Greg had almost exhausted all of the little strength he had shifting into a sitting position on the bed he was on. For the past hour, he had been looking in the direction of the door to the room. This wasn’t done out of boredom but rather, out of confusion and slight worry. Greg had woken up a little over an hour ago. According to the pattern of the previous days, the healer should have come along within the next ten minutes to do her morning rounds. When she didn’t show up in that ten minutes, Greg was surprised. He, however, didn’t pay it much mind. When thirty minutes passed, he couldn’t help but frown slightly at this. Now, a whole hour later, the healer was still nowhere to be seen.
‘Do you think something happened to her?” Greg mentally asked his familiar. When Olivia first vanished into his glabella, Greg had still spoken verbally whenever trying to communicate with her. It took a bit of time for him to transition and get used to the idea that merely thinking was enough to communicate what he wanted to say.
‘How should I know?” Olivia replied with a shrug. This was another part that he was still unable to wrap his mind around. The familiar wasn’t only able to communicate with words. Through their bond, she could send nonverbal cues like shrugs, smiles, winks, and the like. How that was possible, Greg was yet to figure out. “Perhaps she just likes to sleep in on some days,” The familiar added in a clearly uninterested tone.
But while she acted nonchalant about the whole situation, Olivia couldn’t help feeling slightly worried at the possibility that her original may have scared the healer away. When her original had first laid eyes on the healer, she had immediately picked up on the extensive damage to her mana pathways and the hairline fractures in her core. However, without going through the healer's memories, she had no way of knowing how she had ended up in this situation. Given that the healer had chosen to stay in the middle of nowhere where she wouldn’t be able to get magical help of any kind, it didn’t take a genius to guess that she was either on the run or hiding from some foe. Could her original’s appearance in the boy’s room have spooked the healer and caused her to run away?
Had Olivia been in her corporeal form, she would have easily been able to spread out her magical senses and seek the healer out. The boy, however, didn’t have even a smidgen of magic to him. As such, she couldn’t piggyback on them to send out her own scan of the area around them. As things presently stood, she was both blind and deaf to everything that wasn’t in the immediate vicinity of the boy. Both Greg and Olivia had been wondering at the healer’s strange lateness when the door to the room opened.
Standing behind the door was the healer. To someone who didn’t know the healer, it would have been hard for them to notice anything off about her. Greg, however, had spent the last ten days solely interacting with her. The town head’s daughter had once entered his room. Greg, however, had pretended to be asleep and so he didn’t really count that as an interaction. In those ten days, Greg had grown sensitive to the minute changes in the healer’s expression. As such, Greg couldn’t help but feel like the healer seemed to be on guard for some reason. From the way her eyes seemed to do a quick scan of the room, it was almost like she was expecting to find something dangerous inside the room.
The quick scan of the eyes lasted barely a second before the healer walked into the room. Greg smiled and was about to greet her. The words, however, were caught in his throat when he noticed that she wasn’t alone. Behind the healer, was a woman that Greg had never met before. He, however, immediately recognized who she was. Despite this being the first time meeting her, Greg couldn’t help the complex cocktail of feelings that welled up within him as he came face to face with his mother.
In truth, she was the mother to the former owner of this body. To Greg, the woman should have been a stranger. So why was it that seeing her had evoked a powerful feeling of attachment to her? Was it some vestigial effect of the original Roka’s soul? Or was it this body’s conditioned reaction to the woman that had given it life and raised him from young? Greg couldn’t tell. But while he was uncertain about the attachment, Greg had no way of ignoring the sharp pangs of guilt and shame he felt at the thought that he was an imposter masquerading as this poor woman’s child.
How to resolve the situation, however, wasn’t by any means straightforward. While he would feel like shit lying and pretending to be this woman’s child, telling her that he was someone else and that her child was actually dead, didn’t strike him as a better approach. In all likelihood, he'd be thought to be off his rocker. And if by some chance he was actually believed, he'd be the one to tell a mother that their child was dead. Though Greg had no hand in the fact that he'd appeared in this world and this body, Greg felt like telling her would be like admitting to killing her child. He just couldn’t do it.
The woman was moving carefully as she entered the room. It was only when Greg looked down that he noticed that she was carrying a tray with her. On the tray was a bowl giving off some steam. It was only now that Greg remembered that the healer would start feeding him today. The healer’s lateness now made sense. She had probably gone to notify his mother that he needed some food and then waited till she had prepared something for him before coming with her. This is exactly what the healer had alluded to the previous night. Greg’s healing was done. All that remained was for him to be fed and in two to three days, he'd be strong enough to leave the infirmary.
The woman, his mother, had been moving carefully in order to avoid spilling the broth in the bowl. When she lifted her gaze to look at her son, however, the tray almost slipped from her hands. So far, Greg hadn’t had the chance to look at himself in the mirror. From the look of horror on the woman’s face, however, he knew that the damage had to be bad. To the woman’s credit, the shocked expression only lasted for a split second before it was hidden behind a warm smile. Whether it was because he hadn’t been in this body long enough to be attached to its appearance, or the fact that Greg was certain that there had to be some magical solution to the problem, he wasn’t too bothered by the fact of his disfigurement. As such, when Greg returned the smile to his mother, it was a genuine smile.
With no bedside furniture on which she could place the tray, his mother could only first sit on the edge of the bed before placing the tray on her lap. “Roka,” once her hands were free, the woman couldn’t help but bring a hand to stroke the side of Greg’s face. Her voice was shaky as she called out his name and in that one word, Greg could hear the crushing weight of worry the woman had been bearing for the past close to two weeks.
“Mother,” Greg called back. Even though a part of him felt guilty calling her this, the warmth in his voice was every bit as genuine as hers had been. “I made you worry,” he said apologetically. “I’m sorry,” he added.
“Silly child,” The woman replied in a slightly admonishing tone. “I am a mother,” She declared. “I’m always worried about my children,” She said with a warm smile causing Greg’s heart to be stung with even more guilt. “You didn’t leave me. That’s all that matters,” She said.
Greg didn’t know whether it was the words or the tone of her voice. Something about what she’d just said caused a bad feeling to start budding in his heart. Keeping his voice as calm and steady as possible, Greg spoke. “How is everyone else? He asked.
Try as she would, the woman couldn’t keep the pain from showing on her face. “It… It’s been hard,” the woman confessed, making the bad feeling in Greg’s heart grow. “Your sister barely speaks or eats,” The woman reported. “And I… I still can’t believe it,” she went on.
”A… and father?” Greg asked. It was absurd. Greg didn’t know any of these people. His care for them should have only been superficial out of simple courtesy and human decency. And yet, for some reason, he couldn’t help but feel like his heart was caught in a vice. Something was telling him that he didn’t want to hear what would be said next. Still, with a shaking voice, he couldn’t stop himself from asking, “H… how is father?”
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A look of surprise flashed in the woman’s eyes as she looked at her son. It was almost as if she was unsure whether Greg was being serious or not. Once she ascertained that her son wasn’t pretending, it was as if her heart broke all over again. She turned to look at the bowl of broth on the tray that she had set on her lap. Greg, however, had already seen that tears had started to well up in his mother’s eyes. “Y… you should take something to regain your strength,” she said, ignoring his question. It seemed to take everything within the woman to keep her voice steady as she said this.
“Mother,” Greg called out to the woman who wouldn’t look at him. “Answer me!” he part begged, part demanded. “How is father?” he asked.
“Your father didn’t make it back,” The healer, who had thus far remained silent, seemed to take pity on his mother and answer the question in her stead. Greg froze. He felt like he had been dunked in a vat of icy cold water. His brain could understand the words that the healer spoke. And yet, for some reason, he just couldn’t process them. “The hunters who brought you back said that he gave his life to save you from the snow bear,” The healer continued. “Do you not remember any of this?” She asked with a slight frown. She had spent all this time tending to Greg’s external wounds. It was only now that it occurred to the healer that she hadn’t considered the boy’s state of mind. Not that anyone could exactly blame her for this. Up until yesterday, all her healing wasn’t making any major difference in the boy’s condition. It was still up in the air whether he'd make it or not.
Greg had known all this time that his injuries were because of a hunt that had gone wrong. Try as he would, however, he hadn’t been able to drag up any memories of the circumstances around this accident. He knew that people in this remote town often made hunting parties to help each other brave the dangers of the forest around them. He, however, couldn’t remember even one face out of all the people that he’d been out on the hunt with. He didn’t even know how many there had been. A part of him wanted to shake his head. To refuse what the healer had just told him. To argue that this wasn’t what had happened. His memory, however, was blank. Try as he would to shake something loose from his memories, he kept on coming up empty. What Greg couldn’t explain was the fact that his denial wasn’t an emotional one. He was in shock at the fact that his father was dead. That much he couldn’t deny. But for some reason, Greg’s refusal to accept the given explanation of the circumstances around his death, wasn’t because he didn’t want to believe it. Instead, it was as if on some level, he knew that this wasn’t what had happened. The memory of what had really happened was somewhere in his head, he just simply couldn’t get to it, no matter how he tried.
It wasn’t until he felt a shaking hand wiping at his face that Greg became aware of the tears that had been flowing down his face. Tears were flowing down his mother’s face even as she comforted him. “You have to be strong Roka,” She spoke. “It will be hard,” She straightforwardly admitted. “But if we hold together as a family, we’ll get through this,” she said with a forced smile. “Here, have some of this broth that I prepared for you,” She said reaching down for the bowl. Picking it up from the tray on her lap, the woman gently blew on the still-steaming bowl of broth before gently holding it out to him.
Still reeling from the shock of what he’d just learned, Greg unconsciously leaned forward and sipped at the bowl presented to him. Soon as the broth in the bowl touched his tongue, however, a look of confusion crossed Greg’s features. “This is from the three tusk boar,” He spoke up, when the meaty taste of the broth spread across his tongue. Even though Greg was completely new to this world, the body that he inhabited wasn’t. His tongue immediately recognized what he’d been served. It was the most commonly hunted animal in this town, as such it wasn’t that amazing a feat that Greg could immediately identify it. The reason why it caught Greg’s attention was because, in this town, women didn’t hunt. As a widow, his mother shouldn’t have had any way of obtaining meat.
This wasn’t some fairytale world of unicorns and rainbows. This was a remote town in the mountains trying to eke out a living from a harsh and unforgiving environment. Most of the time, people didn’t have enough for themselves, let alone others. As a widow, his mother would have received some help from the women that were her neighbors for the first week. And by help, it was just a share of what they’d cooked. No one would give her food to store for the future. They needed it just as much as she did.. After the week was passed, his mother was expected to rely on herself. Harsh as it sounded, this was just the simple reality of how life was in this remote corner of the world. Greg had been in the infirmary for eleven days thus far. With no man in the house to hunt and no food stores to draw from, her mother shouldn’t have had the meat needed for this broth. As such, the question naturally formed in Greg’s mind. “Where did you get it from?” He asked his mother.
There was a chill in his voice that hadn’t been there in Greg’s voice a moment before. The reason for this was simple, in this town, when a woman was widowed, it was customary to mourn for a month in respect of the spouse that they had lost. While women couldn’t hunt, there were nuts, fruits, and grains in the forest that they could gather and subsist on for the month. This month came to be known as the month of grain in the town. If a woman accepted meat from another man during the month of grain, it was considered just as bad as if she was cuckolding the lost husband. It was a great dishonor to the dead man. Other than the memories he’d inherited from this body, Greg had never met or known the man that was Roka's father. By extension, he shouldn’t have cared what this woman did. But just as he felt a strong bond with this woman who, up until a few minutes ago, was a complete stranger to him, Greg felt equally attached to the unknown man that was supposed to be his father. The thought of his memory being dishonored, caused a flame of rage to burn hotly within him.
“I haven’t accepted or eaten meat from any man since your father died Roka,” The woman answered calmly, her tone betraying no offense at Greg’s accusatory tone. “Your sister and I have eaten nothing other than what we can gather in the forest,” She went on to say in a flat tone. “When the healer came to me and told me that you needed food to regain your strength, I went to the wife of your father’s brother and begged for some little meat to prepare for you,” His mother calmly explained.
While women weren’t allowed to take meat from any man during their month of grain, getting meat from another woman that was willing to share, wasn’t wrong in any way. With the added layer that his mother had gotten the meat from a relative and not from a household that they weren’t related to, the issue should have been resolved at that. This situation, however, only seemed to grow even more and more absurd as far as Greg was concerned.
Up until a few seconds before, Greg only had memories of his uncle. Soon as he heard his mother mention his father’s brother, however, rage and hatred so pure that it almost took form in the real world, filled Greg. His mother had actually been referencing his uncle's wife as she explained where she got the meat. To Greg, however, as soon as he’d heard his father’s brother mentioned, all thoughts had dispersed from his mind. All that had remained was a deep, cold, and unwavering desire to kill. If someone were to ask Greg why he wanted his uncle dead, he’d have no logical answer to offer. Even looking back through what memories he still had of the man, Greg couldn’t find anything that would provoke the kind of vitriolic hatred that he presently felt. What he did know, however, was that given the chance, he wouldn’t hesitate to slit the man’s throat!
Greg didn’t know if something else had gone wrong with him other than the amnesia. What he did know was that he needed to be careful. Right now, Greg had crucial chunks of his memories missing. According to what he’d been told, his father had died trying to save him. And yet, Greg found himself disagreeing with this account of events. Not out of guilt, shame, or some other emotional reaction, but an unexplainable certainty that this wasn’t what had happened. It’s almost like on some level, he knew what had actually happened, he just couldn’t access the memories. At the same time, Greg had this homicidal rage and hatred against his uncle, something that he also couldn’t justify or explain. Something had happened on that hunting trip and right now, these two strong emotions were the only thing he had to go on.
Greg wasn’t stupid. He knew that the emotions of an amnesiac weren’t strong evidence, no matter how one looked at it. Even he himself was barely convinced that he wasn’t just being delusional. For better or for worse, however, Greg just simply couldn’t shake the conviction that there was more to the story than what he’d so far been told. How he’d get to that truth, Greg didn’t know. He, however, had every intention of getting right to the bottom of everything…