Chapter 3: 1: An Infant Can Do Nothing

Note From the Author

There is some emphasis placed on foreign language in this story. As such, rather than simply write some gibberish like @#$$%^, I have opted to put together a custom language.

(Don't give me too much credit for that, it's heavily based on another previously created custom language, namely Tolkien's Elvin language. I have added several of my own words and rearranged the grammar to fit in with more of a structure similar to Latin-based "Romance" languages rather than the Germanic languages. (FYI, English is a Germanic language.))

At any rate, at this point in the story, you should not be too disturbed by the fact that characters are talking a language you cannot understand. You are not supposed to. The point here is that the reader feels the same way that the characters in the story do.

Warning: There are some points where the use of the foreign language is rather heavy. Once again though, the reader is given all the information that the MC can piece together, so hopefully you can grasp enough of what's going on to figure things out despite not knowing what's being said.

1st Arc: Infancy

Act 1: Neural Growth

Being reborn, gaining a second life after your first life has ended. No, it’s more than just that. Being reborn with your memory of your previous life fully intact. Such a concept, it sounds quite wonderful doesn’t it? It effectively becomes a way to cheat death, and there are scant few people who wouldn’t like the idea of such a thing.

I had realized such a thing as I was in the womb of my mother for my second life. It was a rather curious experience being in the womb. Rather peaceful to the point I had lost track of the time that I was in there. The fact that my developing fetal brain could not properly process most of my previous life’s memories likely had something to do with this as well. It was a rather curious thing. I had memories of things I couldn’t fully understand in the mental state I had in my fetal stage. In fact, all I wanted to actually do was sleep in the warmth and gentle cradling of my mother’s womb, snuggled against my twin who shared this space with me. For all of my fetal development, this was the most of the good my previous life’s memories did for me. I was able to understand that the bony thing I kept bumping up against was my sibling, someone who would be with me for my young life, a built in first friend, and that brought an indescribable warm feeling to my heart before I was even born.

That’s the thing though. That is the one thing my previous life’s memories could never prepare me for. No, because of my previous life’s memories, I knew it was going to happen. However, those memories could never prepare me for how painful the process of being born was going to be. After spending so long in this comfortable space, the warm gentle walls around me suddenly began squeezing me tight. I could feel my sibling suddenly slip away, and I knew that I had just become the younger twin. This was not that big a deal. However, next it was my turn to be forced through the birth canal. In this process, I could feel it as my skull began to squeeze and deform, the plates of my skull literally shifting around in order to allow my head to pass through. I felt as though my eyes would burst from my sockets, and likely the only thing to keep them in was the fact that there was no room for them to pop out in the first place. Pressure was being put on my head from every single direction.

After this though, things only became worse, because what I was being forced out into was a cold environment that shocked my system compared to where I just was, and as my eyes were exposed to the light for the first time I found it extremely harsh. My ears could hear the sound of crying nearby, my twin sibling who had been born just before me was wailing their lungs out hard. And, due to my memories of my previous life, I knew that it was essential to my survival that I do the same. As I felt some hands begin to gently cradle my body, I forced my little lungs to work. I could feel the amniotic fluid being forced from my mouth as my body expelled it from my lungs, and I began to cough, sputter, and cry, giving my lungs a hard workout in order to accept air for the first time.

I did not have to force myself to cry. After all the harsh physical experiences I was going through, it was more like there was no way to keep myself from crying. My memories from my previous life informed me of what was going on, but it was still a harsh experience and I did not like it at all. I was a lot tougher than this in my previous life. I had learned to deal with harsh experiences without making so much as a complaint or grunt or unpleasant face, but after spending my gestation time in my mother’s womb it was as though the harsh lessons I had trained into my body were all forgotten.

I could not track what was happening to my tiny newborn body. I may have known what to expect, but that didn’t stop me from feeling completely disoriented. Before I knew it, I was being held and cradled to someone’s chest, and I heard a feminine voice. I could not hear what was being said, and the words sounded very indistinct. However, I had heard this voice a lot while I was in the womb, and I found it comforting. This had to be the voice of my mother. Of our mother. I could feel my twin sibling held close to me as well. This also allowed me to calm down. The light assailed my eyes, it was cold, and the warm liquid no longer supported my body. However, being held tightly in my mother’s arms with my sibling nearby felt so much like what I had come to expect, it gave me a sense of familiarity, and I was soon able to calm my crying and relax into my mother’s arms.

-

I must have fallen asleep at some point after being held by my mother like that, because the next time I became aware of my surroundings I was swaddled in a blanket, and as I shifted about I could feel myself rolling around. There was nobody holding or supporting me at this point. I tried my best to open my eyes and look around to figure out where I was and what my surroundings were like. Up until now, I had been in my mother’s womb. There was not really much I could do to figure out about what my new life was going to be like, so all I really could do was sleep and try to think about somethings with my developing fetal brain in order to make sense of the situation in the times where my body just wouldn’t sleep anymore.

Now, I was no longer in the womb. I could try to figure out what was going on. However, I was only met with a disappointment as I tried to open my eyes. I could not make out any details of the things I was looking at as I tried to look around. Everything just seemed like a blur. I could see splotches of lighter and darker places. My ears could not work properly either. There were voices around me, but they all seemed fairly muffled. Actually, they also seemed rather high pitched. Perhaps I was in a nursery with several other newborn infants. That’s it, I must be at a hospital. But no, something seemed wrong with that idea. Those were definitely voices I was hearing. Other newborns would not be talking.

I was getting confused, and in my confusion I was getting frustrated over the fact I couldn’t figure out what was going on. Before I even knew it, I had started crying. Crying was a very important thing for an infant. It was an infant’s only method of communication. An infant also could not do anything. An infant was completely dependent on the goodwill of the more developed members of its species to care for it, and crying was the only way the infant could attract their attention to let them know that something was wrong. If my guess was right, at minimum I was surrounded with children, which means that an adult had to be somewhere nearby. And, sure enough, after I had started crying it was not long before a pair of hands was picking me up and I could hear a feminine voice.

I focused in on the voice speaking to me. It was a different voice from my mother’s. I could tell the difference, I had never understood a word, but I had heard my mother’s voice almost every time I was awake while I was inside of her for the entire time since I had gained consciousness and awareness inside of her. This woman talked to me, saying something that sounded like it was supposed to be soothing. I could only tell that from the tone though. I could hear that she was saying something, but I could not make it out. It sounded clearer than the words I heard while I was in my mother’s womb, but it still sounded muffled and far away, as though I was hearing the words from the other end of a long tube.

I tried to look at her, but I had already started crying. It was almost impossible for me to open my eyes while I was crying, and now that I had started I seemed to have a hard time calming myself down even though I wanted to stop.

Her voice calls to someone nearby. I may not be able to understand what she is saying at all, but I can tell by her tone that she is not directing her words toward me. Soon after this, I feel myself being lowered. She begins holding me away from her chest like she is putting me down, and then I feel myself being received by another set of very small hands. The person who is holding me now is only just barely bigger than I am, and seems to be having a lot of trouble holding me. I hear this person’s voice complain to the woman who handed me to them with a high-pitched voice that is definitely that of a very young child. The woman responds in some way, and I hear a lot of confused little voices around me. Apparently, the child who was holding me was part of a small crowd.

I finally managed to get myself to stop crying, and I tried to focus in on what was going on, trying to make sense of it all. The woman made some kind of approving remark. Now, judging by the tone, it was more like she took the fact I had stopped crying was proof of something she was just telling the children she had handed me to. It had a fairly “I told you so” feel to it, and whatever she was talking about the children seemed to be rather fascinated by it. I could sense them coming closer to me.

Now that I had stopped crying, I opened my eyes and looked up at the child holding me. All I could see was a fuzzy roughly flesh-colored silhouette of a face framed by the fuzzier and much harder to follow darker color of their hair and the clothing they were wearing. After this, the woman said something else and then walked away. This was when something happened that really caught my attention in a big way for the first time.

“ooo uuud uuul ee uuu” It was still highly distorted. I could only just barely hear some of the harder consonants, and mostly it was the longer vowel sounds that stood out. However, what this child said just sounded a little like he was speaking English, and it sounded a lot like he said something like “so what will we do?”

“aahi oon ooh, ee uhos hoo hake are oh aye ahey eeer? Uuus at eeely eeel?” (I don’t know, we supposed to take care of a baby here? Was that really real?) I was dedicating all my efforts into understanding their words. I was not able to make out the words the woman before was saying at all, but if I really focused in on these children’s words I could sorta understand them. Was that woman maybe speaking a different language? Then that would mean these children here were bi-lingual and now they were speaking English to each other.

“eel, uhe-her, eey eess. Aahi oon ooh aaaou eels oh eey ees oh.” (Well, whatever, I guess. I don’t know about -indecipherable- so I guess so.)

“ohay” (Ok.)

One of the kids said something I couldn’t quite make out, but it sounded kinda important. It didn’t seem like a word that made any real sense in a sentence. Something like, “I don’t know about…” something. Else? Hell? It sounded like he said Else, but no word I substitute into the sentence really seems to completely make sense, and trying to focus on interpreting their words is already overloading my poor newborn brain. It was already hard to figure out what was going on in this new situation, and now my brain really hurt from all the activity I made on it after not even being a day old yet.

It seemed like the word I missed them saying held some sort of clue to the circumstances of my birth and where we were, but I really couldn’t figure it out right now. After only that little bit of activity, I was starting to feel sleepy again. I could feel the two children carrying me awkwardly, actually it was almost closer to them dragging me as I thought I could feel part of the blanket being dragged across the floor.

“eey, aahi iin eeh oinn oo heep a-ain” I couldn’t focus enough to make sense of what they were saying anymore, but I think they probably noticed my eyes getting a little droopy or something. They brought me to someplace and laid me down on something soft. They seem like pretty young kids, but they do not seem to be doing too bad a job of taking care of me. What kind of irresponsible adult gives a baby to kids this young to take care of though? I feel like they’re really not much larger than me, maybe they might be just 2 or 3. That seems like a ridiculous age to be taking care of a baby. Well, so long as they don’t do something that hurts me I guess that I am Ok. If they do though, all I will be able to do is cry really loud and hope an adult notices before they do something really bad to me. That’s rather worrying, but for now they have not done anything to especially make me that worried. So, I decide to accept the situation as it is and fall back asleep.

-

For a while, things proceeded like this. The next time I woke up, I found my twin sibling next to me. I briefly wondered whether we were boys or girls, but it really wasn’t important enough. The two of us were swaddled pretty tightly, covering us up and also making it so my hand couldn’t even move all that much. I probably couldn’t even find out with my own body anyway, babies don’t have the muscles to pull themselves in the direction to look at themselves like that anyway. Oh well, I suppose I have my entire infancy to find out, so it’s not like it particularly matters right this minute.

I’m not sure if I will be able to feel it or not whenever they change my diaper, but at the very least I should be able to figure it out by listening to the kids who were speaking English before. Eventually they are going to have to drop a gendered pronoun. Although, with how fuzzy I was hearing them now, would I even be able to discern the difference between “he” and “she?” Guess even that method won’t work until my hearing develops a little more.

On the subject of being swaddled though, I was a little surprised at how good it really did feel. It was genuinely relaxing to be bunched up so tightly in this cloth, and having my body heat kept close to me. It actually felt fairly similar to back when I was in my mother’s womb, and being reminded of that familiar feeling that wasn’t too far in the past for me at this point gave me comfort.

If I were a normal baby, I might very well have continued to sit there in contentment, at least until I started to feel hungry or had some other needs. Instead, I just wanted some form of stimulation. It was strange, after living for so long in my mother’s womb I had grown far more accustomed to a slower pace in life. However, now that I was out of the womb and nothing interesting had happened yet, with my memories of my past life I craved to know more about this new world I was in, even if it was just to know who would be the first to respond if I started making noise.

“Aaa! Awaowa!” I heard those sounds coming out of my mouth. I was suddenly fascinated by the sound of my own voice and how it sounded in my ears. My ears were my biggest hindrance at this point. My eyesight was not far behind that, but if I remembered post-natal development correctly the eyes take a lot longer to adjust to how a normal person’s work than the ears. Stimulation helps the adjustment, and the eyes get zero stimulation in the womb while the ears at least get some limited stimulation.

I listen carefully to the sounds around me. I can still hear some people far off. No, I want to hear those kids speaking English again. If I can hear them, maybe I can speed up the rate at which my ears develop, at least a little. “Awaoaoa! Awaaa! Awaowa!” I start to pipe up my voice to demand more insistently.

“Heey maa, laio kue naa” I hear a voice and try to make out what it’s saying. The best I can get is “Hey ma’” for the first part, but I can sense people coming closer. They seem a little bigger than the kids from before, but they still seem to be kids. Considering they came immediately after saying that, maybe they were saying something about me being cute?

“Aowa!” I continue to babble as best I can.

“Ahh! ru quennaa ryien” Something about a queen? No, that’s not right. I realize soon enough that this isn’t English at all. They’re speaking that other language before. It wasn’t long at all before I felt myself being picked up. These were definitely small arms, but not so small as the ones who I was given to the first time I woke up. They also seemed to be children.

I felt somehow satisfied being held in this child’s arms, but somehow despite how clumsy it was I felt like I liked the really little kids who were holding me the first time more. I did still like it though, and as I was being held in the kid’s arms I could feel myself drifting back off to sleep once again.

-

There were several more episodes like this. I would awake several times, every time I seemed to be surrounded by children who would immediately come up to me and hold me the moment I woke up. I found it strange that it always seemed to be children tending to me, there seemed to never be any adults. Wasn’t this really irresponsible of the adults around to leave babies to children?

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Soon enough though, I also realized something else was strange. Actually, by far the strangest thing about it was that it took me this long to notice. I had woken up and fallen asleep several times now. I have lost all track of my sense of time by this point, but I’m almost certain at least a day has past. Probably more than that. However, not once has my mother, or at least a nurseing-age woman or something, come around to nurse me. Not just that, these kids have not even given me a bottle or anything of the sort.

I started to panic a little bit when I realized this. I began crying really loudly with all I had as I thought about how this probably meant I was starving to death. I didn’t feel unwell now, but I was sure it would only really be a matter of time.

The children came over to me as they usually did, and somehow I felt a calm come over me immediately. However, I couldn’t let that stop me. If I stopped crying now, how were they going to understand the problem? After I wavered for a moment when I felt myself being picked up, I immediately forced another cry out of my lungs, and as the children seemed to be trying to talk to each other with a panicked sound to their voice, I kept on crying.

I don’t know how long I had to cry for in order to get them to do something different. I really didn’t understand, how could it be so hard for them to figure out they have to feed a baby? At any rate, I kept it up. I kept crying and crying, getting my voice louder and fiercer as they didn’t seem to be doing much of anything.

Eventually, I heard a deeper female voice approaching.

“Levin ri' Rolwen a' ho ona he` ume lle?” I could hear her saying something. My ears had improved to this point now to where they were fully developed, I had understood a few of the English speaking kids perfectly. I still couldn’t quite make any sense at all of what this woman was saying though. It was another language after all. That didn’t matter though. An adult woman seemed to be in front of me at last.

I felt the adult hands around me and I calmed my crying to a few whimpers as the woman cradled me away from her body in such a way that would allow her to look at me. She let out a sigh and cradled me close to her chest. This was it! Finally! But… the next expected step never came. All she did was just cradle me against her chest.

“Rashwe naa amin uma il- sinta manke tuulo', nan' sii' he` nalla naa n'ner” The woman seemed to be talking to the children with a content tone. I could feel her grip starting to relax a little. Was she not going to feed me? I began trying to shake as best I could as I made my protest known. I tried to grab her chest to indicate what it was I wanted, but at this time the swaddling that I had found so comfortable before was working against me in a major way. As my protest was continuing to be met with no result, I began crying once again, this time I would not stop until she did something about this.

“Ah! il- quel! Rashwe mani naa?” She let out a heavy sigh. “N'uma, he` helma naa il- quel. Levin, kwara he` tenna' amin brien n'alaquel Eirlathion tura.”

With those words that I could not understand, I was handed from the woman over to what felt from the hands to be the youngest child in the room. After that, I couldn’t even see the shadowy silhouette of the woman anymore as my head was turned away from her by the awkward grip of the small child. However, I was still able to plainly hear the sounds of her footsteps rapidly retreating. Actually, she sounded like she was in quite a hurry by the sounds of her footsteps.

“Mani naa goien no'? Yassen he` rashwe mani naa?”

“Sinta amin uma il-, genil naa re?”

“Eden’ta uma re anta?”

“Tel'Quessir uma il- anta eden’ta Idn'uma!”

The kids all seemed to be getting pretty lively. I could not understand the language, but I could detect a tone of concern in their voices. Were they worried about me? I just need food! I need to eat! Why can’t they understand that!?

As far as I go though, I was so stunned about the woman just walking away like that I was no longer able to even cry out in my concern. However, it somehow felt really nice to be held like this by this small child. Before long, I felt myself drifting off to sleep once again.

-

It seemed like the next time I woke up was far shorter than any time I had slept before. In fact, I heard murmuring around me and there were a lot of the same children who seemed to be around. There was something different here though. I opened my eyes and saw a shadowy figure crouched down over me. There was something different about what I felt with this person around. Something… it felt like something was lacking, but something about it also felt familiar.

“Rashwe lye elea mani ta naa” The figure spoke in a deep masculine sounding voice. An adult man then. It took me a little bit to remember why he might be here, but then I remembered how concerned all the kids were.

As he held up his hand, I started to sense something very different. Something that reminded me of something from my previous life. It felt peaceful as I was reminded of it, and I allowed my mind to calm and my worries washed away as I felt the feeling of allowing my frustrations to fall off of me and into a void. I could feel the sudden shift in my mind, it was as though my thinking suddenly became more clear. I became more aware of my body. I still hadn’t nursed once since I was born, but as I focused more on my body I realized I really didn’t feel weak like I should if that was going to be an issue.

“Mani!?” The man holding his hand to me said something and sounded rather surprised. I still couldn’t see much more than his silhouette due to my newborn eyes, but I could tell from the motion of his shoulders that something was upsetting him. Wait, he got upset while he was examining me. That should mean maybe there actually IS something wrong with me then, right? I began to get scared. “Il- quel sina naa. He` templa limbe duna ar' lova ten' n'uma casta”

“Mani uma-aya?”

“Sinta il- uma amin. Ten' sii' kela he` yassen tanya hin ve' re naa”

There was some noisy murmuring at the man’s words that made me really wish I could understand the language they were speaking.

“Can you understand what he said was wrong?”

There! Thank freaking god almighty one of the English speaking kids were holding me, and he seemed to be close enough to the other that they were talking to each other.

“I don’t, I still can’t understand much. I think he said something about you holding her?”

Well, that’s not particularly helpful after all. But wait! I DID hear something else. It wasn’t the thing I was wanting to hear at the moment, but he just referred to me as “her” didn’t he? Well, that answers one question I was wondering about. If it weren’t for the situation right now, I might have celebrated in my mind at finally learning what my gender was in this life. Now however I was a little bit too worried to care.

“Quenaien a' ilye n'at ron naa. Sinta uma lle i' lammen ron quena?”

“Amin il- uma, voro a' ilye n'at ron quena ve' tanya ilya i' coiasira. Sinta amin il- uma tanya lammen”

“Hmm… Tir-sen amin. I' taurn quel a' kela i' laito yassen sen.”

The man seemed to be in a discussion with the woman, the only two adults in the room having a serious conversation that I couldn’t make heads or tails of. Or rather, I could at least tell enough to know I had to be worried. It was so incredibly frustrating not knowing the language they were speaking.

After a little bit of this going on, the man walked away. A short time later, the woman seemed to be leaning down close to me again. Well, given the situation here, there was only one thing that made sense to me. That was the very thing that got me panicking in the first place. With an adult woman so close by, I began trying hard to thrash about and free my hands from this tight blanket that was restricting me in order to reach for her. When I couldn’t I found myself getting frustrated way too easily and I began crying loudly.

“Ucar-amin, shhh… shhh..” She began rubbing my head as she knelt over me, but of course being caressed was not what I was after. “Nwalmaien he` amin naa re'na beien sinome. Levin, Rolwen, malia ten' he` lle caela a' sii'. Saesa malia ten' he` eithel. Ilya en' lle, saesa alya-sen mali-laito.”

“Ahhh… uhh..” It seemed by the response of the child holding me that she had asked him to do something. He didn’t really seem to understand what this woman was saying either, although he did seem to understand better than I could. The unsure response he gave seemed to be something along the lines of a “smile and nod” sort of response, and it seemed as though the woman was pleased with it.

“Diola Levin. Rolwen, lle kwara-aya Gaerien, he` helma naa sai’ il-quel. Il-lamya re karne ai'. Sinome. I’ winimo alya-sen yassen edenat.” The woman gave instructions to some of the other children around and they seemed to be moving about in response. From what I could tell, they seemed to be rather concerned and the subject of their concern seemed to be me. If they were that concerned, why couldn’t any of them see I just needed to eat? Or rather, at my age, nurse. After giving these instructions, the woman left. If the woman’s voice weren’t so tender I would assume the children were concerned because she just said something outrageous like her intentionally leaving me to die. In this case though, I was just baffled.

Then there was a more concerning thought. What about my sibling? Sister, is it? My twin at any rate. She(?) has not been really making any noise. Is she nearby? I try to look around, but still all I can make out are strange slightly skin-tone dark silhouettes, and I can’t move my head very far. It cannot even be described how frustrating it is to not be able to do anything as I am now trapped in the body of an infant. All I really can do is just cry and hope that somebody will respond in a way that will meet my needs.

New edit Author's Note

When I first started writing this series, I didn't know exactly what direction I was going to take it in terms of progressing the character for the first parts of their life. I knew roughly the events I wanted to have happen, but not how things were going to be paced. As it has turned out that the pacing as related to the time progression is actually pretty slow and the MC grows up rather slowly, I thought it best to be as up front as possible about that.

In the spirit of this, as of 4/17/2019 as I am writing this new author's note, I have decided that this series will be divided both into thematically related arcs as well as acts that, at this time of finishing the 1st act, are meant to have a rough 3 act structure. In accordance with the 3 act structure, the 1st act will merely be introduction and build-up of concepts and you should not expect much intensity from the action. The really serious stuff will be around the end of the 2nd act and the entire body of the 3rd act.

More to the point though, the entire 1st arc is called "infancy." This should very much be an indicator of the time scale you will be expecting to see from this series. I certainly think you will enjoy the series despite any misgivings you may have about what this says about the pacing. Quite a few readers already do, quite a bit. However, I do not want anyone to go into this with certain expectations. I want these things to be known up front so you will not have your enjoyment ruined by eagerly awaiting something that's still a long way off.

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