“How is he?” I heard father ask.

I felt soft hands stroke my forehead. “Exhausted, he’s been unconscious the whole day,” it was mother.

“You should take him to Heffaya, he might know a way to help him recover quicker.” Father urged rather anxiously.

Mother was silent for a moment. “Yezial, I told you I won’t go back there until they apologise for what they done to you.” Mother’s voice was not kind like I’d come to know, there was an illness to it, like she was sickened by her words, or sickened by whoever ‘they’ were.

There was a long stilt of silence before anyone talked. “What happened to him?”

“I overworked him.” Father said. He sighed, “I’m sorry.”

“he is…amazing I don’t understand how he is so capable so young.” mother’s smile came through her voice. “But he’s still just a boy.”

“you don’t understand what I saw in him, his focus… he only stopped because his body forced him to Rebea, he has something. He swung a sword better than I’ve ever seen any of those Tindem boys after a dex of goes. Do you understand how odd that is for a man? He’s just one, Rebea!”

They shared a few empty moments.

”Do you think there’s a demon inside him?”

“No, no there isn’t!” Father said firm. “Our boy is gifted by the god’s themselves. He’s gonna protect the village in my place! That traitor Heavar and his father have no right to lead this village. If anything happened to the village, all of the families would be at risk shielded by his sword. They couldn’t even win the shroud by the cut of their own wood.”

“Calm down Yezial, the shroud took your arm, don’t offer your son up so easily.” Mother caressed me slow, soothing me.

…

It was a month before mother took me to see the village shaman known as heffaya. In that time father begun training me daily. My own weight felt odd on me when moving. It was a different song to sing for a child to try the moves. My head offered much resistance to my movements and my centre of mass slowed me greatly.

The biggest issue was my body was ever changing. I couldn’t get used to it fast enough. The wind would talk to me, sometimes shouting loudly and sometimes in quiet poems but it always felt like the wind was saying something to me. My body and the fighting were different.

I performed thousands of repetitions of my father’s favourite movements over and over. Each time getting more of a feel for the moves. I didn’t get much stronger, babies seemed to be resistant to gaining such muscle, but I the moves become faster. Not by great amounts, but enough for me to know it. But then my body changed and I would feel a bit more foreign to myself again, my attacks becoming all the slower for it.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Worst yet I’d started feeling less attached to the world and more so at the same time. I was growing less curious in the profoundly concrete essence things like the earth, and more so about people and food and language. It was more normal. It was boring. Where I used to want to see the world, now it was like all I wanted was to talk about it. I’d babbled to mother and father in quasi-speech for longer and longer durations were I used to just be happy to play with them.

”

The journey to Heffaya’s was an enlightening one. I saw many things for the first time. Me and mother walked north, to and through the village. Mother attracted odd looks from women and men of her years. I watched the people carefully. Peoples expressions was my new obsession.

The people of the village were an expressive kind, wearing many emotions on their faces. They lived among huts and trees. The huts much like mother and fathers but bigger, all of them enough to fit several rooms like ours.

“He’s odd.” Heffaya said to mother, prodding my bare ribs. We were in his hut near the center of the village. The ceiling was high and the room smelled of berries.

Heffaya made me more curious than any other villager I had seen on my way here. I imagined my eyes big and wide staring up at him from the bench I was sat on.

“I’ve never seen this much tough meat on a child so young, boy looks like he was raised by wolves.” Heffaya said, side eying mother.

The look angered me, but mother just became pensive. Her and farther argued over me training with him more and more lately, every time after their clash she was close to tears. It was more than just she didn’t want me to get hurt, she would much rather she told me a story or I danced for her.I did not want to learn to fight either, but I didn’t mind going. I enjoyed being in the outdoors with father, each time, I’d sense more of the world and be enamoured by something else in nature although my knowing, much like my curiosity, was diminishing.

“When are you going to come back Rebea?” Heffaya said looking worryingly at mother.

“When Yezial is rightfully back under the shroud.”

Heffaya sighed deep. ”Yezial was wronged, yes, but this is here and now. What for your son? Will you allow him to grow foreign and malignant? The village is a family, there is no room for outsiders.” He said the last few words cold. I started crying less and less as I understand my new body more, but the tension was so much I almost did it again.

No one spoke for a while. “I thought Yezial was above growing too attached to power, he should be honoured to remain a protector of the village.” Heffaya looked away from my mother. “Maybe he should never have ruled.”

This was too much for mother, she jittered angry, “Yezial wants nothing more than the village to be safe! He trains every day knowing full well Heaver and his father are too weak to rule.” Mother said, spitting Heaver’s name.

I was not moved to the village after that. When we returned to the hut mother and father talked long about Heffaya’s words.

Father had grown angry at Heffaya’s words, and didn’t like his suggestion. Father wanted to train me fully, he worried for my safety amongst Heaver and didn’t see any of the village men worthy of instructing his son.

Months past after that, and nothing much happened. I could see often when me and father returned from training mother eyed me heavy, making very little effort to mask the worry on her face. She brought up how I needed to talk to the other boys, and integrate into the village, and learn more than just the sword every day. It took three years before father was convinced. That may have been a mistake.