Chapter 26: 23: Can’t even come clean

Aerien’s POV

The sleep did me some good. Well, again, I didn’t really sleep. Although, the shut-eye was certainly good enough. It gave me some time to order my thoughts and calm myself down. I understood what it was Aerien’s mother was going through, so I could not blame her at all. However, I was being influenced rather strongly by the thoughts of my new body. I had never seen my mother before, but because of the memories from my past life I knew what a mother was and how they were supposed to be.

A part of me had certainly hoped I could form a connection with her. However, it looked like that was going to be pretty difficult. It was more comfortable right now to be the old man I was in my previous life, to allow my baby self to retreat into the inner reaches of my mind and hide. However, even when I tried to do that, even when the one in control was supposedly the one who was older and supposed to be more understanding of these things, I still couldn’t help but feel a little depressed about the whole thing.

I couldn’t help the thought that this was more of my baby self affecting my old-man mind. It seemed we really were affecting each other, bringing one another closer and closer together. My baby self was supposedly only 6 months old. However, her maturity level really seemed far closer to that of an older toddler at the youngest. There was absolutely no doubt the exposure and connection to my past-life consciousness had caused her to mature far faster than she would have naturally.

Meanwhile, her mind and emotion kept affecting me as well, and I felt like I was identifying more and more as this six month old girl, and I also found myself becoming less patient lately as well. Some day, as we continued to become more and more like each other, would our two consciousnesses merge into one? For certain we were going to become less and less distinct from one another at the rate we were going.

I suppose at the rate we’re going now, I would give it maybe another five to ten years before we are no longer the old man and Aerien. Instead we will be two indistinct consciousnesses, both of which fully identify as Aerien and are somewhere between the two in terms of personality. Really, already I seem to no longer consider my former name important in the least. I have long since cast it away. I feel like I remembered it at some point, but right now I know myself only as Aerien, even rignt now as my baby self has curled up into a back corner of my mind.

As I am sitting upright, staring off into the center of the room, I hear Levin beginning to stir. He sits up and looks at me, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. I guess it has been somewhere around two to three hours since they went to sleep.

“Hey Awrien, feelwing better?” He says in his cute little voice that also has the maturity uncharacteristic for his physical age hidden behind it, a reminder that I’m far from alone in my situation.

I nod my head in response to him without meeting his eyes. “Thh..e bbaby is asweep.” I tell him, but from the look he’s giving me out the corner of my eye I can tell he must have picked up something of my emotions from my tone or something.

He has a difficult expression for a moment, and then pulls himself out from under the covers and crawls his way over to me and then holds me as he always has since he was given the duty of feeding me his energy after I had just been born. This is a duty he no longer needs to serve since it is pretty much open about me not only not being sick but also plenty capable of producing my own energy, but the subject of stopping has not even come up once. He still continues to hold onto me like a child with their security animal, the only exceptions being when he is asleep or when I have given him some kind of development exercise to do.

He pulls me into his lap and rests his chin on my head, but he seems to be having some kind of difficult thoughts. Normally he would just either drag me down to the bed to cuddle, or hop to his feet and carry me across the room. However, now, he just pulled me to his chest and sat like that, letting out a long slow breath.

(You know what Aerien? I know you’re the oldest of us on Earth, but you’re the youngest here. You can cry or something if you’re sad you know?) I feel his words resonating through his chest as my body is held against his, and I hear his vocal cords vibrating through my skull as my head is pressed against his neck. I would really prefer he not talk when I’m held up against him like that.

(Actually, Gaerien’s the oldest.) I correct him while pulling away, at least enough to get my head away from his neck.

(Really? How old is… err… was she anyway?)

Hmm… how to answer that one? Come to think of it, we never actually told the boys about her being a goddess before. There’s no way he could easily believe she was tens of thousands of years old.

“Mmm-mm.” I make an ‘I don’t know’ style grunt, passing it off as I just heard she was old but didn’t know how old sorta thing. Well, it is kinda true. All I knew for sure was that she pre-dated Earth’s 6,000 year written history, which apparently started several hundred years after the barrier had been put in place.

(Also, I do cry. I can’t help it, my baby self cries any time she gets even a little upset.) Of course, her prefrontal cortex had not developed yet, so this body had absolutely no impulse control. That lack of impulse control was enough even to allow this physical body’s desires to completely overwhelm my previous life mind even when it was in complete control.

(That’s not what I meant, err… is that the same? I don’t think that’s the same thing.) He has a troubled and unsure look on his face as he tries to figure out whether or not he messed up the point he was trying to make.

(No, you’re right. They are different, I know what you meant.) I told him. (Yeah, I know, I’ve thought about that stuff before. I can’t really sleep anymore, so I think about stuff like that a lot.)

Levin strokes my back. I can tell what he’s up to, he wants to be helpful. I can really see his thoughts written all over his disappointed face. He wanted to try and play big brother and offer me some kind of advice. It must be eating him up that it seemed like he couldn’t really offer anything. Perhaps I should have dumbed myself down and just let him feel like he has comforted me or something. No, that would just be patronizing though. That would be disrespectful. Well, I’ll find some way to make it up to him somehow.

(Well, should I go get Ether guy?) He asks. Before I can respond, he’s jumping out of the bed and carrying me across to the stairs. He’s not really able to descend the stairs all that stably while also carrying me, so he leaves me at the top of the stairs and then begins going down the stairs by himself backward, keeping hands on the upper stair in order to keep his feet on the lower stair from slipping.

[Oh, Levin. Is Aerien awake?] I hear the steady male adult voice speaking the Elven language coming from downstairs. It’s strange, but somehow I’ve started to feel very safe when I hear that voice. It somehow manages to comfort the disturbed emotions I was starting to feel since what happened earlier today.

“Yeah… umm… uma!” Levin responds first in English and then corrects himself to Elvin.

[Haha! Ok, well. I guess we are ready to begin then.] He says. He definitely seems a lot better than he was before now. The rest seems to also have done him a lot of good. He picks up Levin off the stairs as he comes up, and then casts a glance back over to the bed where Rolwen and Gaerien are still asleep. He has a thoughtful look on his face for a moment before he puts Levin down next to me and then scoops us both up in his arms at once and carries us downstairs.

He goes over to the table, and, when I think he’s going to put us both down onto the same chair, instead he picks me up again as soon as Levin’s feet hit the chair, and Levin has a bit of a distressed look on his face as he reaches for me as I’m scooped up and away from him. I, meanwhile, find myself looking rapidly between Levin and Ether guy trying to figure out what to make of this situation.

Ether guy doesn’t take me far though. He just goes over to the next seat over, actually pulling it up within arm’s reach of Levin, and then he stands me up in his lap and makes careful sure I’m able to balance with my hands on the table. It’s actually pretty hard. I have had some practice balancing on the level ground, but balancing on top of an adult’s thighs, which are uneven and fairly squishy, is a different matter all together. Ultimately, despite his best efforts, I wind up slipping and falling into his chest before I slide down into his lap every time he lets go of me.

Eventually, he seems to get the idea that this is simply not going to work and just uses one arm to hold me to his chest while he reaches out with the other arm to grab something further away on the table. What he pulls over, what I had earlier dismissed as something there just for decoration, was a small wooden cup filled with soil. Or, rather, perhaps it was the elves’ idea of a flower pot?

On top of the soil inside of the wooden vessel was a small nut of some kind. As soon as Ether guy moved the whole ensemble in front of me, he used one finger to shift the nut about and make it stand up-right. [You see this Aerien?] He asks, using the up-tones one uses when talking to a small child. [This is a Lakira nut. It’s a very special nut. You know what we’re going to do with this? We’re going to make it grow, like this.]

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As Ether guy finished saying his words, suddenly a green sprout pushed its way up from the shell of the nut. It was a tiny sprout, but it quickly pushed out its leaves and continued to grow at a rate of centimeters per second. [You see? This is a magic called the green word. That’s what you’re going to learn how to do.] As he explained this, I could feel as though something changed about the way he was looking at the nut, and all of a sudden the rapidly growing sprout seemed to reverse the direction of its growth, and it actually unwinded its growth progress and retreated back inside the shell of the nut.

I looked over to Levin. He looked absolutely mystified by the entire sight. Any irritation he may have felt at having me be taken from him was quickly forgotten as he was now fascinated with what was going on in front of him. Meanwhile, as soon as Ether guy finished returning that Lakira nut to its original state, he pulled the wooden pot closer to me and guided my hands to it.

[Ok, now you try it.] He said as though it should be just a simple thing to make something like that happen. [Don’t worry, the Lakira is very smart, it knows what you want it to do if you tell it with your mana.] Despite his words, I really didn’t know what he meant for me to do with just those instructions as he took my hand and made me wrap it around the nut.

[It’s Ok.] He said. [Do you remember how you made yourself sick? You just told your body to act like it was sick and it did, right? Well, this is kinda the same thing. Just tell the Lakira nut to grow.]

Really? Was it actually going to be just that simple? How is a mage so respected if it’s that easy to do magic?

Well, perhaps I shouldn’t judge it until I’ve tried it. I suppose he doesn’t mean that I should actually do exactly as I had done before. I hadn’t told him the whole truth about how I had done what I did at that time. I had lied to him and told him it was just me having a strong mental image of being sick, and then it happened. I had told him nothing about my meditation or shutting off the heaven’s energy part of it. So, what he had likely meant when he said to do the same thing is he wanted me to have a strong mental image of the plant growing while I was focusing on the nut.

[Aerien! What are you doing!?] Ether guy calls me in a harsh stern voice. [Aerien! Stop!] I look back confused. I was not actually doing anything. I was only starting to concentrate on the nut as he had told me. He lets out a strong sigh, looking very disappointed and rather worried as he looks at me for some reason. He picks me up and turns me toward him, sitting me up on the table and looking me in the eyes with a very serious face as he gently pats me on the cheek as though trying to get a response. [Come on Aerien! Don’t do this! Stop! Stop doing what you’re doing right now!]

I really seriously wasn’t doing anything, but his tone was starting to get to me and scare me. I was so confused and scared by his tone and frustrated over the fact that I had no idea what it was he was talking about that, of course, my face immediately started to contort and whimpers started to escape my throat as I began to lose control to this baby body once again. Only a short matter of seconds later, I was full blown crying.

As I was crying, I felt Ether guy picking up my arm and prying the nut, which I had apparently taken from the pot without knowing, from my hand. After doing so, he made a very displeased sound. [It’s not stopping.] He muttered, seemingly more to himself thant to anyone else. [Common Aerien! Snap out of it! Stop!] His voice was in a flat out panic right now, and hearing him freak out only made me more afraid and I cried harder.

[Ether! What wong ‘ith Awien!?] I could hear Levin’s panicked voice as well.

[Not now Levin!] Ether guy half shouted back. [What’s going on?] He continues to hold me, and I can sense he’s hovering a hand right over my body, slowly waving it back and forth over me. [She was unstable earlier too, maybe we shouldn’t have tried this right now.] I try my best to fight and assert my will against my baby body and focus on what he’s saying. In order to do that, I focus with everything I have to forcibly calm myself down.

[Aerien!?] He says, a surprised and relieved tone to his voice now. [Ok, looks like you’re alright now. That’s good. That’s NOT what I meant when I said for you to do the same thing as when you were acting sick!] I can tell he’s still rather tense through his arms that are holding me and the tone of his voice. I cannot see him well through the eyes that are still blurry with tears, but I can guess his face also reflects the same thing.

I can hear Levin crying nearby. He must have gotten upset worrying about me and frustrated when Ether guy yelled at him, and of course that set him off as well. What Ether guy had just said though… I was starting to get some idea of what he may have been fretting about. And also, this would fit in with the very unpleasant conclusion Gaerien had brought me to yesterday. No, by the sounds of it, it seemed it had become a far bigger issue than I had ever imagined it would, and it was such a silly thing to. Really, this whole fiasco just now was all just a giant misunderstanding.

I hadn’t even thought about it. Just now, when I was trying to do what he said with the nut to make it grow, I was trying something completely new to me. Something that had nothing to do with anything in my previous experience, and something I really couldn’t easily wrap my head around without some serious thought. Of course, all of those things are a complete antitheses to a meditative state. It also requires a focused mind, but it is an entirely different kind of focus from what’s going on during meditation.

Meditation is a process of calm and peaceful thought, and it works best when you are within a familiar element. The state of mind for learning and trying new things. Well, I suppose there may be some kind of special self-induced hypnotic state that could make it possible to be in a calm meditative state while trying to perform a complex task for the first time, but before you could possibly even do that your mind has to explore and process the rules for this new task first. It is simply not possible to be in a meditative state while in that new learning process. Or rather, at least not the integration portion of the learning process. The listening portion is one thing, but the integration portion where you internalize what you’ve just learned and attempt to apply it for the first time ever is completely different.

Such a simple thing, and it had freaked him out this much! Gaerien was right. He WAS absolutely able to sense the energy of heaven I was getting as part of my meditation. And, by the looks of it, he had interpreted that state as “normal” for me. It was to a point he completely freaked out when it had changed. He freaked out so bad that he got Levin and I scared as well.

Ether guy seemed so good with my mother earlier, but… Ether guy… you’re REALLY not good with kids, are you? I shudder to think how bad he would be doing if we actually were normal kids.

[Maybe we shouldn’t try this now after all.] He says, coming to a conclusion on his own. I didn’t see any need to stop. In fact, I did kinda want to try again now that it was all cleared up what the fuss was about. I didn’t really have a good way to say that though. I could just flat up contradict him, I had the vocabulary to do that, but it seemed clear enough that he really did see me as just a baby even if I was somewhat abnormal in some ways. He would definitely just ignore me if I did that.

And so, having made his own decision, he scoops the still crying Levin back up and carts us back up stairs to where the commotion earlier seems to have woken up Rolwen and Gaerien. He sets us down, and I am left with the sobbing Levin who is now comforting himself by holding me like a stuffed animal.

After this little incident, I am left with only one conclusion. We are definitely going to have to bring Ether guy in on our secret if we are going to make any actual progress. The question is though, how!? It was easy to convince the boys since we had shared previous life other-world knowledge, but Ether guy was already convinced we were just unusually smart kids and did not seem to have any reason to believe there was something more going on. Maybe I could convince him if I had a stronger Elven vocabulary or if he knew English better, but as things stood I doubted I even had a chance of convincing him.

Well, that’s just great. All this time I had been making efforts to keep this thing under wraps, and now when I want to reveal it that turns out to quite possibly be an even more difficult task. Of course, it’s easy enough to make someone believe a baby is just a baby. Keeping the secret only meant pushing the boundaries of believably slowly enough to let him adjust to how unusual we were. That plan had been too successful though, and now the real hard task was going to be convincing him we were far more than just babies. And, our chances, when I really started to think about it and consider things they really did not look good at all.

Perhaps I would just have to give up on it until I had a stronger Elven vocabulary then. It’s frustrating, but… it looked like that’s how it was going to have to be.

Author's note

Some of you guys seem to have found a very strange way of making me feel better after my comment last chapter about feeling my quality had fallen. Turns out, last chapter was actually not below average in any sense when compared to earlier chapters. A couple people have been pointing out all the errors I made in the early chapters. Turns out I have been making fewer and fewer lately, and I didn't even realize how much I had improved by in just these few chapters.

Well, on the one hand, it means I was performing better than I had thought. On the other hand, it means that the editing job I need to do to bring things up to what I now consider my standard is going to be MUCH bigger in terms of project size than I had originally thought. I'm definitely going to do it though, correcting errors in my writing which is publicly presented for other people to read is definitely something that feels like a worthy project.

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