Their boat joined the others slowly, speeding up a bit as the water current took over. His mother took to the role of a tour guide, giving him the finger-pointing and the story in another language pack deal. He could see now that those going up the river were using large poles, easily 3 meters tall, to push their boats, slowly but steadily going against the current. It was a pleasant ride down the river, mainly because the temperature on the boat was so much lower with the river being so close.

They had to wait behind some of those boats that were so stuffed that they looked ready to tip over to a side should a single item move from its place. After his mother grew bored of talking to him she turned to the boat driver about what he thought were the prices of some items she wanted to buy today. She even bought some things right then and there when a merchant from a boat that floated near our own heard what she wanted to buy.

They haggled for almost an hour, his mother giving one price and the older man making a counteroffer. To his eye, it seemed they just needed to kill a bit of time but on second thought maybe they had some skills related to that and were practicing them. Probably both. he thought.

On both sides of the river grew waist-high shrubbery both in the shallows and the banks. A row of large trees graced the shores a few meters away from the water, and he could see some people taking to the shade, as they walked in the same direction they sailed for. Even from the distance, he could see that all of them looked rather thin.

Different leaves of mostly light green color covered a mixture of sand and yellowish rock, mixed with some of the blackest patches of earth he had ever seen. He tried to stay awake a bit longer, but his body demanded to sleep with a ferocious tantrum. He fell asleep to the pleasant breeze and the chatting crowd and dreamed that he went around the world on a floating cloud, seeing new things every day, until one day he fell off, the cloud vanishing because he finally ate and drank it all.

When he woke up, he was greeted by a place of near-constant noise. People laughing, talking, some screaming, and whatever else made up the cacophony that woke him up. He was once again wrapped up, only this time he could see. His back was placed in the crook of his mother's arm, she was walking through the crowd, him in one hand, and a basket in the other.

When the crowds finally thinned and they left the cluttered stalls, they came upon a wide-open road that lead them to a place familiar to him. He recognized it immediately. They were in the hospital where this new chapter of his life began. The gardens, the sick people milling about, the nurses and healers, it was all the same. Even the old woman was there. He was placed on a hard surface, face-up, and made to endure another set of all kinds of tests. Tickling, poking, you name it.

He was honestly surprised such a thing existed in a time and place like this. He endured it stoically and after he was once again dressed up he got a final smack on the bum as a going away gift. What is it with this perverted old woman, hitting him every time they met?

He practiced his Meditation while he waited for his mother to finish her check, and then they were on their way. While he was asleep, his mother must have bought everything she needed, because they went to the boat straight away, where the same man that took us here was waiting. On the way back he learned that he could, as much as he tried, practice only Language Acquisition. Only this skill could be practiced in these conditions, the other two needed much more concentration than he could manage at the moment.

Every time the boat driver used the pole to push the boat against the current, there was a moment when the current pushed back and the boat would come to a brief stop. It made him nauseous. They were moving considerably slower when they were going the other way, so to take his mind off of the churning pit that he called a stomach, he tried to go over all the words he learned so far one word for each push.

Once he started doing that it went faster, or at least it seemed so from his perspective. In no time they were on the shore, getting out and setting the course for home. When I get home and rest a bit I should go over the details of today’s trip with Visualization. he made a note to himself. There were always some details to be fo this way.

He could with great certainty confirm the benefits the skills provided, his recollection previously could never achieve what he could do now with Visualization.

I am learning a new previously completely unknown language in a matter of weeks for God's sake! he exclaimed internally. Language Acquisition is probably the main reason for it, but the influence of Visualization can’t be dismissed. Maybe for others that was a norm, but for him, that was a leap, the only unknown there was how big a leap.

He would have liked to have some more information on how exactly skills worked, but for that, he will either have to wait for a few years to grow up a bit or experiment some more on his own, and he was leaning on the latter. Only this time go a bit more daring. he thought.

He was put in a large basket in the living room while his mother Petra and his grandparents, Rona and Ciron had dinner. They talked a bit before they started eating and only continued when they finished. The topics were much of what you could expect. The land was good and most of the plants they were growing were thriving. The sun was particularly angry today, and it worried grandfather if the water they had in storage would last until they could find someone to bring over more from the river. So on and so on.

"Septimus is supposed to be coming back any day now?" his grandmother spoke, but he was not sure if it was a question. He still could not sense that.

"In two days probably. This time he told me that he will try to go a bit further north, into the desert, to meet those nomads we keep hearing about. He heard from a friend that they were buying food for good prices, so if all goes well he decided to try setting up something more permanent with them." his mother gave a long look out the window, into the night.

"Can he trust those savages? I heard they eat our people." grandfather's voice rumbled from the side, like two rocks grinding on each other. The man rarely spoke so he would sometimes forget he was even there. In the rare moment that the man did speak, it was always brief.

"I don’t know, but from what he tells me they do not eat us, but they do have some disgusting rituals with hearts of animals, so that rumor probably started from there." she went quiet for a moment, no doubt imagining the possible fate her husband if that rumor proved true. "At least I hope so," she murmured to herself.

***

The next day was one of those more interesting days that occurred. His mother had to go to take care of some problems nearby, that was all he could figure out from the morning talk they had over breakfast.

He was reluctantly handed over to Rona, his grandmother, for safekeeping. The older woman was a true chatterbox. All the time they spent together she kept talking either to him or maybe to herself, possibly no one. I certainly can’t figure it out. His grandmother packed him in a sling and off they went. Rona walked slowly, with a small preference for the right leg, barely noticeable, yet he felt it there. She stopped to greet anyone she crossed paths with, never exchanging one word when she could do two. He could get a sense of some conversations like a few about weather, children, health.

But what surprised him was that the people were happy to talk to her. It was a new experience for him because there were women like his grandmother in his old neighborhood, and most if not all would avoid them. They would look out of a window and observe everything like a hawk does while he hunts. Some even brought chairs. Only the women were after a different kind of prey.

He always actively avoided going in front of their home, because within a day he would hear about it. It didn’t matter he did nothing, the mere notion of passing by their window was enough for them to report it to his home.

He was shown around, like a prize-winning pet, to many a middle-aged woman, who cooed and gave their blessings to him. In one particular case, one woman spat on his hand. Not by accident, no! She did it with intention. He saw her prepare it and everything. Rona said nothing, so it was probably a custom of some kind, but to him it was nauseating.

They left that woman in a hurry and he was so grateful to his new grandmother when she took his small hand and washed it with water. Thank you, grandmother and I am so sorry for anything bad I ever thought about you. You are an angel.

Using Visualization he was plotting a map in his mind of the direction they went. According to it they went out of their house, made a rather large balloon-shaped curve to the east, and were now returning towards the house. When they finally stopped his grandmother got him out of the sling and took him in her arms. He watched her take his sling and hang it on a cut off branch of the only tree he could see. He was then tucked into it and he could observe everything his grandmother did, while he dangled in the breeze like a wild beehive.

They were in a small garden filled to overflow with herbs, with larger plants, those that looked bush-like, near the edges of the garden, right next to the stone walls that surrounded the garden on every side. In the middle of the garden, surrounded with many smaller ones on all sides stood two small trees, with nothing on them. No leaves, no fruits, just bare branches. His grandmother was taking out the tools she brought in her basket and immediately she was going from one part of the garden to the other, a spring in her step, pulling weeds and using a small hand tool to dig around some bush-like plants.

She started singing while she watered them and it was fascinating to both watch and hear. Her voice was sweet, one of those you would expect to hear from a young girl, but had this steel-like quality to it, like it would not break no matter how much you bent it. The song was slow and was beautiful in the way that only those who don’t know a single word of a language, yet still listen, can appreciate.

She pulled some root-like herbs, then came and showed them to him while she scraped the dirt with her hands. This language barrier had to go as soon as possible. How much information was lost so far he did not know, and he was a bit angry at anyone who had a hand in his reincarnation. How was he to get himself oriented? Luckily he had time to learn and someone to teach him.

He did notice something. Every herb his grandmother spent time tending to look a bit more… vibrant, more… well just more somehow. Some even looked visibly bigger than when they did. Probably a skill. he made an observation.

They spent some four hours together, most of it he watched everything with a careful eye, a small part of it spent napping. Then they heard his mother’s voice and his stomach immediately announced itself.

***

That evening, just before everyone went to bed, Petra was scraping leftover food from the bowls. The animals needed a large amount of food and the scraps leftover from meals made some variety in their otherwise monotone diet. It was not much, thankfully, no one in her family was a picky eater as in some she saw.

As she made her way through her chores, her thoughts kept returning to both the events of this morning and some months prior. When Septimus first broached the subject of acquiring land and then building a house on it, to say the least, she was skeptical. At the time she was just confirmed pregnant, and Septimus insisted that things could not stay the way that they were. They made enough money from the trade they did, but she also saw the point he was making. They could do this now, while they were young and healthy, but what about when they got to her parents' age? When with every step of the way your bones protested, and your back just wanted to lay down? What then?

So they made a compromise. They asked a few acquaintances they knew, those that got the land and were already a few years ahead. The problems they faced, both large and small, they asked it all to prepare themselves better for this new chapter of their life. All of the money they had at that moment was invested in this piece of land, so her husband had to work more to get some capital flowing, while she had their baby. Her parents came as soon as word reached them and they brought some people with them, which eventually sparked a small village in the vicinity.

It was the start of a new life.

Earlier this day a dispute happened between two tenants. One of them, Zran the woodwork, was among the first to arrive and settle here and the other just arrived. The land he chose to lease was right between the center of the village and the plot Zran picked for himself. The problem ensued when the new arrival made it clear that he would not allow people to cross over his land. Locals, if you could call them that, made a path right in the middle of where he planned to make a pasture. It escalated from there.

Petra spent the whole morning away from her darling son, dealing with some fools who thought they owned the piece of the sky over them and could do nothing to convince them otherwise. After hours of back and forth, that almost made her start pulling her hair, they made up like nothing ever happened, drinking together like lifelong brothers. Even with all of her dealings with strange people, she could still be surprised by them.

So, after all of that and then the rest of the day spent on the fields with her father, she was tired in body and spirit. Her bed called to her, a sweet song of oblivion, one where all your problems melt away. Only a few more tasks to complete and I will be there. she made a promise to herself.

Then when her Septimus showed up a day early to the surprise of everyone present, and all of her weary burdens burned away in a flash of sunlight. Her mother helped her start a new dinner and while they waited for it to finish they all interrogated her poor man, squeezing him dry of all the details of his journey. She could see that he was tired, his broad shoulders sagging and his eyelids slow, yet still he persevered through the story.

After dinner, she made her parents take Tercius with them to bed, and then she lead Septimus to the backyard of the house near the big water barrels, then helped him get out of the clothes. Piece by piece, she took it all off and was either dusty or wet. She undressed him while he stood in place, too tired to move.

I could just stand here and watch him. her mind suggested, her eyes peeled to his naked shape. Maybe he will turn around and… she went on with the fantasy in her head, as she went for the small wooden stool, brought it over, and made him sit. He shouldn’t stand any longer than he already has. Then she went to fetch water from the barrels and that took some time. It was still warm, a tiny part of the red sun visible over the mountains in the distance, and the water had no chance of getting cold.

She started with his hair and went slowly down, while in her mind she went from fantasy to fantasy. What would he do to her if she went nude to wash his chest? Would he still be tired? He had that effect on her.

Hair, then neck, arms, back, and legs. Then the whole front. But through the whole thing he slept sitting on his small chair, his elbows on his knees, his head bent forward, a soft whistling sound leaving his lips. To lift him it would take three men. She knew she had to wake him up, and yet she didn’t want to. He went for almost two weeks with little sleep and now it was catching up to him, every moment was precious. Then an idea came to her.

She went into the house as quietly as she could, not wanting to wake anyone asleep, and took three sheets and two woolen blankets and hurried back. He was in the same position she left him in, like a statue. His ability to sleep anywhere, in any way no matter the noise, was something she envied. The ground beneath them was so thirsty it was already dry so she first spread a blanket and then a sheet over it. Now for the hard part. Petra took his left arm and put it around her. One arm went under his right shoulder, where he was ticklish. Using her fingers she summoned a mote of his consciousness. "Get up, I made the bed," she whispered to him and urged him to move by a small pull.

He practically leaped from the chair and out of her grip and was in a moment curled on the makeshift bed. That went easier than I thought it would. She took off her dress, the breeze leaving goosebumps over her skin, as she leaned against his back, feeling his solid form near her, and covered them up as best she could. The nights here could get cold, it was one of the things she could not get used to here. Thank you Ancestors for getting him safely to me. She uttered a prayer in her mind.

No one knew what life would bring, but today they were all here and healthy and that was all she could wish for.