"Everything feels so warm and comforting... I wish it could be like this forever..."
A fresh new soul entered the afterlife. This pitiful soul had an equally pitiful life. A life confined to a small hospital bed due to a body rife with disease. They led a life of pain, forever dreaming of something bigger and better.
"Oh, you poor soul, lost in the rivers of the afterlife. You, who was imprisoned in such a sickly body, died so pitifully. I will give you a second chance at life. Hopefully you can find life more enjoyable this time around." a large angelic figure proclaimed after happening across the young soul. The god-like presence embraced the soul and emit a dazzling amount of light. The soul flew across millions of different worlds on its path to a new life, before finally finding its new home in the body of an infant, freshly born into the world of Grand Axiom.
"My body feels uncomfortable for some reason. Its like I'm underwater..." The baby opened it's eyes to the sight of a colorful crib mobile spinning above it. "What is this? This doesn't feel like something they would put in a hospital, so where am I?" it thought to itself. Creak, the baby heard the sound of a door opening followed by the shuffling of footsteps. The heads of a man and woman came into the baby's vision. "Isn't she beautiful?" the woman said to the man. "She's the most beautiful thing in the entire world," the man said, as he grabbed the child from her crib. "Hello little one! I'm your father! You're my daughter. My name is Christoph and yours is Tara, Tara Bouvardia," said Christoph as he grinned a large goofy smile. "Look Tara, this is your mother, Ava." Christoph handed Tara over to Ava. "Hello my child, my Tara," Ava spoke with a warm smile on her face. "I'm your mother. You are my beautiful baby girl."
"What the hell is going on?!" Tara thought in a mad panic. "Why am I a baby?!" A swell of emotions stirred inside of her. Anxiety, fear, anger, even hints of curiosity began to manifest inside of her. Her emotions took over her and she expressed it in the only way a baby could, she cried. Large tears streamed down Tara's face as she began to loudly wail. "Oh no Christoph, our little girl seems to be upset," said Ava as she rocked the crying Tara. "As her father, I know exactly what the problem is!" Christoph began. "She must be hungry. After all, I also feel like crying when I get hungry." he explained while he rubbed his stomach.
"That must be it. It seems our daughter has quite the appetite. Lets go Tara, mother will feed you now." Ava took Tara to a separate room to feed. "I have to get out of here before this lady sticks a nipple in my mouth! Somebody help me!" Tara thought to herself while tears continued to fall from her face. Tara tried to muster up the strength to put up some form of resistance, but, she was in fact, only a baby. What could a baby do against a full grown adult? Tara learned that day, that there was nothing a baby could do to combat the strength of an adult, let alone her immediate parent.
Ava and Tara arrived in a small room with a comfy looking chair and a few bookcases. Ava sat herself on the chair and prepared to feed Tara. "Ah, I give up. You win this time, giant lady person," Tara thought to herself before falling asleep in her mother's arms. "Oh my! It seems she wasn't hungry at all, she was just tired. What a charming baby my Tara is." Ava rose from her seat and took Tara back to her crib. "Sleep well my angel, mother will be here for you when you awake." Tara was returned to her resting place and slept through the night.
A new morning means a new day for Tara to come to terms with her situation. "I'm a baby. I have a small body. I use the bathroom in a cloth wrapped around my butt. I can't even move my body the way I want to. Honestly, this isn't all that different to my life before I reincarnated, besides the baby part." For the first time since landing in this baby's body, Tara assessed her situation in a more rational manner. After looking at her surroundings, she realized that she was born into a decently wealthy family. The room she was in was large and well furnished. There were fancy decorations and a beautiful chandelier hung from the ceiling. There was one more aspect of the room that caught her attention, probably the biggest difference between her old world and this new one. A lone broom had positioned itself in the center of the room and swept by itself, completely unassisted.
"Magic!"
In Tara's previous life, magic was a thing only thought about in stories. Anything else that could be considered magic, were either sleight of hands or special effects. What she saw in front of her was actual, real life magic! That meant that there was a good possibility for her to learn magic. Plans for the future formed quickly after her discovery. As soon as she was physically able, Tara vowed to search for any traces of magic knowledge that she could find inside her home. "If I'm right, some of the books in the bookcases might be related to magic! When no one is paying attention, I'm going to exercise this baby body of mine so I can start moving by myself as soon as possible. I'll sneak into the bookroom and study as much magic as possible. My plan is bulletproof!" Tara imagined with a smug expression on her tiny face.
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From that moment forward, Tara filled all of her private time with exercises that only a baby could do. Her main exercises were a crib assisted squat, followed by multiple sets of rolling over. Between the times her parents spent time with her and being serviced by the servants, she was able to exercise multiple times a day. In only 6 months after her birth, Tara was able to walk on her own with 0 assistance from anyone. Christoph and Ava were shocked by how quickly their little girl had developed. They were initially concerned, thinking it could be a bad omen, but eventually chalked it up to Tara having inherited their superior genetics.
"Huehuehue, who would have guessed that I was such a genius. Now that the first phase of my plan is complete, its time to head into phase 2." Phase 2 consisted of a 3 part plan. Part 1, safely leave her crib. Although she had showed her physical prowess to her parents, they decided that she should still stay in her crib for a little longer, as a precautionary measure. To combat this, Tara had worked on her climbing skills by lifting herself up and down with the crib's railing. She was confident that she could quickly and painlessly get outside of the crib without anyone knowing. Part 2, sneak into the library. This might be the most dangerous part of her plan. Not only did she have to sneak into the library unnoticed, but she had to do it during a time that no one would look for her. During the months where she was physically training, Tara also kept tabs on every adult that came in and out of her room. She memorized everyone's schedules, down to the minute.
Finally, part 3, she had to actually find which books would contain knowledge of magic. Tara determined that this would be the easiest part of her plan, albeit a potentially tedious one. She knew that if she couldn't find the right books fast enough, that she would have to redo phase 2. There was even the potential of having to redo phase 2 more than once. This was a condition that she was willing to risk.
Tara bided her time and waited for the perfect day to enact phase 2. Her chance finally came in the middle of Summer. The Bouvardia household was greeted by a particularly warm Summer day. The adults of the household decided for this day to be a more relaxed one, with no planned schedule. This gave Tara a perfect 1 hour time slot between breakfast and afternoon nap time.
The morning came and went uneventfully. The combination of food and warm weather made Christoph and Ava drowsy after breakfast. They hastily laid Tara down for her nap and left to take one of their own. Tara listened as her parents left her room, counting the footsteps as they walked down the hall. "21... 22... 23... 24... 25!" It was go time. Just as Tara had simulated in her mind hundreds of times over, she climbed over the side of the crib and landed neatly on the ground, diaper side first. Most of the doors in the manor were left opened for ease of movement, this included both Tara's room and the library. For this reason, Tara was able to crawl directly to the library, 3 doors down the hallway from her room.
So far, Tara's plan had been executed smoothly, too smoothly in fact. She knew that if a problem occurred, it would be during a moment of ease like this. Still on guard, Tara crawled into the library and headed for the nearest bookcase. The bookcase in front of her was adorned with many books of different sizes and color. Since she didn't know which books contained what, Tara just picked the largest book that she realistically could get her hands on. The book was nearly the same size she was, but Tara was able to utilize her body weight to tip the book out of it's resting place.
With a small thud, the book fell out and opened to a random page. Tara's levels of excitement hit an unprecedented level. "This is it! Months of hard work are finally going to pay off!" Tara leaned over the now opened book and peered inside. What she saw inside of the book broke her poor little spirit. Something that she never considered would happen, not even remotely. It was something so obvious, but her baby brain clouded her better judgement.
She couldn't read a single word or letter on the page. Even though the people of this world spoke the same language as she did prior to reincarnating, the written language was completely different.
Tara fought the oncoming tears. Every ounce of energy in her small body was used to fight the downpour of tears making their way to her tear ducts. Having collected herself, Tara shamefully crawled back to her room. She climbed her way back into her crib and silently sobbed to herself. She experienced her first defeat in this new world and vowed to never feel like this again. It would be 2 more years before Tara learned to read. By that time, she was allowed to move independently around the house, so all of the work she put into planning the initial breakout amounted to nothing.