*** Kiara ***

  “I am in heaven. After months of torturous boredom, I finally have some form of entertainment. I have a gigantic mount in the form of my older brother, who carries me wherever I want to go. A passable teacher of not only language, but also the alphabet that this world is using, again in the form of my brother. A personal theater crew of questionable skill - again, my brother. Life is good.” Kiara thought to herself. The desire to annoy her brother had completely vanished. He was God sent!

  Her mother had been a vivid fan of adventure stories in her youth, and now Kiara had a huge stock of different adventure scrolls she could enjoy for the first time. At the same time, she was learning the language.

  Through the stories, she also learned that magic most often needed a catalyst of some form, most often in the form of a crystal harvested from a magical beast. It was possible to practice magic without it, but those were the rare exceptions.

  If she understood correctly, some religious ritual was performed when children hit a certain age. Petro told her of all the great feats he would perform when he awoke as a mighty dragon slayer and protector of the innocent. Again, it had something to do with the magical crystal and their individual attunements. They sounded quite expensive and as if there were a lot of different kinds. You also apparently had to be compatible to bond with it. So even if your family could afford a fancy magical crystal, you might not be able to use it.

  One of her favorite stories so far was the story of two orphan twins, who were able to form their own crystals in their heart or soul, she wasn’t sure so far, and Petro most likely wouldn’t be able to explain it to her, even if she could ask him. They did so after consuming some magical berries in a magical forest filled with monsters and absorbing the energy of those berries into themselves, and using it to form their own crystals.

  For now, she had decided to stay under the radar and pretend to be a normal child as much as possible, so no asking her dad for any further explanations either. Her new dad reminded her very much of the one in her old life. She missed him. Neither of them were much of a talker. Being more of the quiet type, but enjoying their time with their family, and during those times, rare smiles broke through their stoic fa?ade. She really liked the time she spent with him.

  And even though she manipulated him a little bit to get him to read some other scrolls to her instead of one adventure story after the other, she was surprised at how far he was willing to indulge her.

  However, it soon backfired. She had pointed to a recipe scroll by accident and had fallen asleep rather quickly. Now, whenever he wanted her to fall asleep quickly, she got a recipe as a bedtime story. Worst of all, it was working like a charm, and all her protest cries were ignored.

  Cooking had always been something she enjoyed doing, but there is a limit on how long one can listen to the quantities of ingredients and how they are to be prepared.

  Whenever she awoke at night, she started kicking the barrier again. Maybe, just maybe, her grandmother would forget reloading the crystal one day, and she would be finally free from her nightly prison. Even though it was no longer as important as before, now that she finally got some entertainment throughout the day. Once she grew tired of kicking, she looked up at the nothing orb. Her brother had once picked her up and carried her over to it. She couldn’t quite reach it, but she felt a strange vibration running through her hands and body.

  It didn’t feel bad, but it was a strange sensation. If she had to describe it, it was kind of like the tingling sensation of blood returning to a limb after it had fallen asleep, but all over her body. She would have liked to experience it for longer, but while her brother was often her trusted mount, she did not really have him under control, and sometimes he was just as stubborn as a mule. This time, he ran out to a window because he had seen a large yellow bird. All she could do was hang on and be taken along for the ride.

  Slowly, the months passed. Her crawling got faster. She had even progressed to standing on her wobbly little feet (with some assistance from her parents or her brother). Her grip on the new language got firmer, also helped by having her first teeth, not a very pleasant experience. If she wanted to, she could probably have a simple conversation right now, and she understood nearly everything that was said in her presence.

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  Since she was unsure of when children started speaking, and also because the “say Mama” really started to get old, she decided to do both her mum and dad a favor. All of them sat together at the dinner table. Kiara was once more constrained in her little baby chair. In front of her, two things, on the main table, a literal feast of a meal. Some kind of meal, smelling utterly delicious. Hot steaming dumplings and different delicious-looking vegetables. Her mother could probably outcook a professional chef with ease.

  On the other hand, directly in front of her stood a bowl with some bland green puree. Her rational mind knew very well, that this was what babies were supposed to eat and her mother took great care in spoon feeding her, one spoon at a time, but after having eaten nothing but milk and puree in one or the other form, she would have gotten on her knees and begged for some of that delicious meat on the table. Damn it she had even started to dream about food, but what are you to expect from a baby, who is being read recipes as good night stories?!?

  And so, she decided to shoot her shot and kill two birds with one stone. Her hands were both grasping the direction of the roasted meat. She put on her best puppy eyes and looked directly towards her mother.

  “Ma ma,” she said with an audible pause in between and the most sluggish pronunciation she could manage.

  All hell broke loose around the dinner table. A chaos of different reactions.

  Her mother immediately began smiling, filled with joy, happiness, and pride at her child.

  An “Aww” escaped her lips, and she swiftly went in for a hug.

  Her father’s smile was a little bit more restrained and maybe a little bit mischievous at the prank - if you could call it such - he had pulled on his wife. However, his eyes shone full of pride and joy, and he soon joined his wife in hugging their little angel from the opposite side.

  Petro was at first confused, not understanding the significance of a baby saying its very first words, but soon jumped from his own chair and joined the family group hug.

  Kiara herself was somewhat surprised by the strong reaction her first word had provoked, and at the same time also despaired because everyone had ignored her outstretched hands and her plea for some roasted meat.

  Well, not everyone. Magdalena was sitting next to her mother at the far end of the table. Her gaze filled with anger and drilled itself into her eyes. Only for an instant, flickering down to her outstretched hands and the roast on the table.

  Slowly, she cut off a small piece of meat from the larger slice already lying on her plate. A spark of hope ignited in Kiara. Magdalena picked it up and ate it with relish.

  “Please,” Kiara begged, barely a whisper and unnoticed by everyone except for Magdalena.

  However, she was bitterly ignored.

  *** Magdalena ***

  She could not believe that little devil. First, it kicked and depleted her barrier every night, forcing her to come by time and time again to fill it up with her Mana.

  Then stole her sleep, with its strange behavior, which she couldn’t reveal to her daughter without revealing the second orb she had built. A move her daughter would most certainly bemoan as a cunning deception and betrayal of her trust, instead of the motherly act of care and the desire to protect her, it truly was.

  She had to suppress the anger that slowly welled up in her.

  Everyone was fanning over her granddaughter, not realizing the danger they might be in. The little pretender manipulated them artfully.

  She remembered last night, Kiara looking straight at me. Smiling and giving the barrier another kick. She did not care at all that she was being watched. No, she wanted to be watched. She wanted to mock her.

  “Why is she taunting me?” Magdalena thought once more.

  The orb confirmed that Kiara had no increased Mana levels. Paranoid, she had even considered that she might be able to suppress her Mana, but not even she would be able to suppress her Mana down to the level of the ambient Mana surrounding them.

  And yet the little monster was growing frightening fast. As far as she could tell, it had learned the language in mere months, given how Kiara had started to follow conversations. Not that she made it obvious, but the subtle looks over to persons who had been asked a question in anticipation of the answer, gave her away. Something we all do. But something, which should be completely impossible for a not even one-year-old.

  As a latest attack on her sanity, it now pretended to be able to speak her first words. If only those love-drunk fools she called family knew! The little one was speaking - when all of them were sleeping – in full sentences and training herself in the language.

  Sometimes she hoped her grandchild was simply gifted. A child like one in a million, destined for greatness to revive the family name and allow them to grasp back onto the reins of power.

  However, she had never heard of a baby who never threw a tantrum and always ate her food, without spilling anything. Damn it she had better table manners than her older brother for fucks sake! Even worse, it was quite apparent that she hated the puree she was being forced to eat, and yet, she never spilled any.

  She could see in Kiara’s eyes how much she yearned to try the roasted Grassland Great Boar. Slowly, she cut herself off a piece. Kiara begged silently. She ignored her and ate it. Her daughter was a great cook, and tonight the meal tasted extra juicy.

  It was an emotional dinner, to say the least. Her parents were blissful and full of joy, her brother simply going with the flow, and Kiara and Magdalena both internally fuming for very different reasons and caught in a silent cold war only fought in occasionally angry glares.