An Unbound Soul

"Huuf nuspoph, movvmi upi. Fof zua tmiiq ximm?"

Urk... This was hard. I think that was a morning greeting? 'movvmi upi' seemed to be how Mum referred to me, or at least it was something she used in the middle of a lot of sentences when talking to me, but not when talking to Dad. How on earth did real babies pick up language without any context to go with it? Hmm, I probably shouldn't be using the expression 'how on earth' anymore, should I, because I wasn't. Ah well, at least I wasn't expected to answer yet.

"Owa ahh."

I answered anyway. My speech wasn't even good enough to be called babbling, but making any noise at all always made Mum happy. It helped that both my vision and hearing had cleared up a bit since I was born. I still couldn't see properly, but I could at least tell Mum apart from Dad, and I knew when they were facing me.

"Et davi epf daffmz et iwis. Voni gus zuas giif."

Uh oh. I knew 'giif' well. It meant I was about to have a boob shoved in my face. I seriously hated being a baby. Right, I could deal with this. Ignore the fact I had my own mother's breast in my mouth and think about something else.

We'd had a lot of visitors to the house these past few weeks. Of course, they all wanted to hold the new baby, so I ended up getting passed around like some sort of hot potato.

And that was another expression that may not make sense anymore; I had no idea if they had potatoes here. So far I'd had nothing but milk, and that was likely to continue for a long time yet. My vision wasn't good enough to see what everyone else was eating. It always smelled nice, though. Something to look forward to once I had functional teeth and a digestive system.

What I hadn't seen was any electric. Par for the course for a fantasy world, unfortunately, but that meant no TV, computers or appliances. We did have lights. I wasn't entirely sure what they were though, since they just looked like small, yellow blobs to my eyes. They weren't particularly bright, but I guess they beat candles. Less chance of burning the house down, too. We did seem to have running water, which was a surprise. I wasn't sure where it came from, but Mum had no trouble producing water from somewhere for cooking and washing without needing to go outside.

I'd yet to be taken outside the house myself, either, so I had very little information on where I was. We did have windows, but to me they were just white oblongs. The house itself was small, with just a few rooms and no stairs. A bedroom in which we all slept on straw-stuffed mattresses, a bathroom, and the entrance room with a table and chairs and a length of worktop against one wall for cooking. Without seeing anyone else's home, I couldn't say if we were comparatively poor or rich, but we had plentiful food and enough space, so whatever amount of money we had was sufficient.

Although Mum had been staying home with me, Dad had started going out every day. He did mostly stick around for the first week, and even now, he never stayed away for the entire day. It was likely that in this world there was no such thing as paid paternity leave, so he was probably doing his best. Fortunately, I wasn't exactly high maintenance as babies went, so Mum wasn't having a hard time of it.

I had no idea what Dad actually did for work. I couldn't tell if he was taking anything with him, nor had I gathered any other clues. I'd caught Mum knitting, but again, I had no idea whether that was her day job or just something to do while housebound. All in all, I had a lot still to learn about my own family before I even started thinking about the world I've been born into.

A knock on the door heralded another visitor. "Dunoph," called Dad, heading over to let them in. Mum took the opportunity to detach me and start tapping my back.

"Huuf egvispuup, David. Jux ot iwiszupi vufez? O juqi zua'si emm nepehoph vu hiv ipuahj sitv."

David was Dad's name. I recognised the start of that as a greeting, but had no idea about the rest. I also recognised the voice as belonging to Clana, a woman who had visited a few times before already.

"Xi'si hivvoph up katv gopi. Peter ot e movvmi ephim. Tu ximm cijewif zua xuamfp'v cimoiwi. Tu nadj tu Lucy ot tvomm gsieloph uav e movvmi."

Second sentence, and they were already talking about me. Lucy was Mum's name. No idea what they were saying about me, but I'll assume it was all good. I cooed appreciatively. That caused a sudden outbreak of awws, which seemed to be universal to any language. At this point, Mum brought me over and joined the chatting. I listened as best as I could, trying to make any sort of sense of the conversation, but it was all still far beyond me. Of course, I was soon handed over to our guest to fuss over. Might as well put on the expected show then.

As I opened my mouth to begin my stream of attempted babbling, my attention was stolen by something more important. On top of the blur that was her head were two smaller blurs. It was still hard to make out, but... were these the fabled animal ears? I instinctively reached up, but of course, my arms were nowhere near long enough. Clana seemed to find my behaviour amusing, laughing at me.

"Opvisitvif op nz iest? Zua'si David't tup emsohjv. Emxezt xepvoph vu qiv epzvjoph gmaggz."

Whatever she said caused Mum to burst out laughing too, while Dad sounded rather grumpy.

"O fup'v sinincis zua dunqmeopoph ev vji voni. Epf fup'v vjopl O'wi gushuvvip vji tohjv ug Gregory djetoph zua fuxp vji tvsiiv."

That just made Mum laugh even harder. Maybe Dad had a thing for animal ears and was trying to deny it. No need to deny it, Dad; I would always be your ally here. Animal ears are justice! Hmm... Maybe I'd been giving that embarrassing little part of my brain a little too much freedom recently. Let's rephrase. Animal ears are merely very, very cute. Also, I was a baby. I could get away with things that adults couldn't.

Surprisingly, Clana cooperated, lifting me up so that I could reach the top of her head. I guess that meant they weren't some sort of private erogenous zone. Since I so obviously had permission, I petted away with everything that my single point of dexterity permitted. Which wasn't much, alas; another reason to try to grow up as soon as possible. They were soft and fluffy, and from the shape, I guessed they were cat-like. Either this woman was into cosplay, or beastkin were a real thing in this world. From the way they were warm, I'd guess the latter. Awesome! I didn't get to pet for long, though, before I was lowered back down. I did my best pout attempt to convey my displeasure, with no idea how successful it was.

ding

Huh? What was that noise? Something definitely went ding. No-one else seemed to have reacted, though. Was I the only one that heard it? Hard to believe, given my dodgy hearing. It didn't seem to correspond to anything I could see, either. In fact, the noise hadn't seemed to come from anywhere. It was more like it came from the inside of my head. Hmm, since I was living inside a literal RPG now, perhaps it was a message notification. How did I check my messages?

New trait acquired: [Early Bloomer]

Simply by wanting to check my messages, apparently. So that answered what the ding was, but now I was a little frightened to look up the trait details. Did I just get awarded something for petting Clana? It had better not be anything weird...

[Early Bloomer] - You like to make an early start in life. The first few levels of a skill are easier to obtain. (Rank 2)

Phew, thank goodness nothing strange came out. That must have come from my desire to grow up quickly. Wait, if I could get new traits just by thinking things... I want all the magic in the world! Nope, nothing happened. Darn. There must be some condition to it. Since skills were things you can learn, traits were probably fundamental aspects of your body or personality. There was a big difference between wanting to learn magic and wanting to already know magic, so traits for learning and skills for knowing, perhaps?

At this point Mum decided to interrupt Clana's prod-the-baby time, despite me being fully willing to offer it up in payment for my pet-the-ears time.

"O jies vjev duphsevamevoupt ug zuas uxp esi op usfis, Clana."

"Uj nz, vjev tqsief raodlmz. Zit, emm cioph ximm O tjemm jewi e movvmi upi ug nz uxp duni xopvis."

Hmm... I think I could actually work that one out. 'Zit' was an agreement. 'Movvmi upi' could be 'baby', since it was how Mum referred to me. I was pretty sure 'xopvis' was a time of year. Maybe a month or season or the local equivalent. And the sentence was referring to herself. Conclusion: Clana was pregnant! Come 'xopvis', whenever that was, there will be a little baby cat-girl. Or boy, I suppose, but I chose to remain optimistic. Hopefully we could be friends.

Clana put down a grey blob and took a white blob out of it. Despite the blobbiness, I knew what this was; our afternoon visitors always brought a meal with them. Presumably some sort of new mother support group was going on. It was nice that my parents had such good friends. A gorgeous smell permeated the room; of all the food bearers, Clana's always smelled the best. Perhaps there was a cooking skill?

Alas, as always, I was imprisoned in my cot while the adults got to eat all the delicious smelling food. Despite my best efforts, I still wasn't strong enough even to hold my head up, never mind rolling or crawling, so I was just kind of stuck there listening to everyone else enjoying themselves. Have some mercy on this poor baby!

I continued practising my motor skills while listening to the conversation. I could decipher very little of it, but if I didn't put the effort in, I'd never get it. Although, I felt that deciphering any of it was pretty impressive, given that I was less than a month old. What were normal babies like? I couldn't remember. At what point would they start to recognise their names, or basic words? When did they start the dada thing? When were they supposed to be able to crawl and walk? I never had a kid in my old life, so this wasn't information I'd ever considered important. I didn't want to get too far ahead in case I started freaking my parents out, but likewise, I didn't want to accidentally fall behind. Stretching my memory, I seemed to recall that about a year old was when I was supposed to start pulling myself upright and speaking simple words? So crawling must come a little earlier. As for recognising words, I really had no clue. It must be earlier than a year, but how much earlier?

Of course, even if I knew the expected timeline exactly, it was all rendered moot by the fact I had no way to measure time properly. A day seemed a little longer than back on Earth, as far as I could tell given my habit of falling asleep at random, but there was no way I could tell the season or know the length of a year. Or if seasons and years were even a thing.

Speaking of falling asleep all the time, it appeared my stamina stat was almost drained again. I waved Clana a metaphorical goodbye, congratulated myself on another successful bout of baby acting, and drifted off.

ding

Strength increased by 1

Dexterity increased by 1

Endurance increased by 1

Charisma increased by 1