I’ve talked about how different races perceive time differently before. But what I didn’t mention is how an individual of the same species can feel time a lot different than another. There are a lot of reasons why, but the main one is lifetime.

It isn’t advanced physics, just basic mathematics. A one-year-old will, emphasis on the word “will”, perceive the passage of time in another way that of a fifty-year-old. This is because one month for a one-year-old is a twelfth of its lifetime, while for a fifty, it’s just a measly one six hundredth of all his life. It’s like making a comparison between twelve minutes with ten hours. The dissonance is obvious.

The dissonance isn’t that exact factor, I must clarify. Twelve minutes for a newborn aren’t ten hours and won’t feel like it. Maybe an hour. My point is, that there’s clearly a distortion, but the factor, while big, isn’t mindboggling big.

And now the question you’ve been asking all this time. How does a child know of this? Easily. I do not. I started annotating in a diary every time I had a flashback, so to speak. While thinking about my unknown memories would make my head ache, letting my hand do its job was relatively pain free. Not the perfect solution, but it worked well enough.

It was easy enough to convince my parents to buy me a blank diary. And about writing, it was instinctual. I do not know what the language I write is called, yet I fully understand it. It’s the same language as I hear my thoughts, or so I think.

What’s funny is that to my parents, I am a little baby writing nonsense in a book with crayons, because they don’t understand the language. To them, I am making scrabbles of an imaginary language, or just incomprehensible doodles. And that benefits me. Just a baby doing baby things.

Writing actually helped developing my hand-eye coordination faster than a child would. I’m not lying when the firsts weeks I tried writing I couldn’t even read what I was doing, no matter how slow I went. Not that my calligraphy is noteworthy at the moment or anything, but it's is certainly better than someone of my age.

After all this rambling, I am entitled to tell you how much time has passed. One year. One whole year. A month, give or take. I could know it exactly if elves celebrated birthdays, which they don’t. Another tad bit of trivia about elven culture. When you live as long as them, birthdays become sort of irrelevant.

Let’s review my achievements since I was born. Crawling, talking (more akin to babbling), reading and writing (even if it was the wrong language). I think I’ve done a lot in a year. Mother and father still spoiled me with books, I didn’t go out a lot since I was still a baby, and I was in a constant state of boredom.

My diary help soothe my pain, but I was impossibly bored. Besides the recollection of my memories, I also registered everyday moments. More like a progression marker, noting the development of my understanding of the language. I wasn’t even close to write in elven, but baby steps.

Ha, baby steps. Good one.

It felt horrible being incapable of doing more because your body didn’t let you. And, even though I wanted to read more complex books, my intellect was severely limited. You cannot learn a totally unknown language in a year, no matter how much free time is at your disposal. And Lady in the river knows I tried.

So, in truth, my suffering originated in my incompetence. If I understood better or faster elven’s tongue, I could do so much more. I did try, but words felt alien, no matter my effort.

Even then, if I learned the whole elven vocabulary, one could not forget things like syntax. What does knowing words do, if you don’t know how to use them and connect them? In the end, after one year I learned basic vocabulary, numbers, maybe a few verbs and pronouns and articles, sayings, et cetera.

Yet I couldn’t make a simple coherent phrase.

“Fir tel ma nitas o men, Edrie.” Mother said with a spoon in hand.

After a year I was tired of the bland-tasting breast milk, so by going on a hunger strike (which did more harm than good to my poor infant body), I convinced my mother to feed me real food. So now I was sat in chair waiting to be fed porridge. Truth be told, the milk was a decent enough meal, but it was getting boring as everything else after a year of the same monotony.

But without a doubt, the main factor was that I found the situation too violent for my liking. I couldn’t just keep sucking milk from a young woman’s bosoms. It was… uncomfortable. Too much, just… too much.

I felt a bit of irony here. Normally babies would refuse to leave the mother’s breast and would put the face away when there was a spoon in front of them, lest I was doing the reverse.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

The porridge was surprisingly good. I’ve already assumed elves were masters of vegetables, cereals and fruits as it was their diet. But they do really know how to make a good porridge. I am not saying they don’t eat meat, and isn’t exactly a luxury, it seems they don’t commonly like it. So, no religious amendment or something like that. Maybe a genetic trait?

“En’ahh~~” I told mother.

“En’ar” meant more. I may have butchered the pronunciation a bit, but my undeveloped tongue was at fault, not me. Sounds like ‘s’ or ‘r’ were difficult to produce when your tongue felt like a wet noodle. Which it was surprising to me that after one year I still had difficulties with my tongue.

Mother fed me until I was full, which was a full bowl. I really liked that porridge. I was weirded out when I saw salads were fifty percent of their diet yet now, I can understand it. Not only my parents were superb at cooking, but the ingredients were top notch. They had this sort of rivalry-slash-battle in the kitchen to see who the best cook was. That’s why normally the table would be bursting with food even if we were only two elves and a half.

I couldn’t recognize the ingredients. Not only because I had no memories to recall, but because this was my first time eating anything besides milk. It had a fruity aftertaste, but I didn't know if trusting my tongue was something I should do.

Dad smirked at the sight of the empty bowl.

“Edrie mirka des fir tel ma ner, eh.” Father commented as he patted my head. I wasn’t offended by such demeaning actions as they felt good. Otherwise, I may have bitten his hand. May.

“En’mat.” Mom agreed with a smile.

As a baby you slowly pick up common phrases or expressions. In this case, “en’mat” was literally translated to ‘indeed’. What mom was agreeing to, was unknown to me. Grammatically, at least. It was easily deducible from context.

“It was impressive that he ate the full bowl without making a mess, though.” Liliana added. “I remember when Sonia invited me to her house and little Marissa filled the table with porridge.”

“That’s because his father taught him manners.” Tel’am explained. “He even asked for more.”

“Surely, it was his father’s doing.” Lilin joked.

“Oh, come on.” Tel’am laughed. “At least give me this victory.”

“You can have your victory if you put Edrie to sleep.” Lilin told.

“I guess I can do that.” Tel’am stood up and held Edrie in a tight yet gentle embrace, then he directed to Edrie’s room.

It was surprising to him how well kept Edrie’s room was. Definitely more than Lilin’s closet. Tel’am thought. Every book he had was on different piles for every category. All of them were on the ground, organized in a corner, so he had easy access to them, but they didn’t get in the way. His child not only had already understood object permanence but was also able to categorize the different types of books he possessed. If it wasn’t for him acting like a normal baby from time to time, Edrie’s antics would have scared him.

He put the sleepy Edrie in the enchanted baby crib. Now they had moved it closer to the ground so he could get out whenever he wanted. They’ve done that a few months prior because he wouldn’t stop crying to get out of bed every time. Edrie would wake up from his afternoon nap and make a ruckus because he wanted to read. Instead of being upset by such behavior, Tel’am couldn’t help but smile at his little scholar.

Tel’am closed down the curtains and wished good dreams to Edrie before closing the door.

It was common for my mother to take me down for some strolls along the city. I enjoyed the sunlight on my skin, though it made me incredibly drowsy. It was really hard to battle against one’s primal instincts.

Life was dull and monotonous, yes, but there was a faint underlying pleasure in such peaceful moments. Far better than the endless cacophony of tortured souls, in my opinion.

We lived in a lousy and liveable place, where the streets were filled both with people and trees. And it’s not an exaggeration, I could see the nearby forest blend with the streets.

It was comfortable being carried around in a piece of cloth, even if it sounded like it should be otherwise. My mother walked along the bazaar buying ingredients with interest.

As both my parents took a liking to cooking, I was carried away in daily outings to the market. They only wanted the freshest ingredients.

“Fir’se akt an ter ar’sis.” Mother commented as she vigorously carried the shopping bags full of vegetables and fruits. She packed quite a lot of strength for someone of a frame as thin as her’s.

I obviously couldn’t understand what she was saying, not even from context, yet she took a detour from the normal route towards home.

“Sin fir’se al nata shil’fa nes, Edrie.” Yup, I caught only my name from this one-sided exchange.

Mother didn’t seem to mind my clueless expression and responded with a bountiful and warm smile, her impressive ears twitching a bit.

After a considerable walk for someone of my age (I was being carried, yet I felt tired), Mother finally stopped and sat down in a bench. She removed me from my clothing and grabbed me between her arms in a sweet embrace, my butt resting on her lap.

“Nitos et nis Ferilyn, Edrie.” Mom told me slowly as she pointed at the horizon.

Then I noticed.

The bench was placed in an oriel, fastened by strong-looking vines. But that wasn’t the impressive part. No, it wasn’t. The marvel awaited on the horizon as an enormous metropolis caressed by the sea was bathed in the orange and violet lights of the twilight.

Then it finally struck me the true magnitude of this city. It was ginormous. Far bigger than my weak eyesight could cover.

The only thing I could distinguish well from my position was the towering needle at the center of the city. Far, far taller than any building in my vision. Its architecture was pointy and refinate, different from the common buildings I had seen. Not only did it seem to puncture the skies, but its spires actively defied them.

“Woah~” I let out a surprised bawl.

Mother responded with an amused giggle, putting her hand before her mouth. “Sinis, sinis.” She said.