Sorrinn snapped awake with a jerk, eyes round and darting from side to side. Where was he? What year was it?

The last thing he remembered was taking a sip from his mother’s breast, then everything went black.

Coming to his senses, he realized he hadn’t been asleep at all. For one, it was the middle of the day. Second, he was sitting on the rug in what looked like the living room of a quaint country cottage.

Well, a living room may have been a stretch of the word. The only thing parlor-y about it was the lone vintage-looking couch tucked off to the side by the front door, beneath the window, and the small stone-topped coffee table before it. Most of the day-illuminated room was given to the dining table and the big slate fireplace, where all manner of stone pots, pans, and kettles hung from a metal rod suspended over the unlit pit. Then there was the vast, empty space in the middle of it all being used for nothing but to display the pretty rug upon which he sat. It appeared to be a general space where lots of things happened, from sitting to hosting guests to dining—to storage too, by the stack of horizontal barrels in the northeastern corner. A general room, per se.

He’d been there for a while, from the looks of it, and had been mindlessly occupying himself with some painted blocks of wood carved into all sorts of fun, infant-entertaining shapes. Absolutely riveting objects. So entertaining, in fact, that one of them was stuffed halfway into his mouth, drenched in a lake’s worth of slobber. He’d nodded off while playing, then that spark of greater awareness had awoken from its hibernation like a bolt from the blue. He was back in the driver’s seat of that accursed, underdeveloped brain whipping him to and fro like a ragdoll for its amusement. Who knew how long he had until that childish stupor dragged him back under the waves.

He was so overwhelmed and jaded, he had to clutch the side of his head. Growing up was an awful, awful thing. Unable to think, waking up in strange places after prolonged periods of absence, hooked on the allure of breastmilk. He was frightened of the infant in which he’d become.

His mother was there, sitting on said couch, basking in the streaks of daylight as she did some sewing.

The simple act of seeing that woman ignited the fear of God in him. He needed to escape before she gave him her breast again. Every instance he faded out, it was preceded by her breast getting sandwiched into his mouth. He tossed the block in his mouth away, crawled onto his feet, and bolted—more like determinedly waddled—in the direction opposite of her. Glancing over his shoulder, eye contact was made. A shiver raced up his spine. An encounter was imminent.

His mother looked at him with curiously perked brows and an adoring smile. “Oh, and where are you off to in such a hurry?”

The adrenaline ignited the prismatic torch within him. The energies of his spirit permeated his uncoordinated limbs, imbuing them with strength—albeit to a vastly, vastly lesser effect than what he accomplished in The Place Within. It was enough for him to be able to sprint without crumpling onto his face. That was all he needed. He took off in a hurry, scaling the two-step staircase into the foyer to the north of the general room on hands and knees, and vanished around the corner into the long hallway.

The woman laughed a sharp snort. “Sorrinn, what are you up to? Get back here.” Her footsteps chased after him across the floorboards.

He had no choice but to ensconce himself in the first room on the left. He reached his hand toward a door further down the hall on instinct and yanked it back, making the door slam shut with [Tangible Will]. Then he gently inched the door he cowered behind near enough to shut so as to not alert her to his schemes.

His mother passed the room by in her search. The foolish woman never expected him to be able to stealth a door shut with such tactical finesse. She was the trout to his bait.

“Sorrinn?” she playfully sang from the hall. “Where are you, my little dasher? Mama’s going to find you.” She tiptoed toward the door he slammed shut. It was almost too easy.

Safe from her bosom, he released the breath he’d been holding at last, shutting the door all the way. His fatigued gaze surveyed his surroundings within his newfound safety. He’d sprouted up in someone’s study, it looked. Dark wood-comprised bookshelves which were like skyscrapers to his little-over-a-year-old height lined the room’s walls on both sides. Thick, daunting tomes burlier than thesauruses—more than he could tally on his fingers—stocked their shelves alongside all manner of odd alchemical ingredients contained in research vials. A big, executive-looking desk and chair sat at the room head, bathing in the rays of light streaking through the broad window. Strange illustrations of otherworldly beasts were framed on the wall behind the desk his curious eyes couldn’t help but scrutinize.

Such a sheer quantity of otherworldly knowledge stashed behind the very walls of his home; the dormant wisdom in him couldn’t help but salivate from the ravenous maw. Once he was old enough to stop fading in and out of lucidity, he was determined on returning to engorge on his struggle’s worth of knowledge.

Channeling [Ethereal Surge] for the limited period he had showed him just how demanding maintaining its effect was on his immature body. The wind was taken out of him, he started to sweat, shiver, and needed to sit on the floor to recoup his energy. Some impatient part of him was contemplating trying to use [Tangible Will] to bring down one of the books. Though he was starting to doubt he’d be able to manage lifting a book for long without pushing himself too far. The last thing he wanted was to spiral back into the fog by straining himself.

He was exhausted. He needed food.

Looking backward where he sat, the handle was too high for him to reach. He hadn’t thought things all the way through.

Surely his skill could bear twisting a door handle. He lifted himself back to his feet, reaching his hand for the handle, and focused his intent through concentration-squinted eyes. Soon, a distorting force wreathed the object of his focus. He twisted it through the projection of his will and the door popped open.

“Mumma!” he childishly mumbled as he wobbled through the doorway. “Mumma, Mumma, Mum-ma-ma-maaa!”

Maeve’s head popped out from a room further down with the most jubilant smile on her face. “Ah, looks like you found me first. When’d you learn how to teleport, little dasher?”

His arms flailed over his head like an inflatable man. “Hungy. Mumma, hungy. Ieiee… I eat-eat.” That was the best all of focus could manage. It was like an overgrown bowel movement that refused to slip out no matter how hard he pushed. He knew once he squeezed the monster’s head through, the rest would come gliding out. Until then, he was stuck cobbling together what words and sounds he could. “I eat-eat!”

“Okay, I hear you, I hear you. No need to shout.” She scooped him up into her arms, beginning to draw open her shirt dress enough to pop out a breast.

Sorrinn shook his head with a passion of a thousand suns, exclaiming, “No, no, no! Hungy! No eat-eat! I eat-eat!” That was succeeded by some intentful gibberish and hand gesturing. The milk was too dangerous to be enticed. He had to stick to his guns. But darn if it wasn’t hard to not soar onto the bottle and toss his inhibitions to the wayside.

“Okay, fussy…” She fastened her top back on. “Something’s gotten into you today. Let’s see what I can make.”

That day, a fruit puree was on the menu. She squeezed the pasty innards out of the round, fuzzy, pastel pink fruits herself, added a splash of unknown animal’s milk, a dollop of homemade yogurt, and ground them up butter-smooth with a mortar and pestle. The end result was something vibrantly pale purple, sweet, creamy, and yet granular like mashed soft pear. Spice it up with a dash of cinnamon and it would’ve been heaven itself on the tongue. The best part was, he could scarf it down without blacking out.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Who knew if the milk was the actual perpetrator of his episodes. But if he played his cards right, he could extend his time spent in the driver’s seat out indefinitely.

Unfortunately, he soon learned that wasn’t the case the slightest. A short few hours later and he faded back into the veil of fog when his tiredness struck him from behind like a spontaneous bat.

***

The next time he snapped awake, he could immediately tell he was much older. His body felt sturdier, his thoughts clearer. His arms were longer than he remembered, hands bigger beneath his falling gaze.

He was out in the front yard of his home, on his knees, mindlessly playing in the dirt—a quaint cottage plucked from the pages of a story book. The ivy-draped, stone brick facade was a beautiful sight to whip into lucidity to. To his surprise, it was actually quite large an abode on the outside. Two stories, plenty of windows. Or perhaps it was a shortness of height making it appear so. It seemed much smaller on the inside, for some reason.

His mother was off tending to her garden. She nurtured a diverse variety of vegetables, berry bushes, and even a few small fruit trees in the property’s expanse contained by short stone walls. None of the produce was familiar to him at a glance. No apples or oranges or carrots for him to ground his sense of worldly knowledge in. The closest, most familiar things were perhaps the heads of cabbage he spotted. Except those little guys were growing from one of her trees like lemons. They were twice as small as a cabbage—small enough to be held comfortably in his hand when he was handed one. And when she offered him one to snack on, the ‘leaves’ she plucked from the head were in truth a crunchy, edible flesh shielding the moist fruit meat tasting of sweet melon. A bloomdew fruit, she referred to it as. When he looked at the ones in the tree, they did look like young flowers coming into blossom.

He couldn’t help wondering where Asammirr and Orrillimmirr were while he ate.

Maeve treated herself to a bloomdew too, peering into his eyes and smiling effusively as she crunched its ‘leaf’ between her teeth. The sound was so satisfying, like the crunchiest chip to ever have crunched. Chills every time.

Her thumb brushed across his nose. A splotch of dirt had marred it. “How’s the bloomdew taste, lovely?”

“Is good. Is yummy, Mama.” He bounced on his toes and flapped his arms, having another crunching bite. “Is yummy, yummy.”

“Alright, go on and keep playing. Where I can see you, okay? No running off.” She returned to gardening.

“Kay, Mama.” And he ambled around the front yard while he continued crunching on the bloomdew leaves. He didn’t know how long he had, so he gave his time to basking beneath the sun, feeling its warmth caressing his pale skin.

However, things were different from that point on. The length of time he was able to spend at the wheel steadily increased. He could go several weeks of full lucidity before fading away beneath the sands of his mind for a month or two. Then he could have a month with only a week’s worth of downtime.

His ability to move, speak, and exercise his dormant intellect broadened over time as well. The fog was being lifted.

Sorrinn was most grateful just to finally be able to exist in the moment with his family in a fuller capacity. His brother ran off every morning after breakfast to play with his friends till sundown, so he hadn’t gotten to know Asammirr as much as he wanted to. But once he was three, Orrillimmirr took him out on excursions into the village quite often. He rode on his fathers shoulders, marveling at the many cottages of the village and its kind, humble people who always waved, all of the well-tended farmland, the rows upon rows of vibrant-colored crops beyond his knowledge, and the sweeping glades of pasture surrounding the village which lithe, pangolin scale-clad, cervine creatures with long, backward-reaching horns roamed in abundance.

Orrillimmirr informed him those majestic creatures were known as mandilleer when he pointed and asked. Where had he heard that name before? They were ridden like horses and even lugged carts and wheelbarrows around the village. Some were trained to use their forklift-resemblant horns to assist the villagers with construction projects. Some were said to be disciplined enough to even commune with The Mystic Force.

Yes, that was correct: magic. Real magic. Magic existed in the world he lived in then.

His excitement over magic aside, they were smart, beautiful creatures who chose of their own wills to settle alongside the villagers. Their ridged, backwards-growing horns functioned as handlebars/reins for the rider when mounted almost like low-rider bars. He always chuckled whenever he saw someone from the village riding one along the path.

They bore quite the sturdy skulls and powerful horns too. They were far from being only for decoration. He once watched a herd of mandilleer play a game of catch with a woodland predator who invaded the pasture in pursuit of a fleeing horn rabbit by chucking it around off the force of their necks and heads alone. It was as gruesome as it was entertaining. He was pretty sure the predator died in the end. His father covered his eyes around the part where the mandilleer herd started stomping its mangled and broken body beneath their hooves to finish the job.

Speaking of the village folk, the village was… a diverse place, to say the least. Not only Humans and Elves called it home, but also sapient, anthropomorphic animals his father referred to as Eldradimon, and the Human-beast-featured kin of the many Beast-blood tribes.

Beast-blood weren’t to be confused with Eldradimon, who they bore no ancestry with, his father was emphatic. Beast-blood were a people said to have originated from ancient Humans who lived in deep reverence of something called The Mother of All Things, The Origin, and thus they were bestowed a chalice of Her ever-flowing blood as a gift for their piety. Upon drinking from the chalice, it was said the once-Humans adopted the traits, features, and abilities of various animals while mostly retaining their Human facades. The descendants of those Humans were the Beast-blood people.

Contrarily, Eldradimon originated from the sprawling, mysterious, and ancient Great Forests of Oberon and Titania to the continent’s south. They were true-blooded animals who were bestowed boons of longevity, mysticism, and erudition through their deep roots with the Great Forests. The descendants of those illuminated beasts who ascended were the Eldradimon.

It startled Sorrinn a great deal the first time he went out with his father and encountered a humanoid, person-sized bird wearing a pair of overalls. Lunallese, she introduced herself as. Apparently, Eldradimon’s names were sometimes in reference to the qualities of their appearance. In all fairness, she did have beautiful feathers a hue resemblant of the full moon.

That ‘Opal’ his father once mentioned—a Leporidae Eldradimon, who was the healer present during his birth.

He was still wrapping his head around it. It was a lot to take in. A Human-looking guy with whiskers, dog ears, and a tail was one thing, but whole, full-blown furries? All of the Eldradimon he encountered in the village were kind, nonetheless. He wasn’t a racist in his past life and had no intention of becoming one. The uncanniness was something he’d simply have to digest and grow comfortable with.

Orrillimmirr sometimes allowed Sorrinn to tag along for his work as well when they went out in the village. His father was a researcher studying The Mystic Force’s influence on nature—the Great Forests in particular, which were regarded as wonders born of its concentrated influence. When Sorrinn asked if his father could use magic, he answered that he couldn’t. That subject was left there to somberly dangle in the cold rain. Considering he was of Elven blood, Sorrinn found that curious. He’d seen other kinds of Elves of the village casting magic to water the crop fields all the time during their outings, so it must’ve been more so abstinence than true inability. And if so, what was making him abstain from something as wonderful as the practice of magic? Especially so when he saw how riveted his father was by mystic phenomena at every turn—enough to spend his days studying it and documenting every detail.

He enjoyed going on walks around the outskirts of the Great Forest of Titania to the village’s south by his father’s side. Helping him harvest materials or watching him sketch an illustration of a Fae-blessed animal with true contentment swirling in the pale blue-gray of his eyes was a peace he never knew he needed. Learning how magical his new world was, was his favorite thing.

Knowing what his father did then, those books in Orrillimmirr’s study must’ve been tomes pertaining to the mystic arts surely. His voracity for knowledge only ballooned with the passing of the days. He didn’t know how long he could continue to fetter himself before he burst.

That said, time continued to drift by. The past few months had been good—the best he’d ever known in past and present life. To be loved and accepted was his reincarnated dream, and he lived it every day. Every smile he caught from Maeve, every obscure alchemical fact he received from Orrillimmirr, the tides of their hearts whelmed him in bliss like the ocean crawling along the golden sands.

That night when his parents laid him to bed, he could sense by the mass of his fatigue he’d be subsumed into the sand once he closed his eyes. He was okay with that. He welcomed it, even. Every period of absence grew shorter, and soon, there wouldn’t be any straw left to trim. He knew his eyes would open again. Perhaps the next time they did would be the way they remained forevermore.

A boy could dream.