Deep in meditation, my awareness sank into my small body, concentrating on the center of my basin. Weeks of searching for a current, or a glimmer of the familiar feeling of the lower dan tian.

  I was calming the storm of this energy, the raging that became familiar over time, a nuisance in my quest. And I felt it.

  The usual tiny, warm seed of energy. It was focused, condensed—the center of the dan tian. I followed the tendrils of its warmth. I was now beneath the storm, in the ocean of energy, moving and following my sensations. The chilly surroundings of the amber moved with my breath and the dark hummed.

  Surrounding the amber was the energy-flooded dan tian, the target of my search. Small drops of jing, my essence and life force, were orbiting the small radiant center of power. This was my foundation in this strange new world. Happiness surged from the depths of my being, and a triumphant thought emerged.

  I found it!

  My elation was quickly tempered by the reality of my situation. The few droplets orbiting and covering the warm core of the dan tian were not enough to do anything. Touching them would be enough to kill me. The energy was little and constantly siphoned by the needs of my infantile body.

  I could only observe, let it be, see it grow and develop, learn from its changes as I grew. Albeit without any immediate benefits, this discovery gave me a map, or rather the beginning of a map. From the lower dan tian I could explore the pathways, the meridians and vessels.

  They would inevitably lead me upward, to the middle dan tian, and then to the one I knew all too well already—the upper dan tian, the seat of consciousness. The path was open. I only had to follow it, making sure nothing would block them as I grew.

  The internal breakthrough mirrored my progress in the outside world. Along with the passing of the weeks, my language decoding advanced too. I could understand words like pot, fire, water, and meal. Each word helped me learn context and deduce more words as time passed.

  My body too grew stronger, restricting me less and less. I could now kneel, which gave me height to see more of what was going on around me. I could pull myself with my arms. The world I had access to was growing. I learned to climb out of my crib, a small valley of wood and straw covered in pelts.

  I can already learn words! My thoughts burst with uncharacteristic, childish glee, fueled by my current success. In two years, I'll learn how to read too, then nothing will stop me! As my thoughts reached this point, I cackled happily. Of course, I was blissfully ignoring how big of a dream that was when our house had no books.

  By four and a half months, I was adept enough at pulling myself up the side of my crib. I would tumble over the edge and land with a roll on my side, reaching the floor harmlessly. The crib was placed at less than half a meter of height, over a hearth ledge. The sunlight was taking longer to vanish, candles were changed less and less often.

  The air changed. From the sharp cold of winter, it now carried the soft smell of flowers, wet dirt, and a faint sweetness I couldn't quite place. Various critters now visited our home, although their presence wasn't long-lived.

  My mom would promptly get rid of them. A sharp thwack signaled the end of their brief visit. Her rough rag would come down with incredible speed and smash flies or other bugs that found their way in.

  The inviting, warm, life-filled atmosphere made me want to go out to see the world. I couldn't see much from inside, so I turned my attention to the door. I waited for opportune moments and rushed for it on multiple occasions. One day, when my father was about to leave, he patted his belt.

  His knife was missing, so he turned around to take it. This is my chance! I thought and quickly crawled out of my crib, making a break for the open door. My everyday training to crawl was paying off as I quickly approached it. The aroma of flowers in the air intensified.

  With my attention fully cast toward the awaiting wide world, suddenly the ground grew further from my limbs. For a moment I kept trying to crawl forward. It was useless. The warmth on my upper back told me that.

  Rhys was holding me up from the scruff of my neck.

  "Caught you again, little explorer! It's not yet time for you to get out." Having given up on resistance, I hung loosely in his grip. He raised me to his face level, holding me with both hands. "What is it that pulls you to the outside?" He shook his head as he took a few steps and put me back in my crib.

  "It's as if he's possessed... Think a wind sprite took over?" Linnea asked with a small smile, looking up from a cloth she was mending.

  "I told you before, sprites don't exist. If he's possessed, it's by a cat. I swear he goes all limp when I pick him up."

  They laughed, finding it adorable probably. I just sat there, frustration taking over as my plan and rush was thwarted again. If they knew how close to the truth that joke is... the different soul part at least... they wouldn't be so happy...

  While my mobility improved, allowing me such fruitless tries, my vocal cords remained uncooperative. In the brief moments when the house was empty, I would try speaking. I didn't want to just babble. I desired precision, something my infantile body kept refusing to give me.

  Certain sounds like heng or ha were specifically used in internal alchemy to generate vibrations in the skull or chest and stimulate energy centers. But more than anything, I wanted to be able to speak clearly.

  I would take deep breaths, focus, and try to say out loud the name of my father or mother.

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  "Hhis... Hifea..."

  They came out as wet, gurgling sounds. My vocal cords were still loose, my tongue felt like hard gum, incapable of bending as I wanted it to, and my mouth was flooded with saliva. For now, I could only keep trying. Babies only start wording by twelve months of age or so. I had time to spare.

  But within, where no muscles were involved, I was less helpless. With my consciousness sunken in, I was trying to expand my awareness to envelop both the lower and middle dan tian. Yet I kept losing track of one or the other. It was like trying to hold a big glass bowl upside down by its rounded part.

  Except I was doing it blind. One slip and I had to locate the dan tian again. Not that it was hard, but to accomplish it, I moved too much of my focus on the dan tian and lost sight of the other. A perpetual cycle in which I tried to stretch my mind to take hold of both energetic centers, only for it to snap back like an elastic.

  Boredom and the memory of the beautiful space were driving me forward. This world had no entertainment, and I was kept under watch. The house had nothing more to offer my bored mind, so all my energy was poured into my various forms of training.

  Training was my entertainment, something no one could take from me, and no one cared about. My internal energetic anatomy was my TV. A TV with only one channel, playing in slow motion... When my frustration with the two dan tians grew, I put my will into the foreign energy.

  I did the one exercise I was most familiar with. I moved my focus with my breath, and the ocean's flow moved with it too. The chaotic turbulences, flowery collisions of smaller flows, and the rapid flow would slow with my breath and move with it. Pooling warm in my body, vibrating like a massage chair, then flowing out, removing the pressure.

  I identified one big issue during these exercises. While I avoided touching and moving the aether, other babies might not be. With a fully formed consciousness, I saw and understood risk unlike babies. So what if the very constitution of humans in this world relied on this flow? Wouldn't that mean I was falling behind?

  Yet blind experimentation was not something I was willing to try, not when my new life was on the line.

  The weather outside was growing warmer. This didn't only mean good news. Rains were now a problem. You'd think that would not be an issue for me to worry about, right? Wrong! One stormy night, a shingle was knocked loose by the wind. The leak caused by this was straight above my little crib.

  What sleep could I have now? I'd try to sleep. Plop, plop, plop. And I'd be wide awake with cold water droplets in my puff of hair. Unacceptable! And despite my efforts to signal my need for the barrel, my parents still thought I was wetting the bed.

  To save myself, I turned to the one thing that wouldn't betray me. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, stilling my mind. I focused on the buzzing flow of power and took control of it. I moved it, trying to shape it around one of the furs in my crib.

  After a few tries, the fur hovered, but the emptiness within told me I wouldn't be able to do more. The surrounding energy slapped down on me to fill the void in myself, and leak or not, I fainted due to the shock. As I lost consciousness, my ears rang with a sharp tingle. Next morning, having exhausted all of my options, I was wet and tired.

  Seeing my father ready to leave, my thoughts took a turn. I cried out like a police siren, crying for attention—something I rarely did. Rhys, not knowing what had happened, came to me and I stopped my cries. He looked at me with that warm gaze of his, worries forgotten. Then he frowned. He saw me wet and was about to leave to get some towel to dry me.

  I cried out again. I was not about to let him leave.

  "What is it, little one?"

  He wanted to pick me up and cradle me in his arms, but I grabbed his rough, warm fingers and held them in place. We stood like that for a little while.

  "Oh, just what is it that you want? Papa has to go to wor..."

  Just as he was about to finish—plop. A big, fat drop of water fell on my head. It splashed smaller droplets around while most of it flowed down my forehead and down my chubby baby nose.

  Rhys froze. His eyes widened comically as they followed the water drop make its way down. He looked up and saw the small damp patch on the ceiling. Then he looked back at me, at my hands holding onto his index and little finger, then down at the wet cloths and furs. I let go of his hand and looked up at him.

  I saw his annoyance melt. His jaw slackened as I could see the gears turn behind his eyes as he understood why I kept him there. A wide, incredulous grin formed on his lips. He rushed out shouting.

  "Linnea! You won't believe it! Our son's amazing!"

  I frowned. Amazing my ass! Fix the damn roof! I thought, filled with irritation, as another drop plopped on my head.

  A new wood board had been hammered in from within, a temporary solution to the issue since the rain hadn't stopped. I enjoyed the dry warmth of my pelts, listening to the rattle of the rain on the wooden shutter. I closed my eyes. Sweet, undisturbed sleep. Reality worked against me, as my bladder woke me up before planned.

  With that issue out of the way, time continued to pass. I kept slurring my words even at five months of age. Having developed my ability to move quite a lot, I no longer cried. Instead, if I had a need—such as help being lifted or other such things—I would find one of them and pull on their clothes.

  I became very quiet as such. To stimulate me, my father brought home a wooden horse on wheels. He was wearing a wide smile as he entered the house with the toy. He placed it down near me and pushed it a little. Its wheels rolled as it slid toward me.

  I observed the toy horse. A small toy I was supposed to ride. I gave it a good look. The wood fiber went along the body. Made of one big piece of wood, it was sturdy and heavy. I pushed it back, having to put in quite a bit of effort due to its weight. I backed away, looking at my father as his smile faded into a frown.

  This, along with my refusal to walk despite my early liveliness, made my parents start to look at me with concern. My refusal to stand on two feet too early was a decision I'd made, as it could very easily lead to splayed feet—something I had experienced in my past life.

  Thinking of my life before, I remembered anime. Kids there always had clothes of appropriate sizes. Reality wasn't that kind to me, however. I had only rags for clothes, made from sack fabric with thick, sturdy thread that carried signs of age, chafing, and coming undone here and there.

  On the other hand, my parents weren't clothed badly, which left me very confused about the situation. I enjoyed the sensation of their soft leather clothes when they picked me up. They felt silky and smooth, a texture I'd never seen before in leather.

  No matter how much I looked around, I never saw any coins. Considering the peace, quiet, and overall lack of human presence around, with no visitors ever coming, perhaps we lived in a village. Then it wouldn't be surprising.

  By the sixth month, the smell my father brought home changed. Now it smelled sweet and nutty—the smell of the wood we burned, combined with sweat. He no longer came carrying red stains. Instead, small wood chips were caught in his clothes.

  He was returning earlier and left later in the mornings, yet the toll it took on him was visible. He was moving less around the house, his steps lower, barely raising off the floor as he walked. Even a fool could see that his new job wasn't making him happy, yet he did it anyway, to have more time for us.

  One evening, while I was getting in my house rounds, crawling as fast as I could, Linnea spoke up.

  "Tomorrow, we have to bring him out."

  "Mhm, the elder women will want to see him and inspect him. I hope they won't find anything wrong with him," Rhys answered.

  I stopped and perked my ears. Finally, I'd see where we lived and other people. I would have a chance to find leads on this new strange energy flowing through me and every object around.