It’s pretty clear this guy has never been a father. Or if he has, then he didn’t take an active role in raising his children. He doesn’t know the first thing about how to deal with a child who has figured out how to manipulate you and has taken a liking to doing it. It’s exactly like a child throwing their toys, or knocking something off their high-chair. Every toddler will do it, especially if you entertain them by doing what they want. And he’s just wasn’t taking the hint here. He just kept getting hair-pullingly frustrated every single time I started allowing my energy to flow again.
It was obviously wearing down on him. I felt a little bad for the guy. Perhaps I should just hold that whole stagnant energy bit until he gets satisfied and leaves? I decided to give that a try. But, it looked like he no longer trusted me. He just sat there watching me for a while, with a suspicious look on his face. Seriously, guy! Just give up already!
Well, I suppose he’s doing this because he actually cares. But him caring is not going to make me drop my cover. If I ever decide to do that, it’s going to be after a long period of careful thought, as well as discussing it with Rolwen, Levin, and Tia.
I knew going into this that I was signing on for something annoying, but by God this was starting to get just as annoying for me as it was for him! Just LEAVE already! I’m a baby! If I was a real baby, I wouldn’t be able to just comprehend the idea that you want me to stay with my energy locked up 24/7, and I have no plans right now to do anything a real baby wouldn’t!
Eventually, I had to give up and let a burst of my energy out, which he apparently felt immediately. It seems the people here are a lot more sensitive to energy than they were back on Earth. Well, at the very least this experience has taught me that the energy they interact with here is the exact same energy you control with meditation.
I got another scolding, he tried to get me to lock up my energy again, but by this point I was starting to get pissed as well. So, I decided to take another baby-like action. I started getting fussy and fighting him, crying and batting away at his hands as he tried to touch my head for his psychic communications.
It seemed like this finally did it. He sighed when he realized I no longer intended to cooperate.
“Irtii zattier lada. In azilu,” he muttered and shook his head before retreating with rounded shoulders in defeat. “Mein ii gir eihar. Takarn-gir manarar udar. Si-mein azen, mein gir dara. Zattier lada, in azilu”
With those words spoken to our caregiver, the guy finally left, allowing me to breathe a sigh of relief at not being subject to all of that anymore. I DID bring a lot of it on myself for being stubborn, but damned if it wasn’t annoying.
“Hehe, finally, he left,” Rolwen said with a weary smile which I immediately returned. “Hah! You’re mean though!” he commented, and I’m really not certain I liked how approving his look was at that statement. He’s talking a lot better now, but I feel like the only reason I’m being saved from a gushing rant is the fact that he’s only able to talk this clearly in short sentences.
He has been talking less since he became able to sound clear and coherent in short bursts like this. Obviously, he doesn’t like sounding like a babbling toddler, even if he actually IS only around 2 years old in this life.
I have no room to criticize him on this either. I have been doing the exact same thing myself.
Something the boys had grown far better at, though, was the one thing that me and Tia were just starting on. They could walk around very easily now, and Rolwen used this advantage to spring right to his feet and run over to Tia and Levin, who were still in our caretaker’s lap. He started blatantly flaunting our caretaker’s lack of ability to understand English by bragging to Levin right in front of her about how awesome I was for “handling” that guy.
When Tia immediately crawled out of the caretaker’s lap in my direction, our caretaker sighed and pushed Levin out of her lap as well, and then immediately stood up and walked over to me. She picked me up and brought me over to the branch somehow growing inside our tree-room house. Yes, I had noticed. Our room is made of wood that has no seams of boards joining together, and the radiating circular tree rings on the floor and ceiling are hard to miss. We are obviously inside a tree. And, somehow, they got this branch to grow on the inside of the tree, and it always has a single berry on it no matter how many times our caretaker picks that one berry.
There’s clearly some kind of magic to this. Energy-sucking elves exist in this world, and a guy just hung a bunch of magic talismans around the room and then communicated psychically with me. So, a branch growing inside a tree and producing berries on demand instead of fruit or nuts seems like small potatoes by comparison.
The woman crushed the berry between her fingers and discarded the skin into a small wooden bowl on the little shelf built into the wall. I wrinkled my nose, because I knew what came next by now. I obediently licked the berry juices off her finger as she stuck it in my mouth, taking my sweet tasting medicine mixed with the oily flavor of human skin. I need to somehow convince this woman to let me eat these myself. Well, maybe it’s good not to, though. Without teeth, I don’t have anything to grind down the berrie’s skin. I might wind up choking on that.
Satisfied with delivering me my medicine, the caretaker grabbed the bowl and a second berry, which grew right before my eyes on the branch, and carried me off back to Levin, Rolwen, and Tia. She set me down next to Levin and Rolwen, fought with a far more ornery Tia to give her medicine as well, and then pulled me into her lap along with both Levin and Rolwen for a while.
Tia was pouting and glaring daggers at our caretaker after that exchange. After a moment though, she seemed to forget about that and was looking around the room for some invisible something. What it was she was looking for, I had no clue. But after a moment, she got a strange evil looking grin that looked slightly on the comical side with her infant facial features.
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I had no idea what that look on her face was all about, but I wound up finding out later that night.
It was after our caretaker had left for the night, putting me in a situation where I was finally able to fight back against Rolwen’s all-too-happy accusations of me being a spiteful bitch who would utterly destroy anyone who messes with me in a super mean-girls fashion, and it was a good thing I was on their side. Seriously, leave a rumor to fester and it just spins more and more out of control. It doesn’t even require that many people. Already, with just one person repeatedly telling the story to only two listeners, I have somehow acquired the image of a highschool school queen who rules by the weapons of fear and rumor. He does recall I was a guy in my last life, right?
It had been left to fester too long, though. Even with me able to fight back, there was no convincing him it was all just out of concern for keeping up our baby and toddler disguises, because… “but you kept going!” he said, “Even when… he was bractically crying!” Rolwen’s speech lisped a little in his excitement to prove his point. “You kept going and going dill you won!” He finished that one off with one of his proud grins.
Yeah, that guy was completely ill equipped to handle a baby. Of course, pointing this out only worsened my apparent “mean-girl” image.
And that was when we all got our surprise.
“That guy was trying to teach you a very bad meditation though.” Tia said, causing every single one of our heads to turn in her direction. “It’s a good thing you caught on to that immediately. The one you already use while you are practicing your crawling and walking is several times better.”
Of course, it was the already very talkative Rolwen who spoke the words that were on all of our minds at this point.
“Wait… you can TALK!? Since when!?”
Tia just beamed a prideful smile at him. “Since this afternoon. I have been working on it, dedicating energy to developing that part of my spirit, but it was just today with this increase in spirit energy from the barrier that guy threw up that I was finally able to make it work.” she said.
She just rattled off those long sentences like it was nothing! Her voice still had a bit of a whine to it here and there, but otherwise, she was talking perfectly at about the level of a 4 or 5 year old. And, by the sounds of it, the only thing keeping her from talking like an adult is the physical shape of her baby mouth. There’s actually something a little creepy about seeing a baby talk so well.
“The spirit density here is nothing even approaching Earth.” Tia continued with a thoughtful pose and gestured to the room. “But, it was fueled by three souls from Earth, so it was more than enough to allow me to speed my own development. I think I can probably be walking better than you two by the end of tomorrow.”
“WHAT THE CRAP!?” Rolwen screeched at her. “We don’t understand anything you’re talking about!? How are you able to talk!?”
“I…” She looked up at Rolwen, apparently shocked by his outburst. A frown appeared on her face. On a baby, it just looked like she needed to poop. The only thing keeping me from reaching that conclusion, aside from the context, would be the fact that I already know these elf bodies don’t do that. “Uhh… well… spirit energy, you know…” she babbled, and then it looked like she was trying to look to me for help. “Isn’t that how you are developing faster than a baby is normally supposed to as well? Your methods aren’t quite as efficient, but…”
“We don’t know what the hell you’re even talking about!” Rolwen berates her. Tia, for her part, looks absolutely stunned.
“Really!? Nothing!?”
“Calm down!” I order everyone, trying to settle this situation. “Tia can’d expwain if yoo keep bushing her!” I call out Rolwen and try to get things settled. I want to hear her explanation as well, but yelling at each other is not going to solve anything here. Even if Rolwen decides I’m a hypocrite against the vision he has built up about me, I gotta call them out and settle this down.