Chapter 6 - Secrets of Baby Speak (Patreon)

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Chapter 6 - Secrets of Baby Speak

“Did you see how valiant he was! How he communicated seamlessly with our daughter with nothing but eye-glances?” Bromwyn, the current chieftain of the Earthloch clan and the proudest father and father-in-law on the disc, exclaimed boisterously while walking down the hallway.

“Yes, honey. For the fifth time, we did.” His wife, Cyra Lou Earthloch, replied in exasperation. This was one thing about her husband that really ticked her off. Once excited, this fellow would talk about the same topic over and over again until the listener’s ears were bleeding.

“He made the warrior’s promise to me! And he doesn’t even know what it is.” The chieftain said. He slammed his fist on his pecs, “A true man! Even if he has pitiful potential, no son-in-law of the Earthloch’s will stay like that forever. By the way,”

Bromwyn turned towards Elrhain’s mother with the tone of his voice shifting, “Eluned… was it? Why are you still draped in a servant’s garb?”

The petite woman looked unsure how to answer that. “I... My lord, I’ve been wearing this most of my life. I don’t know… what else to.”

“Preposterous! You’ve had your sigil removed, no? Dofnald will also finish with his blood quenching of the blade any day now. We have given you the right to a surname for a month already! I expect you to live up to that honour. This,” He moved his hand up and down towards the nervous Eluned, “Is shameful.”

Eluned didn’t know what to do, so she instinctively bowed her head and apologized.

Bromwyn facepalmed, “You… The only people who you should bow to are the Grand Elder and Grand Shamanka! You are an official branch head’s wife now. Any more subservience is-,”

He was about to go on another tirade when his wife, at last, interrupted him. “Now, now, be nice to her, dear. She is our in-law. Besides, do you think you can suddenly wear noble garbs like the Yuriels do if by chance our title increases?”

Bromwyn found it painful to breathe just thinking about it. ‘Those tight clothes covering their entire body. And not even armour!?’

He shook his head frantically.

Cyra smiled, then looked towards Eluned warmly, “Eluned, my dear, follow me to my chamber after this. I’ve already told the watches, so you don’t have to keep watch on the kids this afternoon. We have so many things to discuss, you and I. And since you can take your time learning the etiquette of nobles, you should at least put in the effort to show us you are changing, no?”

Eluned found it hard to refuse the soft-spoken Cyra.

The chieftainess, after seeing Eluned nod hesitantly, clapped her hands in joy, “Perfect!” She then led the confused former servant to her chamber before Bromwyn could begin his tirade on the valiant Elrhain for the sixth time that day.

******

“I’ve noticed something.” Elrhain suddenly said.

“What?” Agwyn paused her movements. She was practising jumping on all fours. Over the previous month, her stamina had improved tremendously, and she was eager to try out new physical skills. Elrhain, on the other hand, gave up after day four, much to Agwyn’s disdain.

When he told her, ‘I heard exercising as babies stunt growth’, she practically spat on him. Then she saw the logic in his words. The reminder also stopped Agwyn from over-exerting her tender muscles.

“Annie… Can you sing me a song?” He made the strange request with an earnest gaze.
Agwyn wanted to ask why but didn’t. She was sure she’d have the answer soon. And she had, in fact, been missing music a lot lately.

“*cough*cough* Don’t get your hopes up, okay? I haven’t practised singing at all since… since we died. Will any song do?” She asked. She was feeling rather shy to perform after so long but didn’t want to let Elrhain know.

“Sure.” His face was the image of concentration as his eager eyes met hers.

So she began, “Twinkle Twinkle little star~

…. …. ….

….. What you are!” And stopped after completing the nursery rhyme. She turned her glittery eyes towards him in expectation.

“Huh? What you say?” Elrhain was surprised.

Agwyn pounced on him with an inaudible screech.

“Wha-! Wait, I have a good reason!”

By the time she let go, Elrhain had scratches all over his face, hands and neck.
“Explain.” That was all she said before retreating. But her eyes promised that if she was not satisfied by the answer, the bloodshed would continue.

Elrhain squinted, rubbing the places that got scratched to lessen the pain. “Ouch, you resort to violence too easily, or were you actually taking advantage of me? You know that’s a real turn off -Wait! Geez, stop hitting me. I’ll explain. You remember the first time we woke up here?”

Agwyn nodded grumpily.

“We’ve been speaking to each other in front of our mothers all the time. You ever wonder why they don’t find it strange, two toddlers having such long conversations? No matter how unknown the language or how undeveloped our vocal speech is, they should at least realize it’s a language. Unless they are that dumb.”

She nodded repeatedly.

“But they don’t. Now I think I know why.” That got her full attention. She had already expected this charade to be one of those peculiar ‘investigations’ he had been doing for the past month. Like trying out all the Harry Potter spells to see if they worked.

They didn’t.

“The first time we woke up, there was this blaring static in our heads like someone was blaring a broken bullhorn in our brains, and it was really hard to speak or think. But now, that blare is long gone. Annie, I want you to guess what I’m thinking about right now.”

“Uhh… Dog, Alien Comet, Suicide Forest, Amazon Trainforest… ahh!”

“Yes! All correct! Okay, we need to try this a few more times.” Elrhain was positively thrilled. This was the first real controllable contact they had with the supernatural.

They tried numerous other things, and almost every time, they could divine what the other was thinking. Frankly, it was starting to creep Elrhain out. Then, to his absolute joy,

“Wrong!” Elrhain cried in the middle of one test.

“Huh? It wasn’t the Norwegian Butter Crisis?” Agwyn asked with a squint in her eyes.

“Nope! It was the Unflooding of the Netherlands. This time, I wasn’t actively trying to transmit my thoughts to you, so you got it wrong!” He replied with a cheer.

“That means… We still have privacy? What would we need privacy for?” Agwyn asked in trepidation, her eyes glossed over into an unnerving look.

Elrhain started, before strongly rebuking her. “Agent Annie, you are going down an extreme path of no return. Autocracy is never the answer! Let’s get back on topic.”

He wiped off the sweat from his forehead as Agwyn glared back and continued with his deduction, “This… link that we have. We can somewhat jam it if we concentrate. And that fact has the answer to why mother never considered us demon babies.”

He cleared his throat just as Agwyn had a few moments ago, “This time, I will sing, and halfway through, I will try to restrict the link. Are you ready?”

“Yes! Can you sing ‘Never gonna give you up?’” Agwyn perked up; the rage she felt was all but forgotten at this point and was replaced with anticipation.

“… sure, why not? Okay, here goes.

~We’re no strangers to loo~ve. You know the rules, and So. Do. I!”

Agwyn started clapping along with the famous rhythm, but then something weird happened.

“Agoo, da di~ Ughy Angaa goo.”

She first thought something was wrong with her hearing. But the “Guchi goo’s” continued!

“Stop!” She screamed. Elrhain looked like a hyper-excited baby bouncing up and down as he got too into the song. But the tone and the sounds were completely wrong!

When she realized that Elrhain wasn’t stopping, she tackled him down pushed her palms on his mouth. “Stop!”

Elrhain calmed down from the high at Agwyn’s high handedness, then bobbed his head. Agwyn slowly removed her hands before asking, “Was that what we really sound like?”

“Yup! If either of us stops the link, we won’t be able to understand each other. At least until we learn this world’s language.”

“This mental link… Do you think we can speak telepathically?” Agwyn asked.

“Let’s find out! Now, do this.”

The little girl closed her eyes and concentrated according to Elrhain’s instructions.

Now that she knew what to look for… indeed, there was this strange… tunnel? Leading away from her head into the infinite void of the mind.

“You see it, don’t you? That tunnel-like structure in our mind.”

“Yes.”

“That’s the best part! To answer your question, I don’t know if we are telepathic. But just think of the possibilities; the very fact that we have in-built magic in our heads opens up so many new doors! Who knows what else kind of psychic stunts we can pull with this. By the way, does the structure in your mind look familiar to you?” This time Elrhain’s face turned serious.

“Now that you mention it… it kind of looks like the comm line app icon? But not quite. There’s so much fog...”
“… as I thought, it’s not just me being nostalgic.” He shook Agwyn’s shoulder to wake her up from her trance, “You think… we brought this with us when we crossed over?”

Agwyn’s eyes turned wide in realization, “The blast! The Gigantomachy!”

“Let’s not get our hopes up. We still have a LOT to research. You’ll stop forcing us to waste time playing bodybuilder and cooperate, right?”

“My dearest friend of four exciting decades, did you come up with all this just to quit exercising?” Agwyn asked with an exasperated sigh.
“Wha- Is that how you see me? I’m trying to be honest here! This could be the answer to every question we had over the past month and possibly reveal the mysteries of the universe! I would, like, never- “

“I get it. You don’t have to say any more.” Agwyn shook her tiny head, her face clouded with disappointment.

“What? I’m absolutely not lying.” Elrhain looked offended, so much so that Agwyn suspected he had practised making that very expression while she was not aware.

“… forget it. Whatever your motivations are, the results are what matters.” She mumbled under her breath.
“Exactly! Though I still think you misunderstand something about my integrity.”

They spent the rest of the day testing out various possibilities. Elrhain’s list was exhaustive. It would take the better part of another month, considering their baby stamina, to complete everything he could think of right at the top of his head, not to mention the constant stream of new things to try out that barraged his mind.

They didn’t even remember their nightly meal or when Elrhains mom returned since they were so groggy in the magic.

The next day,

Agwyn was in a contemplative mode. When Elrhain asked what was wrong, she just smirked. “Did you see what your mother was wearing yesterday?”

“Ah… That was animal fur and hide, right? This world is kind of primitive. Have you seen any metal-wares since we arrived? Only wood, stone, bones and clay.”
“That’s not the point. She was wearing the same thing as the other maids.” Agwyn hinted.

“… are we still talking about that? Does it actually matter? She could be the wet-nurse concubine for all we know….” Elrhain said, annoyed.

Before Agwyn could scream blasphemy at him and go into a lengthy explanation on ‘the whys’ it most definitely mattered, the door to the room opened up, and the lady in question bounced in.

She donned a silky shawl over a pristine white fur robe that reached her ankles.

Elrhain face-palmed, feeling extremely tired.

Agwyn threw the pillow out of the crib, furious.

The woman looked bewildered at the blue baby’s sudden aggressive behaviour. Still, her eyes moved on to her own son, who was trying to do a baby version of an ‘It is what it is’ shrug.

She smiled and hummed a gentle tune. Or was she just speaking? It could have just been the singsong language. He could never really distinguish when she was speaking or singing a lullaby.

The bed under him vanished as he went deeper into the thought. He was picked up. He assumed it was already time for feeding, so he closed his eyes and made a suckling motion with his mouth. He’d been getting awfully hungry with all the scientific thinking he had been doing—a far cry from his initial reaction of horror and then numbness to the event.

He actually looked forward to it now; his brain needed the sustenance. Contemplation was hard work, after all.

Yet the sweet nectar and the touch of the soft cherry never came. He felt his body turning sideways, then rotating clockwise while he was left-side-up.

‘What the..!’ He finally noticed something was wrong. It wasn’t his mother who had picked him up, but an unfamiliar young man.

The stranger had light brown hair and deep blue eyes. The face was clean-shaven, with the curly hair on his head glistening like some Italian shampoo model’s. The only irregularity Elrhain could discern at a glance were the man’s bangs, which were of slightly different colour, the dab grey of stone. The young man also protruding fangs like a vampire.

He was currently looking over Elrhain like he was a commodity in the Transylvania juice market, whether or not Elrhain had any defects.

The irritated little boy felt like throwing up. He had been upside down for a second too long, and the rough treatment was getting on his nerves.

So he did, all over the man’s frowning face.

“Blergh~,”

He heard the loud voice of the woman coming from somewhere and regretted it immediately. What if the man let go and Elrhain turned into a baby pancake?

Yet the man didn’t. His grip, which was considerably gentle now that he noticed, didn’t even flinch.

Elrhain was no longer sideways, so he didn’t have trouble looking straight into the man’s eyes. There was no uneasiness or disgust there. Only the slight crunch of the nose, probably because of the smell of the retch.

Not knowing what to do, Elrhain just repeated his earlier strategy with the barbarian, “Agoo…?”

The man tilted his head, not even bothering to wipe away the vomit all over him. That was until Elrhain’s mother brought a leafy rag from somewhere and wiped them both clean while very clearly complaining.

‘Ah, I got some on myself too.’

His mother was giving the man the stink eye as she removed the confused baby from his hands. The man just scratched his head awkwardly.

When they were both removed of almost all the stains, the woman shooed away the man towards the door very rudely. She sounded pretty angry when she saw him flipping and angling Agwyn over like he did Elrhain.

The baby girl had handled herself far better, though, as was always the case with her and X-treme sports.

There was a one-sided heated exchange from the young lady, and finally, reluctantly, the man relented. He gave one last pat on Elrhain and Agwyn’s head and was about to leave. But then he looked as if he recalled something and suddenly turned around.

Elrhain watched on in awe and shame as the young man simply walked up to the fussing young mother and planted a long, deep kiss on the lady’s plump rosy lips.

One breath,

Two, three… twenty… Three hundred and Fifty…

Elrhain stopped counting. Even a Frenchman would blush in shame. The little boy shied his eyes away, desperately trying to hide a twitch of embarrassment at what the adults were doing in the presence of two highly intelligent babies.

“Bravo!” Agwyn, on the other hand, cheered hysterically. If she could whistle, she would have done so until she got arrested for indecent conduct.

“And don’t say this is an affair! I won’t believe it. You have the same eyes and grey bangs as that wonderful man.”

Elrhain didn’t respond. His gaze just followed the back of the confident man out of the room. All that he left behind was a scene of carnage, Elrhain’s furiously blushing mother fumbling about her tasks with fidgety fingers, weak knees, and a wistfully in-love gaze.