Totem Ch: 4 - 12 Years Later (Patreon)

Twelve Years Later

"I hate corn," I muttered for maybe the thousandth time in my life as I shucked another ear off the stalk and shoved it in a bag. "I hate corn. I hate corn…”

My greedy heart chimed in, But I sure do love what it buys.

Nevertheless, I’d been at this all day, and now the sun was setting. There were only three more plants until the end of the row. Quitting time!

Harvesting wasn't hard or especially backbreaking work -- no, that would come when it was time to rid the field of all the stalks. But it was tedious. And though my dad would clutch his chest and dramatically pretend to have a heart attack once he heard... I wasn't a farming kind of guy.

Plus not having a totem yet meant I didn't have any cool magical benefits. I was slower than our slowest one-handed farm hand. That wasn't a joke. Three fingered Rick with the Finch totem had double my harvesting speed. He was usually done with his quota by noon, got paid, and was drunk off grain hooch by two.

The last two in my row had been picked clean by varmints -- the real ones, not the Deformed. 

Letting out a sigh of relief, I unhooked the woven bag from over my head and walked over to the big bin to dump the final day’s harvest in.

I was the last 'field hand' to finish for the day, being by far the slowest. No rest even for the boss's son.

My life had changed a lot over the last twelve or so years. Growing up again was nice but damn tedious at times, and I'd gotten a reputation as a loner. But things were getting easier now that I was nearing fifteen years old. Other adults sometimes treated me like one of their own, and the kids "my age" weren't quite so annoying.

The biggest change had been the state of my family's finances.

Turns out, that bag of what I'd thought of as glowing pills had been a lot like finding a sack of gold. My dad traded them into the government officials for a large plot of land on the good side of town.

Thanks to my dad's badger farming skills, we were able to develop the purchased land productively. Corn was where it was at.

And no, I have no idea how corn came to be in this world. Back in my old world, it was developed from wild maize. However, there seemed to be no sign of a breeding program here. The corn looked a lot like the stuff I used to get out of the grocery store. We even had different varieties or sweet corn and the hardier stuff used at the mill.

It was kind of a minor detail, but it was the kind of thing that still bugged me, years into my new life.

Twelve years and no explanation of how I’d come to be here in a child’s body. It was the kind of thing that could eat at you, if you let it.

So I tried not to think too much about it.

After I was out of the field, I took a quick dip in the river to wash off. Hygiene was one concept I'd kept from Earth and refused to budge on. Mom joked I spent so much time in the water I'd get an alligator totem like her.

That wouldn't be bad. I still wanted a wolf or a tiger. That way, instead of farming the field I could be guarding it against vermin, thieves and the deformed.

Or maybe I'd take the fight to the deformed monsters themselves.

It was twilight by the time I made it home -- which was a much bigger structure than the tiny hut I'd known as a toddler. I had my own room and my own basic bathroom. Compared to most of my peers in town, I was living large.

I had no complaints -- other than living in Hicksville, treated as a kid, and the constant threat of deformed monster attacks. More on that later.

Anyway, my first indication that I was in trouble tonight was when I opened the door and saw a giant plate of blueberry muffins sitting out on the kitchen table.

"Shit," I sighed.

"What was that?" my mother snapped -- literally. She'd started to grow in longer alligator teeth last year, making her look fearsome.

"Annika dropped off muffins?" I asked.

"As a matter of fact..." Mom started.

I groaned.

Mom waved a wooden spoon at me in a vaguely threatening gesture. "It's obscene for the woman to be doing the courting, Seth.”

"She's fourteen years old. She's not a woman." And the poor girl had a crush on me for years. Hell if I know why. I was 'weird Seth' and had zero charisma.

Yet from the age of ten, bubbly, popular, pretty Annika had her cap set on me.

As a person, she was... okay, I guess. But she was also a young teenager, and I don't know if you've talked to any of those as an adult but conversation isn't exactly deep.

Annika was a kid, but not stupid. She knew I wasn’t into her. So her recent method of attack was trying to get at my heart through my stomach.

And she made damn good muffins: Huge and loaded with blueberries which was a delicacy around here.

I manfully resisted taking one as I slumped off toward my bedroom.

"She comes from a good family, you know," Mom called after me. 

"I'm not marrying her. We'd only make each other miserable!"

She huffed. 

“Where are you going? Dinner's almost ready."

"I'm not hungry," I called back, lying through my teeth as I shut the door.

I flopped back on my bed, exasperated both with the situation and with myself. Part of it, I knew, came from being drenched in hormones. Second puberty was not fun. I had no patience for anything, and I was itching to get away -- but from what, I couldn't say.

But another part of it was that feelings and memories from old life was rearing its head again. For a few years it had been easy to let go of the memories I'd had of Earth. To fully embrace the weird world of magic I'd found myself in.

Now, as I grew older, they'd begun to rush back in.

This was my second life. I didn't understand how I had ended up here, or why. But I didn't want to waste it stuck in a tiny village as a farmer, married to the sweet but shallow girl next door.

Emphasis on girl.

As always when I had moments to relax I opened my inner eye. I'd spent years condensing the ring of light as far down as I could. I'd squeeze it tight until I couldn't anymore. Then after a few weeks I'd find my body naturally added more diffuse energy which drifted in a slow orbit around the black hole. I'd add that to the ring and usually find I could squeeze it down a few degrees more.

Now it was a ring as thin as a hair around the event horizon of the black hole. It was so bright that I wouldn't be able to stare at it directly if I were using regular sight.

I was proud of it, even though no one else seemed to know what I was talking about when I described it to them.

Years on, and I was still unsure about the powers here. My parents were happy to explain the basics to a baby: One day your totem appears to you in a dream and tells you your life's purpose. Your totem is who you are on the inside and that begins to reflect on the outside. You use its power to keep you and those you love safe.

But as I got older it was made clear that it wasn't appropriate to ask for details. It was a little like a toddler running around and asking what kind of pee-pee strangers had.

Apparently, my real magical training would begin when the true nature of my totem was revealed to me.

And though Mom and Dad didn't say it -- if my totem was in any way compatible with Annika's, they'd be pushing hard for a betrothal.

That’s just how things were done around here. If you weren’t hitched by the time you were eighteen, you were thought of as either an old maid or a life-long bachelor.

Mom and Dad had been good to me. Never treated me like I wasn't their son. They’d tried to raise me right even though I was a weird kid by their standards. The Annika thing was the biggest hiccup so far.

I loved them but I wasn't going to get married to make them happy.

I turned my thoughts back to my inner eye.

As I suspected, my body had gathered some more natural energy today. That happened when I worked hard at a singular task. Harvesting definitely counted.

With the ease of years of practice, I guided the free-flowing energy to the the bright light and then squeezed ring down further and further.

Tonight, something changed.

A sharp snap echoed through my body.

For a horrified second I thought I had somehow broken the ring. 

But... no, what had broken was the outer layer of the blackhole core. As if it couldn't handle the pressure of the ring anymore, it cracked and sheared away.

Beneath it was another orb. Except… No, this was oblong.

It was an egg.

"What the..."

I prodded it with my mental attention.

Something from the inside grabbed my mind and yanked me in.

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