Year 18

"I no get."

"What do you not get?"

"Why Ainnir not get."

"Because she's not a human like you are, Áthas. Her soul is that of a bee, so she can't understand things as well as you can."

"But I not fleshy like mom, but Ainnir like me."

Áthas, the name of our child, was sitting next to me within our room. Her long black hair and fiery eyes, both artificial as she was a doll, and the mask like face she held was pondering the reasons behind Ainnir's disability. I've explained to her several times already the known reasons why, and why I couldn't help her or why no one but herself could help her, but the explanation never stuck.

Áthas' level of development had long ago, from the moment of her soul being transferred to that of a doll, surpassed that than any eight month old should be capable of. Alfred and I had already noticed that the soul, as one of the major components of intelligence, was the same both within development as a fetus as it was in a full grown adult's. From that we thought, "wouldn't she be as intelligent as a full grown adult then?" The answer turned out to be yes.

The exact mechanisms behind why babies aren't capable of understanding or producing speech was a mystery to us, we've hypothesized that their undeveloped bodies limited the natural intelligence innate within the soul, and since Áthas hadn't been limited by such a body she could show the full extent of her intellect from day one. What sort of negative side effects this may have neither of us knew, but this entire thing was an ongoing project that we must learn about if we are to continue forward in our research.

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I shook my head and Áthas' simple logic, "She may look superficially similar but your soul is like I and dad's, not like Ainnir's. If you had magic sight you would understand."

"Why I no have that?"

"We haven't figured out the correct enchantment for it, sadly."

Áthas tapped her pen on the table, a habit she has developed for whenever she's angry or frustrated. There were too many things we didn't know about humans and souls, millennia of research still hasn't figured out even the most basic of questions about what life is, how it developed, and why. For now, we have within our household perhaps the greatest breakthrough in magic since the development of magic itself, and with her I'm sure more questions that I could fathom would be answered.

Hopefully on how her soul was generated, since as far as I knew she simply appeared in my belly rather than something assembled by some unknown method within me.

She turned to me, her face still and emotionless as she couldn't move or bend it in anyway, and began to speak through the enchantments etched into her lips. "When will you? Mom speaks too much nonsense, I can't see so why teach?"

"One day you will be able to see, and when that day comes I would like for you to be prepared. You'll live a very long life, Áthas. Frustration over incomprehension is understandable, but you must learn to deal with it at one point. For now, let's get back to learning about the generation and permutation of elements as actions, okay?"

"Too many big words!" Áthas threw the pen on the table and folded her arms together, looking away from me and slumping into her chair. She might have the intelligence level of an adult, but that doesn't mean she was as mature as one. We had already spent a lot of time playing outside, but I guess she's not yet prepared for the amount of information that Alfred and I want to teach her. Perhaps one day we should leave her with Coinnle, she might find a way to make the lesson more enjoyable.

For now, we'll have to deal with this questionably immoral but love-able creation and try to teach her the best we can.