Book One: A Second Chance

  I didn’t envy babies anymore. To be honest, I was jealous of the little poop factories when I was living in my trailer with my older brother Matthew’s family. The joy of just sitting in a crib, minding your own business, and having giants sve away keeping you clean, and fed. Babies had everything, man. Free food, free lodging, and no worries. All they needed to do to get what they wanted was scream about it, and no way were they getting in trouble for it either because hey, it’s a baby. It’s what they do.

  Yeah, no. Not any longer.

  To be fair, I doubted most babies had the consciousness of an adult, like I did now. Could you imagine that? If all babies were like me and could go like bam! Shoot out of Mom and turn to her and say, “Mother, thank you for birthing me. I am ready for whatever this world needs of me.” Just picture how much humanity could’ve accomplished if we came out sprinting day one.

  What the hell am I talking about? Oh yeah—being a baby sucked. This little body of mine felt like a prison. My muscles ached with every shift of my body or attempted lift of my head, and my eyesight was atrocious.

  Now, you might be wondering, why the hell was I a baby? To which I’ll happily answer by saying, “I don’t know, and that scares me.” My original assumption was that I was in the hospital high off some pain sedative, or maybe in a medically induced coma.

  Some part of me still believed this was a coma, though it’d been ages now and I hadn’t awakened. Which was odd when I stopped to think about it. Back when my father fell down the stairs and broke his back and had to go into surgery, he told me that when the doctors had put him under, it was instant. One moment he was waiting to get cut open, next thing he knew he was awake. No dreams, nothing. It was like a swift nap.

  Maybe I was just a special case? I’d always had an active imagination. So perhaps this was just some crazy lucid dream I was having. If so, it sucked, because I couldn’t do any of the cool stuff you can do in dreams. As, for now, I was just going along with whatever happened. I didn’t like thinking about that stuff anyways. It put me in a sour mood. So, I focused on the present.

  I said it once and I’ll say it again, being a baby sucked. I’d been through it once already. Of course I didn’t remember being one, but that didn’t mean I wanted to experience it now.

  My caretakers, the elven woman and man, were always bringing their faces so close to mine that it was unnerving. At least the woman seemed pretty and harmless, but the man, who now resembled a grizzled geezer since he’d grown out his hair, would, uh…

  Well, first, I should mention the fact that my caretakers were two elves. I’ll repeat once again. Elves. You know, the fantasy race? The human-looking people with pointy ears? I’m just being an ass. Of course you would know.

  The elven man I granted the title of Bonehead. Why was I giving my possible new parent a mean nickname? Oh, well, that’s easy. He was an asshole. Probably had little to no experience with kids. The dude treated me like a football, and I’m talking about a real football, not that round thing we call a soccer ball, you heathens.

  I swore if he threw me in the air one more time, I’d aim my vomit at him.

  It was hard to know how much time had passed. I’d slept so much. If I was in a coma, when I slept, was I, like, dreaming in a dream? Because I’d always dream of stuff from back then. You know, like those “false awakenings,” the types of dreams where you wake up in your bedroom. You feel like you’re waking up for the morning, only to realize something isn’t right. Then, bam, you’re in a dream because, screw you, your brain is a gaslighting asshole. That’s some weird Inception crap to think about. Again, the things I’d think about while being a baby.

  As time trudged onwards there were moments that broke up the monotony, yet it did little to keep my sanity in check. Like, seriously, think about it. Imagine being trapped in your thoughts for hours and days on end, stuck in the same tiny room, unable to move, at the whims of your caretakers. Sometimes the giants will come and take you away, but your horrible baby vision stops you from actually seeing anything aside from blobby shapes and colors, unless said object is pushed directly into your pudgy little face. Then eventually you’ll be stuffed back into that tiny room and tucked tightly in your crib bnkets, but sometimes those bnkets are too tight, and it gets really hot. So, you cry and cry, hoping you can get them to come and figure out what’s wrong, only for them to pick you up. Except all you want is for them to put you back in and fix your covers, but no, they don’t know that because of course that’s the one thing they don’t understand. So, in a moment of panic, Bonehead thinks you’re hungry, so he carries you all the way down into the kitchen, where he gets a bottle of lukewarm milk. But I’m not hungry, so I spit it out, and out of frustration I scream, and he also starts to cry. Now everyone is screaming and the giant elf woman, who I’ll grant the title of Boss, comes rushing down the steps shouting her nguage’s equivalent of “WTF is going on?!” Eventually after some squabbling, the couple drags you all the way back upstairs and stuffs you into your crib. Only to then tighten the bedding too much once again, so you’re stuck having to sleep in a slightly too-warm bed!

  Being a baby freaking sucks. Moments like that are few and far between, but your days and nights are filled with nothing but silence, and your own breathing, of course. It’s boring. Like, really boring. If I had to make a tier list of the most boring things to do in the world, I would put being a baby in the lowest possible tier beneath watching paint dry. Because ninety percent of the time, that’s just as fascinating as what you’re doing, but paint dries faster than you’ll stop being a goddamn baby.

  It reminded me of that horror story I read about a U.S. soldier in the Pacific War. Or was it Vietnam? Korea? Eh, some war out in the Pacific, I think. Anyway, the details aren’t important. He was a prisoner of war, kept confined to a cell for years on end. Robert Shumaker was his name, that I do remember. To keep himself sane, Robert built a house in his mind. He imagined going to the store and buying all the tools he needed before putting everything together, day in and day out. Essentially all he did was daydreaming.

  A strategy that I found myself using, and darnit, it’s all I could do. For what felt like hours in my cell, my crib, I would imagine things in my head. It was something my ADHD brain did often, especially back in school during all the boring csses. Man, if I had a seat near the window with a view of the outside, kiss my grades goodbye, because I was never listening to a lecture. Which—hey, if… if I was reincarnated, hypothetically speaking, would I still have ADHD? Because that’s a brain thing, right? I’m no doctor, if my ck of intelligence hasn’t already made that clear. I never went to college or anything, didn’t want to get myself into debt. Which honestly turned out pretty well for me anyways. My IT job paid somewhat okay and such, so really, dodging college was something I did not regret in the slightest.

  Anyway—what I was saying? Oh, right. I was an imaginative kid, and my parents had always been amazed at how I could keep myself entertained without toys. But in my adult years, I dropped the habit. Or, well, I guess it didn’t go away. I just redirected it at D&D. God, I missed that. I missed my friends… Part of me wondered how everyone else reacted—No. No. Don’t think about that.

  Let’s talk about cool stuff. Like how weird this pce was. Like, if there were elves in this world, was there magic here? I’d seen my fair share of anime and such. In isekais, the main character always went to a cool magical world with hot babes, demons, and lots of good food. I hoped this world had good food. God, I’d kill for a cheeseburger right now. I wondered if this world had any Earth animals? Or maybe there were, like, some weird type of critters, who knows.

  Speaking of weird, I noticed in my little room that the sunlight that came from my window… it stuck around far, far longer than I was used to. I didn’t have anything to tell the time aside from that. No clocks or anything that I could see in my room. So now and then, I did the most boring of things imaginable one could do, and that was counting. Oh man, if Count von Count and the Sesame Street crew were there to see me, they’d have been so proud.

  I began counting how long it took for the sun to show up and then vanish over the course of a few days. Why not just one day, you ask? Wouldn’t doing it for a few days ruin the experiment? Eh, probably, but again I’m no scientist or doctor. Besides, counting sometimes resulted in me falling asleep from sheer boredom. Or Bonehead or Boss interrupted me. Assholes. I was so close to reaching thirty thousand the other day.

  Anyway, what I concluded from my experiments was that time in this world was odd. It wasn’t like Earth, that’s for sure. From what I could guess, the days here were a handful of hours longer than on Earth. Maybe like twenty-six or even thirty hours. Fascinating. Did that mean people here naturally stayed up longer? Or did they just go to bed when the sun was still out? I made a mental note to watch Bonehead and Boss more closely.

  Time continued marching on forwards, and because I was a little baby, I couldn’t really explore. The only times I ever sortied out on recon missions were when either Bonehead or Boss came to get me. Despite my poor, pitiful baby eyes, the few times I’d been carried out of prison, I’d collected some intel on my whereabouts. For starters, I appeared to be in a small, two-story home in the countryside. How did I know it was the countryside? I didn’t. But the few times I’d been outside, I hadn’t noticed any other nearby homes, and I could hear distant bulls. At least I thought they were bulls. The sounds were deep and guttural, and quite frightening.

  Aside from that, I also noticed it’d been rather warm, and I’d seen melting snow. So, if I had to guess, it was early spring. Another neat thing was that there seemed to be some form of electricity. Whenever Bonehead or Boss entered the room at night, it was suddenly lit.

  Oh hell, I forgot something. Sadly, no amount of forgetting him would make him go away. I also learned that I might have a sibling—I know, I was shocked too.

  He was an older brother, but only by a year or two. We shared the same room. The kid was already running around and performing stunts. I hated him. I hated him so much. Okay, okay. I didn’t really but seeing him running around doing toddler things was… was torturous. Thankfully, however, much of my torture was relegated to when Boss brought me downstairs, as the boy was contained to the py area in the living room during the day. Even then, my hatred for the little bastard grew.

  Occasionally, between my meditation and daydreaming, I would try little exercises to catch up to the boy, but my little baby body said no to any of that. So, whenever I was near the rambunctious kid, I could only pray, God, please, lord, if you exist—which really you might, if you did bring me to life again—please, please let me start moving on my own soon. Can you, like, turn up the dial that’ll make me grow faster? No? Fine, asshole.

  There was one other thing I learned between my bouts of meditation and self-discovery in prison—something drastic.

  I wasn’t a guy anymore. I was not ready to learn that. You’d think I would’ve learned after the first changing session, but I was still processing where I was. Learning this was a severe shock. Either my brain was giving me some weird fantasy in this comatose dream, or it appeared that my reincarnation had rolled the dice and Johnson packed up his two balls and moved on.

  If this truly was a second chance, and not some drug-induced dream, I couldn’t help but wonder how my life was going to turn out now. While the situation was shocking, it wasn’t infuriating. I also wasn’t indifferent. I felt… amused? I had always wondered what it’d be like to be a woman. Would I have enjoyed life more, or would things still have been the same as before?

  I was in no position to answer my own question. As a guy, I knew nothing about women. Not saying that as a joke, either. I knew nothing. Only that I was attracted to them, I respected them, and I was deeply terrified of them. I had a few friends who were girls, and all of them scared me. Part of that fear stemmed from my mother. In my household, you never wanted Mom to be the one who dished out the punishments.

  I didn’t know what this world was like. All I could hope was that it would be something like modern Earth. If women here were treated as second-css, I was not looking forward to that. Girls went through some tough stuff, especially before my time, and I didn’t know if I had the strength to go through it like they had.

  Let’s talk about something less anxiety-provoking. For instance, I learned from moving my pudgy arms around that I also had a trait in common with the Boss and Bonehead. No, it’s not that I was also a bonehead! It’s that that I too had pointed ears. Making me an elf!

  Shouldn’t I have known that by now?

  Hey, I never said I was smart. And I wasn’t a doctor. I couldn’t be sure they were my birth parents until I checked myself. That’s my story.

  As time continued, the days blurred together, and my little body grew stronger, my imagination was having a harder time keeping me entertained. So, I decided to start exploring my surroundings with my limited vision and short arms. Examining my prison, which was my crib, proved to be a nice distraction in between my imaginative adventures. It wasn’t bad. I’d say it was about four feet by two feet, which was very spacious. The bedding was firm, but not too firm, and the blue baby bnket was extravagant. First off, it had a dragon on it, or at least some kind of lizard monster, with wings and two arms, or maybe legs. It was awesome, and not only because it was fighting heroes.

  So, you had two things: blue, and big lizard monster. I was a huge Godzil fan, and still am, mind you, so already, if I’m giving this crib a review on Yelp, we’re at a solid four and half stars. Why only four and half and not five? Easy, there was no bathroom. I hated my life. Being a baby sucked. God, how humiliating—no wonder the little bastards cried.

  I tried to keep my dignity, to fight on, yet it was a losing battle. A war of attrition I could not endure. Like the three hundred Spartans during the battle of Thermopye I tried. I so tried to hold back the Persians. Yet I couldn’t. It was too much. Lying in a crib of my filth showed me that no matter how strong-willed I thought I was, even I broke down and screamed for my new parents to come and take care of me.

  While that in itself was mortifying, I was also troubled by my thoughts. I stewed in bouts of imagination, reflecting on my predicament of how I ended up here as I y in my crib, which unfortunately hadn’t brought me to any conclusions. In my prior life, I was an agnostic, not knowing if there was a higher power out there or not. Well, let’s say I was a believer now. Something had to be out there, yes, but I didn’t think Jesus Christ decided to pluck me out of that stretcher and stick me here. If he did, I had some serious questions, but I digress.

  I also couldn’t help but think about home: my brother Matthew and his family, my parents, and even my eldest sibling, who I’d rarely seen in recent years, and maybe wouldn’t see ever again. I’d been… reclusive. I hardly paid attention to them.

  After the hellhole that was high school and finding a job capable of giving a basic living wage, I got the opportunity to shack up with my middle brother and his then-girlfriend. Owning or renting your pce at the time was unheard of, and this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to get away from my verbally abusive mother.

  My mother was… interesting. One day she was the nicest person in the world, and you loved her, the next day she was the goddamn devil. Medication helped keep her swings in check, but after her own mother passed away, she’d stopped taking them. My father, meanwhile, would just sit by. Having lived with her for nearly fifty years, he was used to it, I guessed.

  Point is, I didn’t want to stay in her house no more. The pce wasn’t that bad; people had experienced far worse than me. I had been, or still was, just some fat, scruffy loner with a handful of internet friends. Whatever issues I had, I could handle myself, and besides, they weren’t anything to cry over. They only stemmed from plenty of anxiety issues, and one too many people who pretended to be my friends only to backstab me, and a mother’s driving herself insane—

  Sorry… I shouldn’t talk about or dwell on this sort of stuff.

  Fucking hell, being a baby sucks! I just want to grow up… To think I’d ever say that phrase again… That clerk at the 7-Eleven, I wonder if he made it—stop it. Let’s not think about that stuff.

  I’d only make myself depressed, and nobody likes a crying baby. As much as Bonehead and Boss got on my nerves, I didn’t want to disturb these strangers. All I could do now was focus on the task at hand.

  Which is… sit-ups! I need to strengthen this baby’s body. I’m just going to lift my arms. Like this, now lift!

  To say my exercise regime sted more than a minute would be a lie.

  I vaguely recalled Matthew telling me that babies start to see better towards the middle of the second month. Human babies, that is. For elven babies, that seemed to hold true as well. By about the sixth week into this new world, I could now see clearly up to around a foot and a half away from me. For instance, I could now see the other end of my crib, and behind and above me I saw a mp, thus confirming my suspicion about electricity existing in this world.

  The light was different from anything back home. It looked like an LED—a blue one. Yet when powered on, it worked like gas. It wasn’t instant, but gradual, like the light was slowly pushed out of it when either Bonehead or Boss came to check on me.

  Speaking of my caretakers, I could finally get a proper look at the two… or, well, three if you count the boy. The first was my mother in this world, Boss. She was stunning—a tall, toned, and curvy elf with ears that protruded at least six inches from either side of her head, ending in points. Her short bck hair had blue streaks, and her eyes were a dark shade of blue that rivaled the night sky. I got a very anime-tomboy impression from her.

  My horribly degenerate mind couldn’t help but think of the worst possible thing. She was my type. Arm bells rang in my head as my subconscious screamed for the police, and I came to the crushing realization that I had just found my own mother to be attractive. The amount of shame I felt made me want to die.

  As for the man of the house, Bonehead, he was just as handsome as the woman. No, I did not think he was my type, thank you for asking! Like Boss, Bonehead was an elf, though his ears did not protrude quite as far as my mother’s did. Along with his dirty blonde hair, his stubble had also grown somewhat since our initial encounter. His eyes were quite small, pointed, and a vivid shade of green, almost the color of freshly cut grass. I could picture him in a leading role in a Hollywood action film, with his broad shoulders and trim waist.

  Finally, there was the boy I guessed was my older brother. He was old enough to walk around and hold basic conversations with the adults. A cute kid, I supposed. He inherited the best qualities of his parents. Although shorter than his mother, he possessed long ears, and his hair was an extremely dark brown hue, bordering on bck. What stood out the most were his eyes. His left eye was an ocean blue, whereas his right eye was a grass green.

  Heterochromia? Wasn’t that what it was called? Anyway, it was cool. I wondered if my eyes were like that. Next time I got near a window or mirror, I needed to look and see.

  The boy was enraptured with me, always poking his snot-nosed face into my crib and making silly faces at me. I know it’s ironic to say this, but… I despised children. I never got along with them. I had never been outwardly mean to them, and I could tolerate their presence, but living with two of them for three years… my sanity waned.

  And now here I was. Unable to fortify myself in my own room, unable to cover my ears to shield myself from his screaming and crying. I was defenseless against this boy. Many times, he tried to pick me up, and many times I watched as my two supermodel parents admonished him to put me down. Yet the brat just wouldn’t learn.

  While physically I was unable to defend myself against this child, I could at least do one thing. Psychological warfare. The kid loved to make faces at me all the time when poking his head into my crib. Sometimes he did get me; he made some stupid face which I couldn’t help but grin at. But that only encouraged him. So, what was my secret psyop technique? Well, let me tell you: I stared. I made my straightest poker face, and I peered into this child’s soul. At first, this didn’t faze him, and I expected as much. Yet as time went on, days went by, I could see the uneasiness settle in. He pressured me less and less, and soon… silence returned, and I was at peace.

  Me: 1

  Small Child: 0

  God, I’m an asshole.

  The best times of the day were snack times, at least the parts when I wasn’t near the boy. God, I yearned for the days when I could walk on my own again. I was still too young for proper food, so my mother would always sit me down at the kitchen table and nurse me, and… well, I would be a filthy liar if I said I didn’t enjoy the treat, or the view, though that was just due to me being a degenerate… Again, my subconscious tried to call the police, and I felt absolutely awful. I just, my brain, my brain was still stuck thinking that I am me. The other me, the one before I got shoved into this small body. I know I’m just digging a deeper hole. I’ll shut up.

  Anyway, that wasn’t the main reason I enjoyed snack time. What really made it great was how much more of the household I got to take in. Including taking her in—not like that, you freak. I mean details like the pomegranate perfume on her clothes, and the smoothness of her skin. To think an elf of all things was nursing me. To think there were elves at all! Even now, maybe two months after I woke up here in this world, I was still unraveling everything around me.

  I also saw the clothes we were all wearing. I myself was in a typical cotton onesie, or at least what I thought was cotton. Yet everyone else… if I had to compare theirs to a time period on Earth, I’d say the early nineteenth century. For instance, when Bonehead was home, he typically wore denim jeans and suspenders with a polo shirt in white or abaster. He always wore a jacket and a hat when venturing outside, while the Boss alternated between blouses with long skirts, sundresses, and shorts with polos. She occasionally stole and donned the man’s hat; the two of them engaged in pyful altercations over it before, uh, undressing and… wrestling.

  I’ll leave that there. Just know they did this a lot… maybe too much.

  During my nursing periods, the Boss would sometimes take me to other rooms of the house, where I’d learn more. The house was small. I saw a dining room that shared the same space as the kitchen, and a living room that led to the staircase. On the second floor, I found what looked to be a bathroom with actual plumbing, a study room the man sometimes used, and my shared bedroom. Beside it was what I presumed to be the master bedroom.

  A pce I had grown to despise, because the walls in this house were extremely thin. Over the past few weeks, I had lost countless hours of sleep to the sounds of my parents boring to get me and the boy a third sibling. Didn’t they know that we could hear them? Like, the Boss sounded like she was being murdered by Bonehead. Honestly, if there was one thing I felt bad for, it was that bed. My god, it was screaming for them to stop with how loud it was creaking.

  Anyway, my favorite nursing times were when the Boss took me outside. I was born around the end of winter, based on the bits of melting snow I’d seen. I didn’t know how seasons worked in this world. Maybe we were nearing the equivalent of March? I was purely specuting. Already I knew that hours-wise the days here were longer. Perhaps comparing time in this world to Earth wasn’t going to be helpful.

  On those days, the sky was a bright, almost cloudless blue, and a gentle breeze wafted over the ndscape, counteracting the warmth. My eyesight was getting far better; perhaps elven babies improved in that aspect faster than humans. Six feet out or so, my vision became blurry, yet I could make out distant shapes and ndscapes way better than two months prior.

  One morning, the Boss brought me out to the backyard for some lunch. She nursed me privately and noticed midway through my meal I had stopped suckling. You see, I was gazing out at one of the most gorgeous scenes I could ever imagine. Our house was on a hill, a big hill, and from here, I could see a sprawling valley of rolling grassnds and woodnd trees. Yet they were not ordinary trees; they were a multihued array of reds, yellows, and even pinks. All scattered amongst the greenery, highlighting it in magnificent ways. Like a painting come to life, it sprawled on forever till the horizon was met with gargantuan mountains that loomed over the valley. It was breathtaking. Even I could make out the shapes of colorful trees blending into one another. I couldn’t wait to see it again once my eyes were fully developed.

  My mother said something to me, and I felt her button her shirt back up before she lifted and pced me gently on her p. She spoke to me softly, her voice tender and warm, which sent tingles through me. She stroked the bits of hair that rested on my head. I still had no idea what she was saying, yet I was catching one thing. A word she only said when looking at me.

  It sounded like “Roona.” Perhaps this was my name? When I heard her say it, I used all the strength in my little neck to look up at her, and her smile widened even more. She giggled before adding something cheerful and tapping my nose. I giggled back.

  About a year passed since I first awakened in this world, and my daily workout routine of trying to lift my head, rolling onto my stomach and panicking seemed to be paying off, for now I had mastered the art of crawling. My eyes had fully adapted to this new little body, and I could see now.

  Incredibly, my ancient prediction about the nineteenth century turned out to be spot-on. For that era, the house was pretty advanced, especially the kitchen appliances, the water heater thing in the basement, and the lighting. It was far different from the world I had imagined being reincarnated in. I was expecting to reappear in the Middle Ages or something. Not that I’m compining, mind you. Unfortunately, though, this world most likely didn’t have the internet or video games.

  By this point, I had given up on the notion of being in a medically induced coma. A full year had gone by now. I had seen trees outside die and snow bnket the ndscape, only to melt and come back to life. Now way in hell could one coherent dream st that long. That’d be like, what, three hundred and sixty-some days? Or maybe longer? The days here were longer, and it all felt way longer than a normal year. Then again, I hadn’t been keeping great track of the days. Hell, they could’ve been shorter… No, no way. Dammit, why didn’t I keep track? Darnit, I should’ve counted more days.

  Why am I not smart?

  Anyway, it seemed my second theory of reincarnation was true. Or at least, I wanted it to be, because honestly, it was better than being dead or out cold. I hated to say it, but I was kind of committed to this new life thing now. Like, come on, look at me, I was crawling now. New technology unlocked, baby, we’re slowly going up the tree.

  With my newfound mobility, my main obstacles were doors and stairs. I could not reach doorknobs because I was too short, and I could not use stairs because my legs were too weak. Besides that, the Boss and Bonehead practically let me run loose, as long as I left pantries and cabinets alone, and stayed far away from the front or back doors. Didn’t mean I didn’t try, though. Sometimes when they looked away, I made a dash for the doors to see how far I could get. It was kind of fun. Plus, seeing their panicked faces gave me great joy. At first, they thought I was being cute, but I had a feeling they soon noticed these were deliberate tests of their patience. Until one day they had enough and threw me into a new prison. The gated py area that my brother was usually locked away in, in the living room.

  As I continued up the infant tech tree, I was confident I could master walking easily; it just came down to working out, and boy, I hated leg day. So much. It was mandatory, and it was going to suck. But that didn’t stop me.

  My struggles bore fruit one morning. The family was in the dining room, and Bonehead was reading a newspaper while sipping on his coffee. When I first met him, he was clean-shaven, but as time went on, he’d developed a beard and mustache. Now he was back to a clean shave, save for the mustache. Anyway, his attention was so focused on this newspaper that he looked ridiculous with his face scrunched up so intensely, while Boss was bringing breakfast out for everyone, and my brother was in his booster seat, pounding away at the table with the silverware.

  I—the little speedster, as I’d come to call myself—was in their little py area, now moved into the dining room. They’d quartered off a small corner, where they id out all these plush toys and a few blocks for me to py with. The blocks had symbols on them, and if I traced them, they emitted a mesmerizing glow. The technology was pretty cool. Or was it magic? I hadn’t seen evidence that magic existed. I had not witnessed a dragon flying overhead or Gandalf casting a spell. On the other hand, I hadn’t come across a single human being, but that didn’t mean they didn’t… huh… did humans exist in this world?

  As cool as these little blocks were, I was speedrunning my way through infancy. So instead of pying around so much, I’d been focusing for the past few weeks on standing. You see, the py area had a baby gate—a wooden gate about two feet up, way taller than me, but perfect for bancing against. While the folks were preparing the table, I knew I had about a couple minutes before the Boss would come and snatch me out of the pypen to sit with everyone at the table. Now was the time to act.

  So far, every attempt at standing had ended with pain-filled baby legs and me plopping on my ass. But today was the day. If I could not keep it together this time, I was going to have to resort to crying like a baby. With that in mind, I put my stuffed bunny and glowing block down and crawled towards the gate.

  I nded on my stomach and got into a push-up position, then used my tiny arms to lift myself off the ground and onto my knees. Already, I could feel the muscles in my little legs tiring as I reached out and grabbed the pen’s bars. With a lot of effort, I firmly rooted my feet and propelled myself upward, and yes!

  Yes, I did it! I’m standing! I shrieked in delight, drawing Bonehead’s attention; he looked up from his newspaper just as my body gave out from its excitement, causing me to fall back and hit my head on the floor.

  “Roona!” My vision was blurry and hazy, but I heard the Boss yell as she and Bonehead rushed towards me. They argued as she walked into the pen and knelt to pick me up.

  Ouch, that hurt… I think I rose too fast, and my fat head knocked me over. I felt the Boss touch the back of my head and I winced. She once more echoed my name.

  Bonehead voiced his frustration and gestured towards the table and his paper. The Boss’s retort caused Bonehead to retreat and sigh.

  I think he’s being scolded for not watching me, poor dude. I sighed softly, now feeling bad that I called him such a mean nickname. It honestly doesn’t hurt that bad. Wait, babies cry when they’re hurt. Maybe she’s concerned that I’m not crying?

  Mother hurried me into the kitchen, where she pced me delicately on the counter. She retrieved a washcloth and ran water from the tap over it before wringing it out and pcing it on my head. It was ice-cold. I grimaced and gasped. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her pull the cloth away and caught what looked like blood.

  Holy shit! Yes, she was rinsing a bloodstained cloth. The fall didn’t feel that bad!

  As she moved towards the icebox, Mother uttered a word and gestured for me to remain still. Above the box was a satchel hanging on the wall with a red snakelike symbol on it. As soon as she grabbed and opened it, I realized that it was, in essence, a first aid kit. But what she removed was neither bandages nor medication. It was a rolled-up piece of parchment. A scroll.

  She approached me, and the sound of my name drew my attention. With a warm smile, she held a hand up to suggest I stay put. Then she broke a seal on the scroll. Unrolling it, she began to read, and I could tell this was something momentous.

  A dim green aura emanated from her hands as the lights faded and the scroll in her hands shimmered. An earthy odor permeated the room. Mother, with one hand, pced the scroll on the back of my head, sending particles of energy from the aurora.

  “Hel’Nora.” A surge of warmth from her penetrated the wound on my head. The agony vanished, and within seconds, I felt as if I’d never been hurt—just as my mother’s scroll began to break apart into dust and dissipate along with the green light particles that swirled around us.

  When it was all done, Mother bent in front of me, a grin on her face. “Roona?” she said as she cocked her head. I forced myself out of my stupor and smiled at her, then gave her my best, exaggeratedly cute cheer and ughed as she picked me up and carried me off to breakfast. Even so, I could not help but gnce over at the counter as I clung to her shoulder. There I saw remnants of green swirling lights that flew like fireflies.

  So, there is magic in this world after all. That would linger in my mind for the rest of the day as the little lights winked out.

  Ether, the essence of channeling. It is the fuel that etherborne and those of the Concilium channel to perform extraordinary feats such as changing the weather or even molding the earth. Despite thousands of years of constant use, not much is really known about ether and where it comes from, or what it even is and how it works. Ancient magi have described it as being the by-product of the soul, a great power that all life emits but not all have yet mastered. But is that really what it is?

  —Magic. What Is It Really? Sardni Malfroy.