to her, and she hated being away from me. Knowing all too soon she would have to return to court, and every moment counted to this woman.
It felt so strange making all these connections about people and how they think, as well as how obvious it was. Yet in my last life, even the attempt to empathise with someone, let alone understand their feelings was so far beyond me.
Apparently, Rachel told Keefe all about what happened and requested that she could have the next week to visit a few her friends and extended family and show off at how great I am.
In Rachel and Erin’s planning, they figured that this would be the best way to keep me away from Keefe and the servants in the short term and stop the man intensifying his interest in me.
I personally don’t think Rachel was willing to admit to herself she was scared that their time was coming to an end, and that Keefe would do something to keep me away from her somehow. This plan guarantees the chance to spend more time with me.
Keefe agreed, saying that it would allow him to catch up on several overdue business matters.
Upon returning Rachel was explicit with Erin, she was convinced that even if his business dealing had been building up, Keefe was incredibly prideful and most obviously so with family matters. The idea of me being shown off would appeal to the man’s vanity.
With that, I spent the next two weeks doing a tour of the city. I had been out a few times, but they were always direct journeys there and back again. This time though, I was crossing the city and visited what felt like every noble woman in the city and “oh wasn’t I just soooo cute!” and they “just simply must hold me!”, they would say. Well, who am I to complain about being held to the chest by so many young women? I am a baby, after all! (Hehe)
Rachel had originally meant to spend only a week going about with me but apparently Keefe really did have a lot of work backed up and needed to spend an additional week focusing on it.
Over that two-week period, I developed my ability to walk, and I had become relatively stable on my feet, well as stable as I could be on two short legs anyway. When I was not out and about, I spent a lot of time sleeping as traipsing about the city, as well as pushing myself by doing as much walking as I could manage without overwhelming my body like I did before, had left me exhausted.
I would soon come to be thankful for this exhaustion however not soon enough.
I encountered the nemesis of my new life… Shopping!
In my previous life I did all my shopping online or had a professional shopper hired to deal with it, but now… the horror!
It felt like every other bloody day, Rachel and Erin would meet up with old friends and we would spend the day going shopping. Given the noble and wealthy family I was part of, this meant the best stores in the capital where we would be seated, and given personal service by a member of staff, and, more often than not, it would be the store owner.
This meant going through all the styles and fabrics available and measured. However, in my case, they had to get me to try EVERY BLOODY THING on to see how it looked. And not even the boy’s stuff.
Apparently, I still had that generic baby look so they used that as excuse to see what it would look like were Rachel to have a girl and a few of the other ladies with only boys were only too happy to join in (Bitches the lot of em!).
About the only benefit I had come across was my understanding that animals in this world were quite different from Earth.
Now that I could walk, I saw for the first time the creature that pulled the carriage. It was bloody massive!
Before I just assumed it was a horse pulling the carriage, but the thing was about half again the size of any horse I had ever heard of and looked like something between a horse and a rhino. It had a prominent horn on the front of its head and had way, Waaaaay more muscle mass than a horse.
It seemed to me the beast was an herbivore given the shape of its teeth, but I would rather not put my hand near it to find out. It also had no hair but a thick skin that looked a bit scaly in places.
The example that pulled our carriage was of a larger variety, as I had seen others pulling carts when we were out shopping. There were other types of creatures ranging in size pulling wagons and carriages as well. Some had a wingless griffon look to them and a few feline creatures.
It also helped explain away all the different materials I had never heard of that were used to make the clothing. Although I never got a close look at the different animals. Still, it made the shopping excursions rather more interesting… the glimmer of a silver lining in a sea of coma inducing misery!
****
JAROD
Over the past two weeks it had been one thing after another but today I was supposed to return to spending a few hours with Keefe.
However, he arrived in the nursery himself to inform Rachel early in the morning, he would be away for three days on sudden and urgent business.
To my surprise Keefe came over to me to kneel in front to tell me “I’m sorry Jarod, but your father must go away for a few days. I hope you will look forward to us spending some quality father son time when I get back!”
Keefe knelt to give me a hug and a kiss on my head (dude seriously, personal space, this a lady only zone!). This was a surprise to me and when I looked at Rachel, this uncharacteristic behaviour likewise surprised her. Keefe left soon after.
Erin had returned to her home for a couple of days, as they expected I would be with Keefe for more extended periods. Rachel had insisted she take the opportunity to do so.
I decided to take it easy for the next couple of days and spend time in my mind palace, studying magic while getting extended hugs. Rachel was taking this one-on-one time to an extreme now and had a death grip on me. Normally this would cause me no end of irritation, but with Rachel carrying me around everywhere like a safety blanket allowed me to spend multiple periods of time in my mind palace with everyone non the wiser.
I had not been in my mind palace for over a week and was excited to spend time there. I broke the time I spent in the mind palace up; I would spend about two hours in the mindscape with an hour outside and rest a bit more. This left me feeling quite fresh most the day and I would have to stick to this level of time within the mind palace in the future.
In my Magic Lab I realised as soon as I first entered my mind palace that I had analysed as much as I could from all the magic and its corresponding projected magic circles I had seen to date.
I had developed a number of theories concerning magic so far from my observations. For instance, there are a variety of elements, certainly the elements I would consider the foundation, Fire, Water, Air, Earth. However, it turns out because people around me only used the spells and took them for granted and never discussed them (son of a bitch) I could not get any more information about this. I only recently confirmed the existence of the Earth element as my grandfather used it to create temporary chairs for Rachel and himself in the garden once when while we visited.
As yet, I do not know where healing spell sits in this elemental spectrum. Is it a discipline of its own, separate from the elements, or is it a mix of elements? I just did not know and not all that much magic is cast around me as it was just unnecessary.
I know that not everyone can cast every element as Erin could fill my bath with water, but she required Rachel to heat it. The many, many times I had forced Keefe to flee his study also showed that he required a butler or maid to cast wind magic as he could, although it could be he just wanted to escape the smell.
I felt a bit bad for Ronald, as he was often the one having to deal with it. As scary as I first found the man, I quickly changed my mind as whenever he was the only one in the room with me, he would pay me lots of attention and even did the baby noise. However, as soon as anyone, even Keefe appeared, the stern look on his face would reappear (the man is a total softy!).
I quickly had to admit to myself that I would have to work out how to sense magic energy. I know it comes from the body of the caster and seems to react with the air, and then the magic energy will gather in a relevant place to form a circle, resulting in the phenomena known as magic. Throughout this, the mage will perform a chant. There seems to be a rhythm to the chant that is associated with the magic being cast.
Fire magic has an intense pace, with heavy intonation made for the beginning of each word like an explosion. It sounds rather primal when spoken, almost like there is anger behind the words.
Water magic has a constant pace to the tempo. However, the tempo seems to be unique to each spell. Some spells can be spoken slowly and relaxed, with each sentence flowing into the next. However, at other times, a water spell can be quick and practically running out of the caster’s mouth as if out of control.
Wind magic can be unpredictable in how a caster speaks the chants. Each word following the next so smoothly it can be almost one long word rather than one after another. However, there can be unexpected pauses that make it hard to work out when a spell ends.
Earth magic spells are throaty things that force the caster to use a deeper pitch almost unconsciously. When spoken, it sounds like the chant is being directed into the centre of the planet.
I still lacked enough information to understand the language, both written and spoken. However, the correlations between the chant and the sigils required little in the way of time to work out. Well, if I am honest, I don’t know how long it took, as I had set up the parameters in my magic lab and left my brain to do the heavy lifting. When I returned, it had finished and unfortunately it was during a few days’ break between mind palace usages that I worked it out.
I figured I could spend some time working out how to for a lack of a better way to put it feel magic energy. I didn’t know if I would feel the magic within my body or if I drew it in as part of the spell. For now, I would just have to experiment.
In my previous life, I had experimented with meditation and visualisation exercises to deal with my issues, but for all their effect, it was like trying to stop the tide on a three-mile-long beach with a leaf. It’s technically true that the held leaf blocks something, but it may as well not. I had, however, become fairly experienced on the matter. In all honesty, I was probably one of the foremost experts on the theory, if not the practice.
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I spent the rest of the next two hours mind rotation, creating a meditation room to create a relaxing environment for myself. To be honest, I am not entirely sure that I would have any chance of discovering magic energy from within my mind palace. The mind palace is, in effect, an allegory for my brain and its functions that my consciousness can understand and access. I had been able to access my vision from the magic lab; however, that does not mean I can access all elements of my physical and mystical self.
Oh well only one way to find out. I exited the magic lab and into the corridor of the mind palace. I had been planning to create this meditation room for a while as I knew that I would need it eventually once I had put every scrap of data concerning magic through the ringer and try it. Don't get me wrong, I would not complain if I made a sudden connection that would let me fully control magic, but let's face it. Nothing is ever that easy! (Shame that!).
I envisioned what I would want. I need to envision the most relaxing environment possible. I had been a shut in my entire last life; however, as a child I had been taken to a number of country parks. I remember a forest in particular. A little dampness in the air, making everything smells so fresh. I found the sound of streams soothing so I added a nearby running stream to the background soundtrack. Next, I thought of a place to sit comfortably. I could sit cross legged on the floor but if I am honest, I always preferred sitting on a chair than the floor. The whole point of this is to relax and focus within my body so comfort it is.
In my past life I had been lucky enough to own a floating chair. It is actually thanks to that chair that my weight did not blow up like a balloon. It was a fairly new piece of tech that negated downward force; however, the technology was at the time of my death new and ridiculously expensive. Development of the technology was less progressing slowly as much as it was crawling and there was a considerable restrictive weight limit for the chair. I had to choose between decadent indulgence and the most comfortable chair in the world. The chair won!
The chair was rather large and had a rectangular base that allowed a person to sit cross legged on it and angles arms and a straight back. The size actually looked like it could sit two or three people but it only meant one person was comfy at any angle.
I wondered how I could make the whole thing work in a room but as I heard the room form, I figured I would just leave it to my subconscious and make any changes later. My expectations had been a fairly snug room with an emphasis on plants and wood. What I got was a forest with what sounded like a river running in the nearby. The smell was just like I envisioned. I heard birds singing in the background but that I found more annoying than soothing and with that thought the bird sounds ended suddenly. Perfect!
I turned around to look at the door and found it and the door frame just standing in the middle of a forest. I decided that after dying, finding myself as a soul hovering over a world and meeting a god before resurrecting, well, I just shrugged my shoulders and thought “fuck it!”.
Turning around again, I saw my chair, however not as I expected it. Instead of a chair floating in the air, I saw what looked like a tree with my chair having been carved out when it was still young, and then the tree kept growing over the chair. This created a nicely shaded, cool alcove. Instead of deep soft pillows, I see a vibrant green moss. I touched it with my hand, and it felt as soft as the pillows in my real chair but completely dry and not wet like it looked. I sat down.
“It’s amazing what you miss when you die!” I chuckled to myself.
I did not have much time until I would need to leave my mind palace. Enjoying the bliss of what henceforth I will think of as ‘The Chair’, capital T and capital C! I practiced a few breathing techniques and left it at that.
I didn’t want to start something like this and leave not long after. I would be counting the seconds till I re-entered my mindscape.
After leaving the mind palace, I looked around. It was still morning, and I saw Rachel sitting on a chair near the window drinking a cup of tea. She had such a despondent look on her face; she seemed to stare into space. I don’t know if it was my baby body influencing my mind and thus make me do what I did next, but I stood up and walked over to her and with a lot of effort attempted to climb onto her lap.
Seeing what I was doing, and a little surprise Rachel helped me up onto her lap. I adjusted my position and curled up on her lap, my cheek cuddling up against her.
I felt her put her hand on my head and gently start stroking my hair. I think this is the first time I ever did something like this. As a baby, people would often pick me up and hug me, but me going out of my way for physical contact like this is not something I had ever done since being reborn. No wonder people quickly found me odd!
Because of my position, I could not see Rachel’s face, but her breathing seemed to change and the tension in her body seemed to leak out. Soon after, I drifted off to sleep, even though I didn’t think I felt tired. Before I fell asleep, I couldn’t help but feel so relaxed myself and Rachel’s hand stroking my head felt nice. Just the two of us like this. I think I will dig deep and find the strength to think of her as my mother again. In this instant, it felt just right.
My eyes closed as sleep called, magic far from my mind in that peaceful moment.
****
RACHEL
I had been expecting to be without my Jarod for a few hours this afternoon, but with Keefe going out on his trip, I found myself rather thrown by his actions before leaving. At first glance, Keefe was growing closer to his son and would miss him while gone. These thoughts quickly left me, as I also knew the man had not visited him once in the last two weeks.
Erin was off visiting her family and I felt rather lonely and sorry for myself. We spend almost all day everyday together and I still felt it wasn’t enough. I knew I loved her and she loved me. It is times like this that I curse my gifts and wished I had been born just another girl to a lesser noble and we could have run off together to the middle of nowhere to live our lives. Fate, unfortunately, had not been so kind. Ignoring the perceived impropriety of our relationship as felt by society. My extreme gifts guaranteed my marriage into upper nobility. Erin and I had come to terms with this long ago, despite the pain. Between eventually becoming pregnant and Erin once again becoming a staple part of my life brought me so much joy.
However, right here and right now, I could not help but feel the ground beneath my feet shift. Erin wasn’t here, and I had been receiving numerous missives from the court. They were not, in fact, coming from the king as I had been expecting, but from many varied nobles. There are many requests for aid in a wide variety of subjects. Before my pregnancy, I had been a pillar of the court and the king relied on me heavily to manage many issues behind the scenes.
Although there were a great many talented people within the court, they all had their duties within the court, and it seems like my loss has been increasing felt over time. Many unexpected issues were coming to me, so the king did not have to assign them to already overburdened subjects.
All of this was mounting more and more on my shoulders and only exacerbated my concerns over Jarod.
Just as I thought this while looking at nothing in particular, I felt a tugging at my skirt and leg. Looking down I saw Jarod. This was surprising as he normally does his own thing when he is not eating or sleeping. I bent down at picked him up and placed him on my lap. He had grown so much but all I could see was my small baby boy.
Jarod adjusted his position on my lap not looking up. He leaned his cheek against my stomach and curled up his knees and arms on my lap. I placed a hand on his head and let my fingers play through his hair. For all the worries that had been praying on my mind just seemed to disappear. I just in this moment felt peace and the mother I was. Soon enough the soft rhythmic breathing of Jarod sleeping in my lap came to me.
Right this moment, for all his capabilities Jarod was my baby and I was his mother and for a few hours an impenetrable fortress formed around Rachel that no worry could enter. A few days later Rachel would forever consider this the calm before the storm.
****
JAROD
After two days of meditation, I was beginning to get somewhere. It may only have been luck, but during a meditation session before I fell asleep, I started to feel a pulse with my breathing.
When I breathed in, I felt a sense of movement within me, but even that seems inaccurate to the feeling. It was almost like mist swirling around my body.
When people think of the mind and emotions, they describe it as intangible, but when thinking about your blood supply, it is easy to envision tangible blood vessels within the body that the blood flows through.
However, the sensation of the energy that I could feel it was like these opposing concepts were smashing into each other and creating a concept that I just could not fully describe.
I could imagine a series of glowing lines within my body. It was all gathering behind my belly button; I figured that this was my mana pool… probably, anyway.
When I first detected it, I could only feel the pool of energy gathered behind my belly button and I could feel it flowing out of there with a pulse in time with my heartbeat.
The next day, I could feel the pool of energy in my body. From there, it was easy to trace the energy as it flowed through my body.
Well, I say easy. Detecting the energy was easy as I had detected it. However, it required a considerable amount of concentration to track the energy, and this was difficult part… and that’s me talking difficult.
I had to make sure no one was paying attention to me when I was mapping the flow of energy within me. I had to map the energy flow outside of my mind palace, as I could not seem to sense the energy when I was within it.
This meant extended periods of meditation where I was completely still and focusing entirely on inside my body.
Fortunately, this was one of the few times I could take advantage of my diminutive appearance. I basically spent my last day away from Keefe running around like a lunatic, pushing myself hard, well, when people were looking.
After that, I would slow down and make out. I needed naps. This gave me the chance to meditate while Rachel and Erin thought I was asleep.
Erin had returned that day and was in a bad mood with Rachel and me. Apparently, the emotional support session I gave my mom when Erin had been absent annoyed her.
A fact made apparent by her words, “That sounds adorable and so unlike Jarod… and I missed it!” she wailed the last bit in frustrated disappointment.
Erin’s method of working out her disappointment was an interesting one; she apparently went into an extreme detail of what happened to the female members of staff and painted such a detailed and from what I could gather, over the top picture of what happened that she made the maids even more jealous than even she was.
In other words, if she was miserable or frustrated, everyone would be right there with her. These actions made Erin feel better in the process while everyone else’s mood worsened. From this day forward, Erin, to me, became the textbook definition of passive aggressive.
Unfortunately, this also meant the maids were coming up with ridiculous reasons to visit the nursery, hoping to see me actually acting my age. Every time they left with a look of disappointment on their faces, I swear Erin’s mood improved!
Despite the distraction brought about by whirlwind Erin, I started tracing the magic energy within me.
It was truly a wonder!
When imagining its appearance as a complete system, it was like lines of transparent energy flowing throughout my body in several colours. Each stream was a different colour, but there were so many.
The odd thing was that I was not intentionally providing colour to the mental picture. For some reason, it just… happened. One more of the growing list of random annoyances that I could not yet explain.
****
JAROD
Over the next few weeks, my father and son time with Keefe had resumed, and I used the time to continue my tactical bouts of activity, coupled with feigned sleep to mask my meditation and magic circulation mapping.
As an added benefit, my constant activity was apparently very distracting to Keefe, which was a bonus in my opinion.
As I meditated, I was not sure if my activities were acting as a good enough subterfuge against Keefe. The man was incredibly observant and patient.
I regularly got a good glance at his notes on me, and he was meticulous and seemed to have stepped up his monitoring of me when we were apart.
Keefe was now apparently giving his servants specific habits and actions of mine to keep an eye out for, and orders to provide him with reports detailing all they saw me doing on a regular basis.
At this point, a full third of the paperwork on his desk is devoted to me.
I decided I would not push my luck. I instead focused on not doing anything that was not babyish. That would include not sitting still for prolonged periods with my eyes closed and breathing slowly… Okay, to be fair, sitting around doing nothing is my idea of what being a baby is all about!
That would be a bit of a weird action. I decided I would use my times of exuberance in Keefe’s presence to practice using my voice.
I had not had time to practice whenever anyone was about, as I took on a structured and directed approach to everything I did.
My vocal exercises would likely weird out anyone who heard it. If anything, my voice is not well developed as I hardly ever cried much and made little noise.
Well, if I am honest, these may be good reasons, but I just wanted to annoy Keefe for upsetting my mom. I mean Rachel (the two were only separated a few days but were enjoying the quiet times in my room to show it! If I am honest with myself, I was wondering if their displays of affection were messing with me because Rachel is my mother or out of jealousy that I never experience love for someone like they did for each other?).
Whatever my reasons, I was a constant ball of motion and noise in Keefe’s study. By the second day of this, Keefe had had enough and picked me up, sat me on his lap and bounced me on his knee and resumed his work.
I considered this a double positive; I was really annoying him, if it caused him to pause his observations on me, and it gave me more time to look through his business dealings with his paperwork and correspondence.
I also discovered that slavery was illegal in this kingdom but was a booming business to be in apparently, with business had picking up. Although it seems that even Keefe didn’t know who was buying the slaves, as he also seemed curious as to the origins of the buyer or buyers. Demand was apparently always exceeding the supply.
Although it does seem odd that Keefe wouldn’t know who he was dealing with, as he had his hand in so many pies. More curious is that Keefe would even care enough to investigate what happened to the slaves after he got the gold… probably just covering his ass.