I was recovering. But quite slowly. Mom changed my bandage a couple of times over the last few weeks and even applied herbs and stuff but the arm just felt weak.
It wasn’t until the fourth week, aka, after a whole month did I finally see the outcome. My arm, or rather what was left of it, didn’t look that different from a typical arm. It was just that… it was missing meat in some places; awkwardly sewn together like Frankenstein. At one particular place, I barely saw any meat whatsoever. Just a thin bone and skin that was barely attached. The whole arm was calloused and full of weird pus like yellow liquid. Gross!
‘No wonder it’s so weak.’ And it was my dominant right arm no less. ‘Doesn’t this mean I’m fucked for life.’ Well at least it didn’t stink.
No wait, considering how I didn’t have any good abilities, I was already fucked for life. I had to be grateful I had an arm and at least it at least moved
I sighed. A really, extravagant exaggerated sigh.
“What?” Mom said. She cleaned my wound, and without making a disgusted face like I did. “What’s wrong? Hurts?”
“No. It’s just that…” I chuckled. “I’m so weak…”
Now, Mom sighed. “You’re not weak… you’re just a little different now.”
‘Yeah, like changing the way you view your disability is going to make it any different.’ I rolled my eyes but didn’t quite say anything.
Lately, we had fairly fluent conversations, and I didn’t bother to hide my intellect. And Mom didn’t quite view me as suspicious either. At least I thought she didn’t. I still didn’t find out anything about this ‘possessed’ thing and honestly, I didn’t want to fight out. Just yet.
Sitting back and just staring at the damn wall all day was getting awfully boring. But this world didn’t have books. No, strike that. I didn’t know if there were books or not. Just because Mom didn’t have any, didn’t mean there weren’t any books at all. Besides, she taught me to read, so there had to be books!
‘She didn’t teach me math though…’ “Mom.”
“Yeah?”
“What’s five plus five?”
“Um… uh- Ten?”
“How about ten divided by 5?”
“2?”
“Forty times 3?”
“Um…uh…100!”
No, that’s 120.
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Hmm… so she knew basic math. But didn’t quite know enough.
Hmm….
“Did you,” Mom paused. “No, never mind.”
She seemed to be a little conflicted. Was she thinking about that possessed thing?
‘Wait, she didn’t teach me math but I still.’ I groaned inwardly. No, no, wait. Though she messed up, I didn’t say the right answer. Still safe, we were still safe!
Back then, Mom and Lyra were having a conversation. A conversation I didn’t want to barge in, because I was afraid to. “What’s a Possessed?” I spoke. And the minute I did, I regretted it.
After all… Mom’s expression crumbled. She sighed anew. “It’s when monsters, really high ranked monsters, take over the corpses of young children.”
“And you guys think I might be one of them?” ‘Why the hell did I say that?’ Perhaps curious… perhaps afraid.
“Wh-no!” She slouched closer. “No.”
“I-” I wanted to tell her.
I wanted to tell her, I wasn’t from this world. I wanted to tell her… I had memories of a different life.
I…
“I love you, Mom.”
She snickered. “I love you too, Solni.” Giggling, she moved back. “By the way… I’ve made soup.”
“More soup…” I groaned. Actually, milk was better than soup in this world. It was just veg flavored water without any spice other than salt. Argh….
Or maybe Mom just didn’t know how to cook… but I discarded that possibility immediately.
“It has meat in it though,” Mom said, smirking.
“Meat!”
Finally!
***
Okay, I had to admit, the meat flavored soup was actually pretty good. And mother added some spices, cumin and coriander seeds. But considering how little she used and how she didn’t use it on anything else, the spices were either very rare, or very pricy or maybe even both.
Still, it was pretty delicious though. And Mom had cut the meat in such small pieces, I could eat and chew for once! She only gave me very little amount of meat though.
It took me some time to notice but, Mom had never handled a baby and knew virtually nothing about babies. She didn’t bother contacting her friends for the first year, for some odd reason and that’s why she didn’t feed me anything other than just goat milk back then. But after having multiple conversations with Lyra, she started giving me solid food. She was still super careful though.
I didn’t know why but I found that oddly cute.
Knock! Knock!
Mom opened the door. A wild Den had showed up. And he’d bought… birds? No, Chicken!
‘This world has chicken!’ Let’s goo!
But upon closer inspection, those weren’t chicken. Chicken wasn’t that big and chicken didn’t have two heads. Not just two heads, they even had multiple eyes and… wait, weren’t these birds just… those ‘good fortune’ ones? They were oddly fat though.
Well, Mom did say they tasted good, so I guess oh well.
Den gave the birds to Mom and came over to me. “How’re you doing?”
“Better than before,” I said, giving my arm a look; Mom had only just applied some herbs. No matter how I stared at it, it was pretty busted and I was probably never going to be the same.
“Good. Rest well. Starting next month, we’ll start training.”
“Training?”
“She hasn’t told you?” Den looked back but Mom didn’t give him the time of day. Rolling his eyes, his brought his gaze back to me. “Yes, train you. So this,” he pointed at my busted arm. “Doesn’t happen again. Of course, you have the right to say no. But,” he came closer, eyes dead center, no blinks. “Think how much she will be sad if you just died in a ditch like last time.”
“One, I’m not dead. Two, I wasn’t just dead because I wanted to. And three… you’re right, I need to train.”
He moved back. “Kid already makes excuses,” he proclaimed loudly.
“Pretty sure, he has a point,” Mom said, almost dumping a bowl full of Soup on Den’s chest but somehow Den stabilized that.
Man that was close. I almost resisted the urge to scream.
“Uh-huh….” Den chuckled and started drinking. “Oh, this is good!”
“I know, right,” I smirked.
He smirked back.
Yep, we understood each other.