Levin and Rolwen, who had confirmed to me that they were both boys, were a very big help as I tried to get myself more mobile. Although I still needed to work on my ability to communicate, I managed to work out a bit of a system with the two of them. I could gesture and make my best approximation at the word “front,” and they would flip me over onto my belly. From there, I was free to wiggle myself forward, trying to get enough control over myself to actually crawl. A feat that was made very awkward by the fact that my neck still didn’t have the strength to lift my head at the time I started this exercise.
It was hardly the order most newborns learned to gain mobility. Most had to become able to lift their head and flip themselves over first. Crawling came after that. But, because I knew a little better what I was working towards from my previous life memories, going out of order like this wound up paying dividends. Gaining strength in my arms from crawling helped me learn how to do those normal flipping-over motions faster as well, and had the added bonus of allowing me to work on my crawling early.
My sister was the real surprise, though. When she imitated me, she started doing this weird inch-worm thing where she didn’t even care that she was smashing her face into the floor. Shockingly enough, her unorthodox motions actually managed to propel her quite well, and her squirming could beat my crawling anywhere. It seemed she’d managed to develop some insane core strength while I wasn’t looking, and I had no idea how it was that she ignored the fact she was dragging her face against the floor.
Well, at least this confirmed that she's definitely from Earth as well. She’s picking this up way too fast. I would be quite interested to have met her back on Earth, though. What kind of person resorts to something crazy like that to get around?
We mostly did this mobility practice at night, in order to avoid interference from our caretaker. In doing so, I also figured out something else. Somehow, I can see in the dark. At first, I’d just assumed there was some kind of night-light, but Levin and Rolwen informed me otherwise. It gets so dark at night that they can’t even see their hands in front of their faces, it seems. For me, though, it’s as bright as a full-moon light. Or, maybe even a little brighter than that, actually. Is this a part of being whatever race me and my sister are?
Speaking of our race, Levin and Rolwen have decided we are elves. Now that my vision has focused enough to see clearly, I can definitely tell why they came to that conclusion. We do have the pointed ears. I’m not so certain I’ve ever heard any stories about elves eating the energy of young children, though. But… then again, the concept of being kidnapped by the fey was part of a lot of early English lore. And, the original Germanic lore about Elves had them kidnapping people who wandered off into the woods, especially children. While the whole energy eating thing was not a part of those legends, perhaps it’s not all that far-fetched to imagine this as their reason.
While all this physical training was going on, I was also still working quite hard on improving my ability to communicate, and that very issue of us consuming some kind of energy from Levin and Rolwen was one of my chief concerns.
It was well before I could form an actual intelligible sentence that I decided to ask the boys about how they were feeling. It was a fairly awkward experience. It was mostly grunts and gestures with the occasional one-word sentence.
I just looked Rolwen in the eye one day after having propped myself up against Levin’s side, and then I said “I… gwestion!”
“Huh?” was Rolwen’s obvious response, once he realized I was talking to him.
“Gwestion!” I said again in a rather frustrated sounding voice. It was almost a yell. It was a little embarrassing that my own frustrations at how limited my body was had actually made me start sounding every bit as much like the baby I appeared to be.
He just stared at me blankly for a moment before it clicked. “Oh cu-ess-tion!” He said, sounding out each syllable by itself as though he were a living dictionary pronunciation guide. “yuu ask me a cu-ess-tion?”
“Ah!” I said. “Aow u veeleeen?” I asked. Fortunately, he seemed to get this one a little bit faster since he was actually paying full attention to me this time.
As soon as he figured it out, he smiled and laughed. “How’m I fee-ling?” he asked for confirmation. “I veel vine!”
I couldn’t help but think something wasn’t quite getting communicated right. He seemed way too happy.
“You getting bedder aad talking, Asa!” Levin said, as he looked down from behind me. Yes, that’s another thing we managed to figure out by paying close attention to the caretaker woman’s words.
My name was apparently “Asaren,” or just “Asa” for short. My sister’s name was “Tia,” but that was also a shortened name. Her full name was “Tiaren.”
This was not important right now, though. The boys had completely misunderstood my intentions and thought I was just trying to show off my progress in my self-effort speech training.
“No!” I barked in frustration, having not gotten the kind of answer I wanted.
“Huh?” Levin said, getting a giggle from Rolwen.
“I thenk zhe’s mad uwe dalk like zhe’s a baby!” Rolwen teased with a giggle.
“No!” I barked again, only getting more giggles from Rolwen and a head-rub from Levin. Yeah, I knew it made sense for them to misinterpret me. I hadn’t managed to clarify my question yet, but it was also clear they’d made up their minds as to what I meant and, with my current language abilities, it was going to be very hard to clarify my meaning.
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“Is ogay!” Levin encouraged. “You-r lurnin uereally vast! Uhh… how old iz zhee?”
“I own no!” Rolwen said. “monthh owr too?”
Well, that’s just great. I try and show some concern, and here they are making fun of me. Do they even remember that me and Tia are pretty much eating their energy? Or at least that’s the theory, anyway.
Well, I guess that if they are feeling lively enough to make fun of me, they must not be feeling all that weak in terms of whatever energy or whatever we are taking from them.
We had developed a bit of an unspoken agreement during the daytime that we would calm down our attempts to practice talking, especially because I was finally just a little behind the boys in ability to speak now and I was likely just going on a quarter year old.
As for our caretaker, I had further confirmation she was definitely not our mother. She had rounded ears like the boys rather than the pointed ears me and Tia had. She was not Levin and Rolwen’s mother either, though, according to their own testimony. They had informed me they were actually kidnapped from their house in the middle of the night. After this, they were brought to mine and Tia’s mother, soon before we were born.
They figured out they were supposed to be our food about the same time I was reaching the same conclusion, and for the same reasons. Being held close to us at regular times throughout the day kinda removes the doubt. I’m not entirely certain though why it has to be children and why our adult caretaker can’t do the job.
At any rate, our caretaker would probably become suspicious if she could see how well I was suddenly able to talk. However, she was not the biggest problem. I could probably at least get away with some crawling or wriggling around her. The problem was the other visitors we had.
As it turns out, there are a bunch of other kids in the place we are staying. The place, by the way, looks like we are inside of a large hollowed-out tree that happens to be made up like a nursery. More credence to the elf theory, I suppose. The other kids visiting are not all the same species, though. In fact, they seem to be about a half-and-half mix of humans and what I guess are elves like me and Tia. And, it seemed they were very interested in seeing the babies.
I tried to do my best to pay attention to what the kids were saying in order to pick up the Elven language as well. They may have come to see me and Tia, but the elven children all seemed to get extremely interested in Levin and Rolwen. They kept saying things like “Ipar abzum lati,” followed by giggles and awed whispers as the other kids repeated the words “Abzum lati” in reverent tones of agreement.
This was when I saw something that confused me. One day, when several of the elven kids were pulling Rolwen one way and the other while touching him all over, he’d finally decided he had enough and started swinging his arms around in order to push them off. That’s perfectly understandable. The problem was that he must have been less than half their size and age, but he tossed them around like rag-dolls. The two poor kids who were hanging onto his arms screamed in astonishment, as he threw his arms forward and sent them tumbling onto the ground as a result.
For his own part, Rolwen looked every single bit as surprised as they were.
It turned out to be our caretaker who came to his rescue. She immediately started yelling at the elf kids and they scampered off immediately, and stopped bothering Rolwen.
That was strange. It seemed like Rolwen was physically a lot stronger than the elf kids. Were elves physically weak or something? Being weaker than a toddler seemed to be going a little far, though. The elves in question looked like they were around 5 years old, but that was still more than twice Rolwen’s age.
Well, we really don’t have any means to experiment with that now. The best we could do is Rolwen and Levin testing their strength against each other with some arm wrestling, which Rolwen had enthusiastically proposed that night after everyone else left. He did win every match, but from the best I could tell, that had more to do with him just having more will and desire to win, rather than vastly outclassing Levin for strength. I think Levin could probably put up a bit more of a fight if his heart was in it a bit more. But, it’s pretty clear he just thought the whole exercise was silly.
In the days that followed, I began carefully observing the relationship between these elf children and the human children who were with them. It absolutely did seem like they were a pair, one human child per one elf child. Also, the human children seemed to mostly do what the elf children told them to do, like slaves being ordered around by their masters. For the most part, the ones who wanted to play with Levin and Rolwen always ordered the human who came with them to play with me and Tia like we were temporarily trading humans or something.
The ages of the human children compared to the elf children seemed rather suspicious too. For the most part, it seemed like the human children looked like they were over twice the age of the elf children they were paired with. The elf children all looked like they ranged in age from 5 to 7. Meanwhile, most of the human children seemed closer to 10 to 12. One of them even looked like he was in his teen years.
Seeing this, I was forced to wonder. Elves were supposed to have long life-spans. Did they also have slow childhood growth? Are all these human children like Levin and Rolwen? Were they all also brought to the village and given to an elven child soon before said elf child was born?
The more I find out about being an elf, the less I like it.