So, the Sun on this world pretty much sucks, it’s way too bright for my adorable infant eyes… I say this because a shaft of sunlight was beaming straight into my eyes as I tried to orient myself after waking up. For the record, I am not a morning person, I’ve never been one and I’ll do my best to stay that way. Mildly disoriented and partially blinded by the light I reached out for something to cover my eyes. I felt some fur and attempted to lift it, but my hands kind of suck at doing what I want so I just ended up running my hand through the course fibers without really accomplishing anything. I felt the same coarse fur underneath my back and eventually after my eyes adjusted to the light and I could see the straw that makes up our roof. Apparently at some point my parents laid me down on their bed and started doing chores or whatever giant wolfmen do when they aren’t sleeping.

I did my best to roll onto my side and after a monumental effort on my part I succeeded. From this new position I could see a little more of my home, and I have to say it’s kind of primitive. The walls are apparently made of sticks, lots of long thin sticks. The floor is hard packed dirt and the furniture leaves a little something to be desired, though strangely enough it still looks nicer than the rest of the home. Ugh, looks like I wasn’t born into some noble’s family instead I was going to have to live my life as a peasant… Joy…

I did my best to scoot around a little and I could just barely see into the kitchen, there was a table in the center where mom is apparently slicing up some meat. She threw the bits into some kind of bowl and then cracked the biggest egg I have ever seen, adding the contents to the mix. She whipped it together with what looks like chopsticks and then poured the contents into a frying pan. I couldn’t make out what she was doing after that, but the most heavenly aroma assailed my nose.

Damn looks like Dad, who was sitting in one of the chairs in the kitchen gets to enjoy some high class bacon and eggs, or maybe an omelet. So not fair, he gets a real meal, and I get milk. Who do I talk to in order to upgrade my meal service? I need to not be a baby as soon as possible. I know some women who paid a lot of money to be on all liquid diets, but I think they would have changed their minds if they found out they were only going to have breast milk and cheat days were not possible.

I made some noise informing the world that I was displeased with life in general whilst simultaneously announcing to my parents that I was currently awake. Dad got up, walked over to me, gave me a sniff, then picked me up way too fast. I felt my stomach drop as I rocketed into the air, and ended up making a mess in my diapers.

Don’t look at me like that, gravity and a lack of bladder control are to blame, I’m only a day old, it’s not like I have any real control over these things yet. Dad’s face contorted into a snarl, although he didn’t make any noise when he did it, so I guess I simply offended his sense of smell. Once again, not my fault. After he changed me which was an awkward experience for both of us, he carried me over to the kitchen where Mom was putting the finishing touches on the omelets.

They smelled heavenly, I put a smile on my face and did my best to indicate that I would like to have some omelet for breakfast as well. My mother upon seeing this smiled back, she has a nice smile by the way, a simple quirk of the lips, no scary teeth, and then she promptly misinterpreted what I wanted. Hello again breast milk I didn’t miss you, but it looks like I will be stuck with you for longer than I’d wish. While we all ate our respective meals together, some enjoying the experience more than others I decided I needed to make a plan for this life. The last one felt like a waste, like all I had done was study my life away.

First things first though, I needed to learn the language. So far beyond some crooning and a couple of yips and growls I hadn’t been able to pick up any words. Hopefully that’s just because my parents are quiet people as opposed to us not having a language, or dealing with some kind of body language thing. I don’t want to have to try and express complex thoughts and emotions by standing one particular way over another.

Next on the agenda is to make money, I know money isn’t the key to happiness but it is the key to not living in a shack with a dirt floor. I’m guessing this world doesn’t have a lot of technology, so hopefully I can invent something simple that will make some money and get us into a nicer home. Maybe Dad is a blacksmith, that would be awesome, then I would have access to a forge and could potentially make what I need for the future.

Finally I need to find out if there is magic in this world, because come on, what kind of rip off would it be if there are wolf people and no magic. Maybe I should start meditating or something, after all that’s the way everyone learns magic in the books. Of course I never meditated in my life and all I know is there is something about breathing and thinking of nothing… Let’s put a pin in the meditation thing until I have a better understanding of the world, or maybe just wait until things get boring.

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That’s all I was able to come up with during breakfast, but I’m sure something else will occur to me before too long, like moving around better. Add that to the list! Anyway Mom picked me up and laid me back down on the bed, which now that I got a better look at it, is made up of straw and furs. Ugh. Money is definitely something I want as soon as possible, but until then I think I should probably work out.

I did my best to move around as much as possible, but my energy quickly ran out. Meanwhile Dad left to go do dad things, and Mom went outside. Maybe to the garden. Not really 100% on what she was doing out there, but at the very least I knew she was close since I could hear her moving around. Did I mention my senses are now amazing?

I could hear and smell so many things, like the fact that there were two other people besides Mom and Dad here for my birth due to their lingering and weak scents. Their smell didn’t permeate everything like Mom and Dad’s. I could hear Mom moving around outside the house at least 50 feet away from where I was lying down. Even my eyesight seemed to have improved since if I tried to, I could clearly see every individual grain of straw in fine detail as they hung above my head. Getting used to this new body was going to be difficult so I figured now would be the best time to get started.

I focused on gaining control over my individual fingers which was not easy. Every single time I tried to move just one finger my whole hand would move. It was like trying to bring down your pinky finger without moving your ring finger at the same time, take a second and try it out, go on I bet you can’t do it. Well imagine that except instead of that only happening with one finger it happens with every finger, oh and your arm moves too. To say the least it was very annoying. I spent a couple of hours absorbed in that task until I finally made some progress. I got my fingers to move without the whole arm following along. Sure it might have been every single finger at the same time, but that’s better than your whole arm.

Eventually Mom came back in the house, she smelled like springtime after a hard rain and I could see she had some dirt on her hands. She went into the kitchen to wash up, I know this because I heard the sound of water splashing around, and then she came to pick me up. I promptly soiled myself, what, gravity has that effect on me. So I was treated to a changing and some food.

After that little embarrassing moment passed I think I got my first peak at our language. She started to howl, but not the kind that wolves do in the wild, where it’s loud and you can hear it for miles, this was more of a quiet, conversational howl. It sounded kind of like the crooning she was doing earlier only vastly more complex. I could hear so many different tones, it was like listening to a complex piece of classical music, only with wolf sounds instead of instruments.

Naturally I have no idea what she was saying, but at least I know we have a language that I can eventually learn. Also it’s beautiful, I could listen to my mother talk for hours since it’s almost like someone is singing. I let her know I was happy with the conversation by smiling and a laughing. Well I guess some people would describe it as a giggle, but damn it, it’s hard to laugh as a baby, it just comes out too high pitched.

Anyway we conversed for an hour or so with her poking and tickling me throughout the conversation until I eventually got tired and fell asleep. Once again, I was born yesterday and being awake is hard.

The next six months went by a lot like that, I slowly gained mastery over my body, I can crawl now by the way, and stand if I have something to support me. I spent time with my parents and found out they are very quiet people, rarely wasting words. Mom does talk to me most days which has allowed me to start sounding out words. I think I have mom and dad down, but I am not 100% on that.

My vocabulary consists of maybe 5 to 30 words at this point, although at least 20 of them are guesses. I also think I have figured out what my name is, it sounds like Nopea, not sure what it means, but hopefully it’s something cool. Beyond slowly gaining control over my body and adjusting to my heightened senses I haven’t really been able to do much.

Every day is fairly similar to the last with mild variations, learning the language is tough, but I think I finally figured out the key. The pitch at which you say the word changes the meaning, No and Bad are two words like that, where no is said in a higher pitch and bad is said in a lower one. Hopefully this is the key to actually understanding this crazy language.

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AN: Don’t expect too many chapters about Baby John, childhood should only be 3 chapters away.