#7.2 Guests From Afar (Patreon)

Language Acquisition (19)

Visualization (14)

Serenity of the Mind (11)

Two, three, and four levels per skill, respectively, Tercius thought and shook his two-and-a-half-year-old head. It's getting slower and slower to level them. Am I doing something wrong?

This last question had been on his mind for some time.

A year had passed since his last skill– the trend of one skill every six months broken by a large margin. The six months period seemed significant to him as he gained his first skill around that time since his birth, then the second, and third skill followed in the exact time-frame apart from each other.

Each time I got my previous skills it was because I needed them, he thought. Language Acquisition when I started learning the Common, Visualization when I had trouble remembering my old life, and Serenity of the Mind when I needed privacy. Now my biggest need is to eject these strangers from our home. Is there a skill for that? A nasty fart skill or something?

"He doesn't speak?" One of the men asked slowly while looking at Tercius.

The man had black hair all over him, seeming more a beast than man. Only a part around his eyes was free of follicular growth, yet even there the hair made advances, Tercius was able to observe.

The second guest was also a man, of a similar muscular build to the first one. Like the first one, this one was also bearded-- unruly growths covering their mouths. Tercius had observed them eating and if he was a betting toddler he would bet his fine leather boots that these two ate more hair than food. It was disturbing to watch, yet he could not peel his eyes away.

"He can speak but he never does it when strangers are present," Septimus said and threw a small smile Tercius's way.

"A cautious one," the bigger of the two said and nodded his head approvingly.

"Septimus, I'm sorry but it looks like we'll be staying for a few more days," the smaller man, Kasim, said, shaking his head left to right. "I know you said we can stay as long as we want, but I wanted to solve this as soon as possible,"

"It's a small matter, my friend. There is room aplenty, as long as the stone floor isn't too hard for your bones," Septimus said with a laugh.

All three of them laughed.

Tercius only observed.

It happened occasionally that passing soldiers stopped by to eat or even sightsee on their way to the South Fort, the new town some twenty kilometers down the river that had started development a few years back. These passing soldiers often looked at Septimus with envy in their eyes, for he had what they were after. A token of completed military service— it was what allowed Septimus to have a piece of land of his own.

Tercius was used to seeing soldiers, by now. People had an obligation to help them, as soldiers were the ones who killed dangerous predators and drove off the occasional bandit groups.

Then these men arrived and Tercius thought they were some kind of beggars. He assumed that Septimus would just throw them out. When Septimus did not do it and allowed them into their home, Tercius had felt his sheltered mind shudder.

Tercius had to say that his life as a loner had made him a bit of a sheltered individual. He knew this before, but this fact was only made more apparent here, in this new world. When a particular event occurred which would prompt him to think about this exact topic, he almost always concluded that most of the population of his old world would be considered sheltered here. That thought, somehow, always managed to draw a smile from him.

He had to wonder how he would have reacted if people had come to his home and asked for hospitality, like these men did. Slam and bolt the door, probably.

"I ask the owner of this home to grant us hospitality," Kasim had greeted, then his friend repeated the words. "I pledge to do no ill deed while your house shelters me. Neither of us bears any illness and we seek no handouts. My friend and I are both willing to exchange work for a place to stay."

The story the two men gave was that they were merchants traveling from north to south, and then back north.

From towns to villages they went buying and reselling– earning their money. Misfortune struck them near Septimus's village when something smashed their boat, leaving a whooping hole in it. While the men managed to get to the shore, their boat and most of the wares on it now graced the bottom of the river.

From one of the villagers, they had heard that Septimus used to be a trader and came to him to ask for hospitality— as was, apparently, custom. In the days that followed, the two men spent half of the day scavenging the river for their wares, a very risky endeavor that everyone tried to talk them out of, and the other half by helping on whatever task Septimus had in mind. They worked hard for their meals and their place to stay. Both were well-traveled and had many stories to share with the family. They gave a much-needed new tone to the otherwise monotone days. He enjoyed their peculiar and comical tales in the evenings.

The only actual problem that Tercius had with them was that both of them snored. They snored with such intensity that even Petra, a heavy sleeper, got woken up by them. His half-deaf grandparents got woken up by their rumblings.

One night's sleep Tercius was able to forgive. Two nights… Well, he managed to do it somehow. Yet the one behind him was the third almost-sleepless night. It got to the point where he would have to sleep during the day and move his daily schedule into the night.

Simply unacceptable.

He was able to forgive a lot of things, but making him reschedule things was where he drew the line.

So Tercius's droopy eyes glared at the offenders as they ate their breakfast and he fantasized how he would make them go away.

His stomach rumbled and twisted. He got up and slowly walked to Petra who was preparing lunch. He pointed at a pear-shaped fruit and his mother noticed.

"You want this one?"

Tercius nodded.

Petra cut up the fruit into small pieces, perfect for his size.

"Thanks," Tercius said before he started to eat.

She bent down and gave him a big kiss on top of his head. Silly woman.

After eating Tercius felt extremely tired. He yawned and made way for his small bed. After Tercius insisted on never sleeping in his parent's overused bed, and then refused to sleep with his grandparents, they made a small bed just for him.

Ciron made the frame of stone, perfect for his size. Petra, with some help from Rona and Septimus, made the pillow and sheets in just the right size for him to use.

Tercius easily climbed on the bed and with a large yawn placed his cheek on the pillow. Before he went to sleep he made sure to use Serenity of the Mind, even if for a few minutes. The skill always left him feeling refreshed, mentally. It was a subtle thing, this feeling, but after a year of use of the skill, he was sure that it was there.

He closed his eyes and activated the skill. Twenty minutes of use. That's how much he had before he ran out of mana. He made sure to never empty his mana pool, as the aftereffects were something he avoided with as wide a berth as he could get away with.

The annoyance he felt towards the two interloping, sleep-interrupting, snoring, sons of a hairy ape— dulled to a crawl. With a long sigh, he was able to put any thought about them past himself.

The skill was an almost instant rest and relaxation— if you preferred being completely alone in dark places, where only bare whispers were heard. It had a slight dark and twisted tone, but to Tercius it was bliss.

With his eyes closed and the visual sense dulled by a large margin, he was left in an almost completely dark environment. A perfect setting for meditation. Few disturbances, and the whispers and smells in the background made for an ideal material for him to inspect and catalog.

The sounds the animals made, those of the people, cookware being moved about, the smell of plants inside of their home, the smell that was carried into their home by a wandering wind, the feel of that very wind on his skin. One by one he separated each from the others and observed it, gave each particular sound, smell or feel a name and let them wander away.

Serenity of the Mind (11) is now Serenity of the Mind (12).

A simple message was written before his eyes in white script. There was one difference between the first time he saw this kind of message and the one he saw now. Somewhere along the way, the script changed from his original language to the one he learned recently. Why this happened he had no clue.

This was just another thing he made notice of and then he let it go away.

Tercius was just about to stop with the meditation when he felt a change overcome him. It was a soft feeling as if someone used a finger to poke him. For a moment he thought that his mother or someone else was checking in on him, but after a moment he realized that this was not the case. He knew how that felt when someone was shaking him or touching him while he was under the influence of the skill.

What happened right now was similar, but not that. It felt smaller— much smaller. It was as if someone poked him with a needle, but not intending to pierce the skin and hurt him. The weirdest part was that it was not a sole feeling, but increasing in frequency. After a while, his whole skin felt the tingling constantly.

While his eyes weren't able to see anything, he could feel it all over his body-- especially with Serenity of the Mind turned on. It was a complete contradiction to what the skill claimed to do.

It wasn't even an unpleasant tingle-- on the contrary, it felt as if a current was passing through him. His batteries were being recharged, he realized as the minutes passed by and his need for sleep slowly faded away. After a while, the tingling just stopped.

He checked the skill description, just to be sure, and there was nothing there that even hinted at what was happening here.

How long have I been at this? Surely twenty minutes have gone by? Tercius thought and turned off his skill. Opening his eyes, he climbed off the bed with a spring in his step-- as if he just woke up from a full night of sleep.

In the room where he slept were his bed and the bed of his parents. There were two large wooden chests for storage of personal items and clothing between their beds-- moved there at Tercius's behest.

A small window in the upper part of the wall let in the sunlight and Tercius glanced at the lines on the stone floor-- where the large stone blocks which made up the foundations were joined. The light was over a meter closer to the wall itself than it was the last time he saw it, just before he went to meditate.

Easily forty minutes, he concluded and suddenly he felt confused. But how? The amount of mana I have couldn't have changed drastically in a single day. That's not how it worked so far. Is it because the skill leveled?

"Did you nap well, baby?" Petra asked him when he got to the kitchen area.

"Yea," he said as he ran to the table.

Petra yawned. "I will have to take a nap as well. Next time we should turn back those who snore,"

"Yea," Tercius completely agreed. With a single look, he saw the dark shadows around Petra's eyes. He made his way to her and tried to push the woman towards the bedroom. "Go sleep,"

"I need to prepare lunch, silly," she said with a laugh. "Your Father and Grandparents need to eat when they come home and so do the guests,"

"They eat," he said and picked up a fruit-- one from his grandmother's small, fast-growing, orchard. "No worries,"

The woman laughed. "I'm making your favorite stew."

Tercius ran to get the required vegetables. He brought them to the table one by one, hugging each with his two arms and chest.

Later that same day, Tercius tried to meditate one more time while his Serenity of the Mind was active. This time the skill behaved just like it did so many times before, turning off after twenty minutes of use-- leaving him with a headache and feeling slightly queasy.

So what happened this morning was an anomaly, he concluded, while rubbing his temples. But why did it happen? Where did I get the mana required to fuel the skill? What was that weird sensation? Will it happen again? Was what happened… helpful in some way? Harmful?

The complete draining of mana always left him in a sour mood– his new family called him Grumpy at these times– and the people and events with which he normally didn't even notice or was completely fine with suddenly seemed annoying.

“Why the sour face, little man?” Rona asked.

“Nothing,” Tercius said and even he heard the sourness in his childish voice.

“Oh, is that Grumpy I hear—”

Tercius just left the room.

The two merchants returned that late afternoon and once more they managed to get some things off the riverbed. The larger of the two men carried a lot of things in his arms, yet the smaller one only had one.

“It’s ruined,” the smaller man sighed, his eyes downcast as he cradled the lute-like instrument like a baby. “Our journey together has ended, old friend,”

“I know of a luthier in Zuros, Kasim,” Septimus said. “He might be able to repair it,”

“It was fixed once or twice before, my friend. The sound was never the same,” the man shook his head sadly. Then his eyes brightened. “Tell you what. I know that it’s a poor gift, given its current state, but allow me to give it to your son. If that luthier manages to fix it, the boy will have something to learn on.”

“No gift is necessary–”

“I insist. It would mean a lot to–”

“Kasim please, there is no need–”

“I will leave it here after I depart, whether you want it or not. Let it rot if that is what you want.”

Septimus sighed and nodded his head reluctantly.

It was a custom here for offers to be refused repeatedly, before finally agreeing. Tercius found the whole thing slightly off-putting. If Tercius was in Kasim’s place and Septimus refused even once Tercius would just drop the matter– no questions asked. Leaving strange cultural differences for a later date, he turned his attention to the instrument.

His first ever.

While Septimus talked to the two merchants, Tercius went to the instrument in question and crouched near it. He was sure that he saw it before. Similar to a lute, it was made of wood in the same pear shape, yet this instrument had a shorter neck and no frets on it.

Tercius had a friend who played an acoustic guitar, before his reincarnation. She was also a bit of a connoisseur of the history of musical instruments– never formally trained, but it was something of a hobby of hers. Through her, Tercius was able to see and learn about lutes, vielles, harpsichords, bodhráns, and many, many other kinds of instruments. Tercius was sure that he saw an instrument just like the one the two merchants brought back, but a name for it in his old language escaped him.

The merchant called it an oud, a word he never heard before.

"Oud," he repeated the name as he touched the neck of the instrument. As Kasim said, its stay in the river for the past few days made the wood soft. This luthier Septimus mentioned earlier is probably some kind of a craftsman, a repairman, Tercius thought, as his fingers gently slid down the body of the instrument. He repeated the two new words as his eyes took in the form of his new possession.

The instrument was too big for Tercius's body size— more a double bass than a guitar it should be. His strength only allowed him to lift it a bit before he had to slowly put it back, afraid that he would do further damage to it.

"Tercius, is that an oud?" Tercius heard Rona's ecstatic voice. As he turned around, the woman had already made her way to him.

Tercius looked at the green eyes of his grandmother and found boundless happiness waiting there. With some hesitation, he said, "Yea?"

“What happened to it?” the woman said as she gently plucked the double strings. Her pinched face when she heard the sound said it all— who drowned the oud?

“Snorers fished it from the river,” Tercius whispered to the woman. “It's mine now.”

Rona laughed. "This needs to be dried. Hmm… what to do, what to do… That Zran can draw water from wood and his wives owe me a favor. I'll give it to them tomorrow and make sure to say how careful they need to be with it. Can I?"

"You can," Tercius nodded, with a small smile on his face. Rona was the only one in his new family who understood the concept of privacy and private property– the rest took and touched what they wanted when they wanted. It was… aggravating.

Still, Tercius was forgiving and above all patient. It was some time ago that he decided that he would teach them— slowly, over a longer time period— how to stop with their bandit-like behavior— without resorting to religious preachings like Rona.

He was still in the decision process on how to do the actual lessons as he did not want to make it look like he was denying them something for the pleasure of denying them– that would miss the mark he wanted to make.

That same night, as a sea of stars shone down on the land, he was meditating on those thoughts, his Serenity of the Mind active.

They gave him everything he had. His new life. His clothes, a bed, daily meals, care, and daily support— for years now. He had a lot of gratitude for what they did for him, for what they continued to do each day, and will probably do for a few more years. The gratitude he had for these new parents also slowly made its way to those who raised him before, to them whose fate he did not know. To Mr. Sullivan who had died while Tercius was still on Earth.

He finally realized how difficult it was to raise a child– from a very unique and personal perspective.

And while old nature would often prod him and ask, ‘When are you going to teach them some boundaries?’, his gratitude to them and a general non interference policy he was quite fond of asked Tercius, ‘Who are you to teach them anything? Why should they follow your beliefs?’

So he struggled.

Luckily, his struggles were interrupted by something much more interesting.

The tingling sensation from all over his body was back.