2. Growing pains II (Patreon)

They left the hospital and he wasn’t even awake for it. One moment he felt sleepy in one bed, then when he woke up they were somewhere else, in a completely new place. It was honestly kinda scary how things could change so much without him being able to exercise any kind of control.

He was introduced to two more people, who from the resemblance must have been his mothers parents or at least close relatives. Both were older than forty, maybe even fifty. Both had black hair that started going grey in parts. The older lady had the same eyes like his mother.

They took their turn to kiss him and tell him something, the older woman doing this thing with her fingers as she kissed his forehead that he thought was a blessing of some kind.

Once again he spent his time observing the new surroundings, walls made of stone somewhere between yellow and white in colour, the same holes that these people used as windows, just covered with cloth. He was left in a small enclosure, which he figured was his bed, the fence around it meant to stop him when he eventually learned to walk. The bottom part was made of stone, while the fence was made of wood and added on.

The fabric which was his bed was soft and pleasant on the skin, and he felt no cold nor was the surface hard, so there was probably something stuffed, as a barrier between him and the stone. The frame of mother’s bed also made of stone, and probably stuffed with fabrics like his. It was the only other thing he could see, other than the ceiling and walls of course.

***

The days marched forward. Weeks went by before he met a new face. His father. The man had the same black hair, just like his mother and her parents, so it was a good bet that his was probably going to be the same. A squarish jaw and wider then average eyebrows. Not the bush type but not too far from it. Ti was difficult to tell when someone is staring at you from arms length away and he is as small as he was, so it might just be the wrong perspective. The man looked happy to meet him and carried him all day long, much to his protest.

Over time he started catching repetitive phrases, just getting some sense of the language and it helped that when they talked to him, they did it slowly. He was already sure he got the word for "mother" and "hungry" figured out. But then the most interesting thing happened. While he was going over some of what he heard and was slowly repeating it to himself, hoping that some day he was going to make some sense of it, this popped out of nowhere.

You have learned the skill Language Acquisition (1)! Obtain Yes/No?

It was just there in front of him. At first he just stood very still and did nothing, but it didn’t go away. So he carefully tried moving his hand to touch it, yet the hand passed through as if the whole thing was an illusion. The text just hovered there, not moving and his hand was presumably on the other side. It is still attached, I can feel it. he thought. Pulling back the hand he inspected it and there was nothing on it. Hands up, hands down, between fingers... nothing. He closed his eyes and it was still here, only now it was in white letters.

His eyelids were closed and yet the letters were at the same distance they were before. And they were in a language he understood. There was something going on here, but he had so few information to make sense of it. He figured out how to get rid of it in a few tries. Just thinking about it going away did the trick. The same for bringing it back. And when he focused on the words Language Acquisition he got another surprise.

Language Acquisition (1)

Increases the capacity to perceive, process and comprehend a language, raising the speed at which you learn a language. Every skill level increases the effect by a small degree and lowers the cost of its use by a small degree.

This looks like something I really need right now… but what is it? he tried to come up with answers, but he got nothing. Well at least it asked nicely. he thought as he accepted to learn it. The level it was talking about was probably the number near the name. But how was he to test if this does what it says it does. To learn a language is a slow process, and although he was good at that sort of thing he never timed it. So how to compare? And how large is that small degree? And if there is a skill like this, there must be others. He got this one trying to figure out a new language, so maybe just... but what was he to do, as a baby he was essentially bound to this stone crib, his movement limited. That narrows thing down to some of the things I could do by just thinking. Or maybe even not thinking. he thought.

Trying to not think first came to nothing, he could not make the questions floating in his mind go away. There was a time when he could do it at the snap of his fingers, but now the excitement was probably messing with him. So what can I do of the thinking branch? Maybe trying to recall something? he thought.

He made a schedule of remembering paintings and photos he saw, trying to remember their details. Then he watched his mother, grandparents… and tried to remember the details of their faces, their clothes, anything large or small. This went on for seven days. He thought to quit doing it many times, thinking that it was obviously no working, but boredom kept sending him back, and it paid out at the end.

You have learned the skill Visualization (1)! Obtain Yes/No?

Lowers the influence of the surroundings on you and gives focus to details of a visual memory. Every skill level increases the effect by a small degree and lowers the cost of its use by a small degree.

The house was nothing big by his old standards. His sense of distance was a bit woozy but the room he spent most of his days was somewhere around 4x4 meters and largely occupied by the bed of his parents. Then in the corner opposite of the door was his crib and there was just one more wooden chest in the corner across the bed from him.

He figured pretty early that his was not his old world. At first he thought he was in some king of third world country, but those messages shattered that bubble completely. Judging by the clothes and the materials of construction he was in a pre-industrial age. The heat every day indicated he was somewhere around equator or it was the peak of summer. Too soon to tell. The air was dry but he didn’t know of that was just because of the summer of something else. His parents didn’t take him out yet, and the glimpses he saw were brief in the moments where they walked with him around. That was probably going to change soon.

***

On one night, right after his father got back, he was woken up by his parents. From what he could tell it was completely unintentionally, they were trying to keep their voices down, but even not knowing the language, he figured out what they were doing. I guess some things transcend language barriers. At first he tried thinking about something else, anything, just not to be the biggest voyeur in the history of the world. He even used that skill to lower outside influence, and it worked for a bit. It even got its second level. But they just kept going.

So he did something to get their attention and let them know that someone was listening. The scrambling they did after his baby cry was oh so satisfying. He didn’t mind what they did, it was not his business, but he had no choice but to lay there and be forced to listen. They, on the other hand, could go to some other room. He saw that the house had a few more.

They even went at it for hours, while he only wished for them tire already. To go sleep. To leave him in peace. From that point on he would cry first, should he hear anything near a muffled moan. He counted his victory when they started going to other rooms and was not woken from that point on. Although he did get a sense of a forming grudge from his father, but he didn’t care, he was perverted enough without them adding this to the list.

The next skill he got, after countless hours of wondering if it was working, was Meditation. He first tried to empty his mind of all thoughts, but that did not seem to work probably because every few seconds that exact thought kept rearing back into his mind. Then he remembered that there were more ways to meditate, and one of those that he was recommended to try was a sort of observation. You relax, allow your thoughts to flow, and you observe what comes. Just acknowledge their passing. At least that was how he understood it. A way to observe thoughts in peace and quiet and that did the trick finally.

You have learned the skill Meditation (1)! Obtain Yes/No?

While in use increases concentration and awareness and lowers heightened emotions. Allows for introspective view of ones inner self. Every skill level increases the effect by a small degree and lowers the cost of its use by a small degree.

***

He slept in intervals of a couple hours at a time, waking up ready to charge, yet the energy rush never lasted long, expended in an hour at most. After what he counted were another two weeks, the only interesting thing in his day was practising, and in that he was persistent. The results spoke for themselves.

Language Acquisition (7)

Visualization (4)

Meditation (9)

Even though it was the latest skill he acquired, Meditation levelled faster than the two he got before it. He did not want to try to get more skills, because just looking at the time it took to gain these he could see that with each new skill it took more time to get a new one. He was not sure how long he practised to get Language Acquisition, but his best guess was somewhere a bit over one full day when all is taken into calculation. For Visualization from one and a half day to two, when you exclude sleeping,eating and such.

For Meditation it was almost five days of constant work, and that looked more like exponential than linear equation. Now maybe there was a limited number of these skills you can get, and so far these looked extremely useful, so he refrained from getting new ones and focus on raising the ones he got so far. In the meantime, maybe some questions will hopefully get an answer.

These past few weeks, since he got Language Acquisition, he learned five dozen new words just from extrapolation and some helpful pointing on the part of his new parents. In some situations where his mother and father talked he could almost catch the flow of the conversation, but they were still too fast for him to follow along. He had a flaw that when he did not know a word he caught onto it to memorise it, and when he tried to get back into it, the conversation was long gone from the point where he followed.

But he was trying every day, and every day a new piece revealed itself. There was no hurry to learn, he was pretty sure babies don’t start talking before six months and even then it is probably something like "Mum" or "Dad", both words already firmly in his grasp. The thing that worried him was that sometimes some words changed just a bit and he did not know what that meant. They sounded almost the same, just with something added on, some spin on them that he kept missing. He was gaining sense and intimacy with the language so he was hoping to figure out this puzzle soon.

He did not spend as much time on Visualization as he did on the other two. He got the second level on that night he’d rather not remember, the third and the fourth trying to remember some of the details of his past life and he stopped there. There was a plan to try to remember the scenes from those days in the hospital, filling as much as possible of the details as he could. A small challenge to make it more fun.

Now Meditation was probably his favourite skill so far. The way the world warped when you look outside of yourself , with this skill was just magical. He experimented with this skill much more because of the awareness part of the skill. It heightened the senses, allowing more information to be seen, heard or felt. With Visualization he had a powerful tool to process with, but for now it is still a mystery what. He was trying to see how the skills level while the process of levelling happened, but that was either too quick or somehow obfuscated or something else.

The two things he noticed is that after the levelling he felt tired and could drink much more of his mothers milk. The second symptom was maybe unrelated to levelling, but it was too early to discount. So he tried to practise skills as soon as possible after sleeping, then soon after eating, sometimes both. So far, from what he could sense, it was easier to level a skill when he did both.

His mother had even complained to his father that he was pulling too hard when he drank, so his father came to reproach his son, as if a baby could understand. This one does, though. But after that he was more mindful of the amount of tugging and biting he did, keeping it down to a minimum.

***

Ever since he came to this house his new father was absent the majority of time, because apparently his work as a travelling merchant took him on long journeys that sometimes took up to a month, while his mother and grandparents took care of him and the land they resided on. There was a lot of stress running around because of a lot of new things that happened recently, his unexpected birth for one.

From what he could gather there was some difficulty to conceive, then after it was confirmed his mother was pregnant they decided to relocate from their previous home. They bought this land and made a home on it, only to buy it they had to pool all of the money they had and now times were a bit tough, but they were managing. His grandfather worked on construction and grandmother grew herbs for sale, all the while they maintained a small farm right next to the house.

He pieced these thing together slowly, listening to them talk while they ate. It was a lot of change in a small window of time and it took some getting used to, all the members of the family had difficulties with it. He understood all too well, he himself had trouble adjusting to new environments, new people… There was a lot of pressure there.

There was something that quite surprised him, he learned that the next day would be exactly two months since his birth. He did try to keep some sort of calendar in his mind, but there were difficulties with that. The number that he learned was pretty close to what he had, but there were a few days missing on his.

***

The day started the almost the same way as all so far. Washing, feeding… but then she wrapped him in some cloth that was much better then the previous one. That one gave him an itch that made his skin crawl by even thinking of it. The worst part was that he could not scratch it. After leaving her parents behind, his mother slowly walked carrying him in another cloth wrapped over her bosom, under one of her arm and over her other shoulder. It covered all of him, protecting him from the heat of the day, but it also meant that he could not see anything.

So he wiggled a bit, made some noise, with the hopes of getting a better view. She did not fall for the attempt, he was just tucked a bit and shushed. At times, when the angle was right, he could see the blue sky with small roving clouds of white. Most of the way they walked in shade of trees he did not see, but he could hear them swaying in the soft wind. The other sound was a bit harder to place at first, but that mystery was solved when they got onto a boat and he was removed from the baby sling. A river, wide and packed with boats going this and that way, in a pattern known only to them.

He saw people dressed from head to toe in colourful clothes, others almost nude in their single rag, wrapped around the crotch. And all combinations in between. Some had only people aboard and he could see by how they talked and waved their hands around utterly involved in the conversation, that this crowd was something they saw on a regular basis. Others only had one or two passengers, but those were stuffed with stones or crates full of fruits and vegetables, leaving a sweet smell in their passing.

Everybody kept a safe distance, careful not to cause a collision.