Tercius. That was the new name he would respond to going forward. It sounded like his old one in some blurred way, but only vaguely. Of course, his was not the only name he learned lately. His new mother was called Petra, while his new father went by Septimus. The rest of the household was grandmother Rona and grandfather Cirin. As far as he could tell they either didn't have or didn't use a family name. These people were his new family, all of them living together in one home. They all took turns taking care of him during these last eight months since he was reborn.

The new thing for him these days was that he was finally able to move about! Well, move is probably too strong a word, more precisely I can crawl on my stomach using my arms and legs. he thought. Like a soldier, under a wire. He did not know when his muscles developed enough for this to be possible but he was glad for it. The crawl in question was quite incidental and it was not by any measure a long one, in part because he was interrupted soon after, but it was progress and an overdue one at that. He was sick of only being able to roll over and do the baby equivalent of pet tricks.

Speaking of sick, about a month ago he had a heightened body temperature that got so bad at one point his family took him to that healer lady. He kept slipping in and out of consciousness so many times that he lost track of days he previously kept track of and had no way to guess how many passed while he was delirious. Many nightmares were accompanying those heated days, but he got better soon after and he knew that he had to thank that nice lady.

Tercius had a better understanding of the language now and tried to use it in a new way. Previously he kept translating everything into a language known to him but in the long run, he knew that such practice made some road bumps, so he endeavored to correct that as soon as possible. Now he kept using this new language to, at the risk of sounding strange, think with it. That way he removed the old language from the equation, like someone who broke a leg did with a no longer needed crutch. You use one only to the point where the bone mended.

It was difficult but he kept doing it and there were results.

Once he realized he could crawl, the first agenda of his plan was a solitary mission of exploration of his home. There he hit a wall. A problem presented itself. Most of his day he was in a small cradle surrounded by walls he could never hope to go over by himself. With no way of doing this on his own, which already made his solitary mission just a mission, he made a ruckus which his family found suspicious.

They all came in numbers at once to investigate what was going on. What they found was their precious little Tercius sitting on his butt, with a single cloth protecting his privates, his arms extended in a way of a hug, reaching his tiny digits for them, his forest green eyes moist and mirror-like. This was a picture they did not see before, so their fear of the unknown urged them to investigate the cause of this development. His mother was the one to take him in her arms, enveloping his body completely in her arms, as if to protect him of all dangers of the world.

"What happened? What is it?" she kept repeating gently while his father and grandfather moved furniture around and grandmother checked blankets. Over the past few months, his family bought more furniture, as more money started trickling in, so it took some time to check it all. They thought something spooked me.

"Ma!" he grunted with his arm pointing towards the floor. At first, everyone just gaped at him, but then like the Big Bang, pandemonium ensued.

"His first word! And he called for me!" his mother was working up a storm, delirious with happiness.

"Say Pa! Tercius say Pa!" his father tried prying him away but nothing could break open the arms of his mother. Everyone forgot of the presumed threat they initially thought lurked about the baby's cradle.

***

How did it come to this? he thought.

He decided to postpone his mission to a later date, considering that at the moment he was being manhandled and vigorously persuaded to say certain things. On one side was his proud mother with a smile so wide on her face you could see wisdom teeth, pointing out that even if he did use any other word he still said "Ma" first and there was no going back on that. They probably knew that but still fought for second place. In front of him, his father Septimus repeated "Pa", "Say Pa!" over and over again, and opposite to his mother were his grandparents huddled together chanting "Grandma.", "Grandpa.".

What should I do now? Whatever he says someone will get hurt, so better to just sit still and not respond to any stimuli.

Maybe they will give up if I pretend to be sleepy?

Definitely worth a try.

***

He woke up the next day bright and early ready for this day to be the day he finally goes on a crawl. But first time for the daily training. Starting with Meditation over to Visualization and finally Language Acquisition, he spent half an hour before dawn on every skill getting them higher, one step at a time. When his parents got up he got a bath, a clean diaper, and filled his belly and his mother laid him on the floor. So it begins. he thought, while in his head he kept singing some made-up notes from those movies about some special agent. ...bam, bam, tuluru, tuluru, tuluru, tu ru... From a sitting position, he pressed his back to the floor and rolled over.

"What are you doing? Don't you want to play with Ma?" her voice followed him as he used his hands and feet to reach and push and pull. He knew he could do it so even though it hurt he mustered every possible capacity his body contained and pushed on. His arms and legs could not bring his torso up, their muscles not developed to that point, but soon...

"That's my boy, good job!" urged his mother from behind him, closely following step by step.

"Septimus! Septimus! Come here now! You need to see something!" she hollered.

His father came running from outside, his gaze going over the room looking for the cause of the commotion. "What do we have here?" he asked when he spotted him.

"I told you that he was crawling yesterday. I told you! You told me I was imagining things. Well, do you see him now? Eh?" his mother was great at gloating when she was right, and he was sorry to say that that happened more than the other option.

"Our son..." his voice grew a little proud there and then it switched gears. "You know, soon he will be walking... " his father said and Tercius heard a kiss. He turned and saw them embraced, with one hand on her waist, the other on the neck. She did the same with her own. "How about we give little Tercius a little brother or a sister... "

OH hell no! Not in front of me. He rushed over to the door all the while in the background his parents busied themselves.

His only wish was that he could see their faces once they realize he was not where they left him.

Serves them right!

***

This was the most freedom he had in years! Now that he had a means of moving independently of another he used it to explore his new house. His bed was in the room where his parents slept. That room joined a hallway that had three other doors. Two of those doors lead to rooms like his.

Currently, only one was occupied by his grandparents, the other presumably collecting dust. The last door was the entrance to the house. Opposite the entrance, at the end of the hallway was a kitchen/dining room/living room. A shared space for all of the household to eat and spent time together.

There were no pictures on the walls, but there was no need for them. These walls had a story of their own to tell, the stone finely crafted, both the bottom and the top of the wall smooth as his skin. Then in the middle, like a chart of heaven and earth, some walls had what looked like stellar maps, others topological with many valleys and peaks. He could imagine this house as an old Greek temple dedicated to Gaia and Uranus, with people coming and lighting incense below the artwork.

In almost every corner there was a decorated stone pot with a magnificent plant in it, all unique and thriving in the sunlight. There were no glass windows only wooden shutters, made of the same type of wood as the doors.

There was little furniture of any kind inside, but more than when he first arrived here. No classic table, nor chairs, but that was because people here used a rather low table, with cushions for seats. Near the walls, at the back, there were two wide wooden benches with armrests with two pillows made of fine fabric in each corner. The only thing that stood out is what he thought was a stove. The frame of the thing was made of stone but there were metal parts on it, namely the hinges and the door. Probably the top of the thing was the same way, but for now, he had no way to see. There were two wooden surfaces attached directly to the wall near it, probably for the preparation of meals.

But the biggest attraction for his eyes was the giant indentation in the middle of the room. Three steps down on all four sides leading down to a large red carpet. In a circle on the carpet nine cushions arranged around a low table. The meal and casual conversation area.

"There you are! You little monkey you made your parents worried."

Oh, I saw how worried you two were!

***

Rona tried persuasion, but it didn’t always work on her husband, but the old goat too was stuck in his ways. It was one of the few ways they were so different that no common ground was shared between them. While she found pleasure in exchanging words with even a stranger, maybe even find a juicy piece of gossip along the way, she would swear that he could go for months with no words spoken. Where he merely tolerated the presence of others, something in her nature called for her to learn more of them. Their hopes and dreams, hurdles and fears. Rona attributed their marriage to her hands alone because if things were left in his hands they would not be here today.

He even had the nerve to agree.

No matter what she tried he would not budge and the trick that always worked while she was younger and her body of a certain form worked no more. It used to be enough to just make a casual observation of the way some young man tried to get her a drink or said a nice compliment and Ciron would jump to his feet, no matter what he was doing, and accompany her looking like a guard statue on some of those temples to the old gods.

It was not as if he hated anybody, Ancestor’s no, he just focused himself on his work or something that occupied his attention and never liked anything or anyone who interrupted him in that pursuit. For people he cared about he took the pain of considering things from their perspective, but for others... The problem was that she forced him one too many times to go with her. He HATED crowds. And this small gathering in the new village was certain to host one, albeit a small one.

Septimus and Petra will of course go, but with whom am I supposed to go? That old goat was unmoved no matter how many times she explained in what ways his absence could be interpreted by those loudmouths, merely brushing away her concerns. They asked her every time where was her husband and then went to make up a thousand different reasons for it. Harlots, the lot of them.

But all is not lost! She had her darling grandson, such a well behaved child, completely different from his mother when she was the same age. Now I only need to get him away from his mother's clinging arms.

Mirna, a new addition to the village, a weaver by trade, told her that preparations for the celebration were almost done with only a few finishing touches left.

When Ciron tried to kiss her on the cheek, on his way out, she pulled back to show her displeasure, but as usual, he did not mind. He had the gall to smirk and then leave! "You infuriating man!" she murmured in his wake.

Preparing herself for an outing was easier this far south. The heat of the day lingered for an hour even after the sun went completely down. She didn't have many clothing items left so she went with something simple. A white shirt with short sleeves with some flowers she embroidered and a light yellow skirt she bought herself the last time she went to market. Since she knew not how long her daughter will stay she took a large yellow shawl to covered the boy and her arms should they stay longer than intended.

From there, once she finished her preparations, she went to get Tercius. It was easy to prepare him, just a cloth large enough to cover the baby whole, leaving the face exposed.

"Children hurry up, I am not even on the way there and my feet already hurt. " Rona said.

"In a minute mother." her daughter yelled from her room.

"Finally! I was starting to think we would be skipping this one. I am not sure if I could forgive that to you." it took a while for the young couple to emerge ready.

"As if you would let us do that mother, even Septimus here was hurrying me along just so you would not barge in and start your preaching." Petra rolled her eyes.

"I was not! Rona. Truly!" he said in defeat, his hands raised in the indication of having no intention of getting between them.

"Alright enough, let's get going, we are already late. Your tenants have made their best effort to make a celebration for all the hard work they did and it would be insulting to them if you didn’t show up." she berated them, but even she knew how easy it was for other people to dismiss someone else’s efforts.

Their house, in the largest part, was built by her hard-working husband, was situated on a small rise between the village and the river. Septimus told her that he wanted to buy land near the river when he came here initially, but those were too costly at the time. There was a stone wall, around a meter and a half in height, around the house and a part of the land, useful in keeping out the majority of the wildlife present in these parts. Most of those were herbivores and the danger they posed was in cases where they feel threatened for themselves or they're young.

She heard of something called a "stampede" but she knew not what was the precise danger from it, nor what manner of beast it was. The carnivores were a present danger and she heard of tales that made her blood chill, but also true was that the danger was present everywhere. These dangerous predators were actively hunted by the armies, keeping their number low.

The stone wall was the first thing that was built on the site of the new house, something Ciron insisted on when they moved here and it has proved useful in a couple of close calls over the past year and a half, protecting both her family and their livestock from dangerous animals. It gave them enough time to get their bows and arrows.

It was some time ago that they left Spheros, one of the civilized centers of the Empire, and not a day went by she didn't want to go back. At first, it was because of all the places and people she missed, the comforts of life in the city, but as time passed that shifted from wanting those things for herself to wanting it for Petra and Septimus and Tercius. She couldn't imagine anything happening to them, and the safety of a city insured their well-being.

The months she spent apart from Petra still weighed heavily on her, as they did on Ciron, only he never showed it. Well, rarely.

Oh how she wished things could have played out differently than they did, then her daughter and accidental son-in-law could raise their son in a place where he could get a proper education and make a life for himself. Here, in these last reaches of the Empire, every day was a struggle of uncertainty, where making any kind of plan is simply tempting fate.

It is a wild and harsh land, punishing those who fail yet rewarding success, she only hoped that success won't draw their kind of predators. Her son-in-law has proved himself an able man. She had her doubts about him at first but over the years she came to see that Petra had chosen right. Rona could see he cared about Petra and little Tercius and would see to their needs at any cost.

They went down the hill to the village proper. Some seventy odd souls found their home here at the time of the initial settling, and today that number was close to eighty. They had few deaths and all of them were older people, parents of the original settlers. It was difficult for her to think about some of them because she was older than most that left this world behind.

Keeping her mind from wandering into too dark a place, she looked over at the houses that drew her eye every time she came this way.

Where she had her husband to make their house, and he was good at what he did, in the village some houses looked ready to topple over. Others would probably be washed away with the first rain, the bricks they used not baked properly. Hm! she snorted. After days of nagging from her, Cirin made the offer to help expecting no compensation in return, and they just politely declined. Well, now they can live in their crooked houses wondering if today is the day it collapses on their heads.

Plastering a smile and checking on the sleeping baby in her arms she hurried towards her friends, leaving Septimus and Petra behind. I can bet those two lovebirds won't even notice I went ahead.

And even if they did she cared not, this was something she missed mightily and would step over whoever stood in her way!