“I don’t always have a 5-year plan. One thing you must always do in life is to keep your learning curve as high as possible.”

Yo-Yo Ma

Aleera took me out down to the shore where we could look back at the town across the lake where home lay while grandfather prepared dinner.

“Well, we’re here for however long.” Aleera sighed. Turning to me, she asked, “So, any more surprises today?”

Stopped for a second by the sudden changes in my life, I decided to return the questions, “You can do magic? You never showed me! What can you do? Can you fly? Can you make me fly?” I kept asking questions trying to find out what else the rest of my family could do that I had never known. Were we all secretly magicians from a faraway kingdom? I’ve always tried to keep my learning curve as high as possible and I might not have a 5-year plan but it has certainly felt like there has been a lot of curveballs today.

“When do you practice? I’ve never seen you do magic?” I pointed out, still a little put out that I could have been watching people perform magic and getting so much better at it. Yet not once had they ever shown me any.

Aleera responded, “That’s because we are supposed to keep it secret!” Before continuing, “The merchants may be few and far between but they do still come here. A secret is best kept by yourself not a 13-month-old baby.” She teased.

“I can secret.”

Aleera smirked, “You can’t even talk properly yet.” Even though she continued to speak to me as if I understood everything and for the most part I could. Still, there were words I missed, hadn’t heard yet, or couldn’t quite get the conjugation correct with. Baby talk was so much simpler sometimes and they understood what I meant even if I didn’t say it correctly 9 times out of 10. Maybe I was just lazy. I’d get there in time especially as I didn’t have a language book to learn from or a dictionary to build my knowledge off of others' studies. Every language has its own words, idioms, slang, and take on the world but at least it is no longer βαρ-βαρ (bar-bar) a completely incomprehensible babble to me.

“Cantu.” I defended obtusely in as dumbed-down baby talk as I could and still be understood.

She ignored my childish behaviour before beginning to teach me. “Okay then. The trick to having Magic while looking like you don’t have it is to use it to do you things that look like skills you already have or support them with it.”

Confused I asked, “Like what? How?”

“Well, when I’m using the drop spindle or spinning thread, I’m also trying to use my magic rather than a skill I’ve learned. Then, if anyone looks in or is watching, it simply looks like I’m just using the skill Spinning. But actually, I am leveling up my magical skills.”

“Can you show me?” I asked excitedly. This would be the first time I would actually see someone else’s magic rather than my own. I wonder what else she can do. I watched as she held a thread she pulled from her pocket and made it spin in the air twisting and curling up on itself then and curling and twisting. Finally, just spinning around and around in the air.

It looked like the string had come alive. Yet, unless you watched the mana within the string itself, there was no visible magic at all!

“The trick is to keep your magic as small and as controlled as possible.” She explained. “Then if anyone does look in it looks like you’re spinning the thread rather than practicing your magic.” She reiterated.

“Is that why you spend so much time spinning.? “I asked. I had always been confused why she didn’t want to leave the house more. It had seemed so boring to sit there spinning and spinning. Washing and carding didn’t look like much fun either.

“Yes. “She replied.

I stand looking out over the water, pausing to consider how many other little things I had watched and assumed were skills that actually might have been being performed through magic. Her magic and mana control was amazing the mana never left the thread. It was completely contained within it. Leaving her fingers where they held one end the mana flowed along the fibers that made the single thread. Where I had just been pushing my mana out of my body, when I looked closely at hers, it was tightly controlled and woven through a single thread.

“I’ve shown you what I can do. Now, are you going to show me what can you do, you little monster?”

With my new excess of mana, it was no longer challenging to practice beyond my previous limited amounts despite the amulet that was still continuing to drain my mana pool to do whatever it was that it was doing. So I happily showed some of what I could do with my magic enthusiastic to show off a little.

I started with the first skill I had learned how to do.

Borrowing her little thread I asked her to lean forward to watch. “Well I can’t make it spin but I can do this!”

Ignite!

I fell over laughing as she shrieked in surprise and fell over backward, best of all, she landed in a shallow rock pool. My moment of glee was soon cut off as she rose wet from water.

Hmm, uh oh,

Maybe that hadn’t been the best of ideas. I’d expected the shriek but not the trip and fall especially not into the water.

“Wait.” I gestured trying to calm her down as she started towards me. “You asked me. Wasn’t my fault. You fell over.”

“You could have taken my eyebrows off. Set my hair on fire! Magic can be dangerous you little twerp!” She replied as she advanced towards me.

I backed away, a little too scared to turn and make a run for it. She had never hurt me before but then I had never really succeeded in escaping much further than 5 meters before she caught me and lifted me up. I’d certainly never managed to actually upset her more than bumbling physical failings that had been looked on more with amusement than annoyance. But now she looked a little more than annoyed and close to cross.

I continued to back up and away from her up a small rise from the lake.

“Tell me what you are going to do before you do it or you will get a tanning. Not by me, mother or father but by Grandfather when I tell him!” She took one more step towards me and I took one last step away from her. It was my last because I tripped backward into a pool of my own.

But here I had a different conclusion to her fall.

My new trait Super Senses meant that as soon as I began to fall I noticed it immediately and time seemed to slow enough to give me just enough time to work out what to do. I did not have sufficient control of my baby body to do more than put my hands behind me but somehow, I had a single moment of time when they hit the water before my body in which I was able to flash freeze the water.

Freeze!

I landed with a thump on my little sheet of ice that now covered the rock pool. It would have been perfect and a moment of magical triumph if I hadn’t straight away shattered the sheet of ice with my weight dumping me into a now freezing if still shallow rock pool.

It was quite a shock and I am sure my surprised face must have been a sight for a sore sister because she was soon laughing at my freezing cold sodden features.

“It’s freezing!” I shouted as I struggled to climb up out of the water which was harder than it looked with slippery algae covering my particular pool. Super senses now once more almost a curse as I sat there shivering.

“Quit complaining, the pools aren’t that cold after most of the day in the sun.” she motioned me to calm down.

Clearly, she hadn’t seen my trick with the ice from her angle closer to the shore. Still, even if my pool of water was cold it didn’t have to stay that way especially not with the wellspring of mana I had within me. I had spent hardly any mana igniting the thread and although I was not entirely sure how much I had spent on my unfortunately too thin piece of ice I still had plenty left.

Having already made far too many mistakes today I slowly, very slowly started to heat the water with my mana making a very slow and cautious use of my skill Boil having no desire to cook myself alive. I raised the temperature enough so that it was warm and then seeing as I could I kept going a little to give myself my first hot bath on this planet. Water and heating it, being a chore I had yet to have a truly hot bath. Mainly being bathed in, at best lukewarm water, which was more often cold than not. I enjoyed my first hot bath and stopped struggling to get out of my baby bath.

Aleera her mouth agape finally reached a point where she could see into the pool of water. It no longer had any ice floating in it but it seemed the steam floating up from it was equally shocking.

“How are you doing that?” she demanded.

“You put your mana into the water. It gets warm.” I gave her a simplified explanation.

“Setting things on fire and boiling lakes. Are you sure you’re not a little demon?” She raised an eyebrow. “This is why we are now on an island. Come on back to Grandfather’s before you give the game away even hiding here on the island.”

“No one is here,” I complained sitting in my steaming if shrinking pool. I had finally gotten the temperature just right.

“You don’t know that Kai and even if there isn’t someone here they could be looking out at us here from town.” She patiently explained hands on hips as she looked down on me.

“They couldn’t see us from there,” I mutter knowing she has a point even if I’m only hoping to enjoy my bath for a moment longer. As it was my first proper one in so long and knowing full well that the walk back was going to quickly become cold and chafing.

“Everyone has skills, Kai, and some of them are strong. Eagle Eye and Farsight are just two that could let someone see us here.” She says as she pulls me out of my shrinking puddle, the salt crusting on the algae as the pool continues to evaporate away.

“Oh.” Fair enough I’ve always known I didn’t know very much and that point has been driven home particularly hard today several times.

“Exactly let’s go back before you do anything else and Grandfather will explain the rules.” She says leading me by the hand back to the cave my grandfather calls a house.

“There are rules?” I apprehensively ask.

“Yes. How do you think mother, him, and I have managed to stay hidden here for so long? You will need to learn them and follow them too. For all of our sakes.” She murmured the last sentence so softly that without my skill in listening and my hypersensitivity I doubt I would have heard her worries.

Sad to have caused such stress I distracted myself with my new skill as we walked back.

A skill I had gained as she had threatened me earlier.

A skill suited to my super senses.

A skill any baby ninja needed.

Ding! Quick Reflexes (Lv 1)

Spiderman here I come!

As we walked into grandfather’s home he had already finished cooking dinner, laid the table, and was sat there waiting for us. “Right, food first. Then we will discuss the next five years and the rules you will have to learn to live by.” He gruffly started before pausing . . . “Why are you wet and why Kai are you covered in salt?”

. . .

Kai's True Staus

True Status

Level: 10 Name: Kai

Experience: 50,800/ 204,800

Age: 13 months, 1 weeks, 2 days, 16 hours

Health: 1100/1100 Stamina: 513/513 Mana: 1000/1000 Psi: 1070/1070

Trait: Long Lived, Fast Learner, Super Senses, Source of Mana,

Vitality: 110

Endurance: 22

Strength: 22

Dexterity: 23

Senses: 109

Mind: 107

Clarity: 38

Magic: 100

Free Points: 20

Skills:

Tier 1: Time sense (LV 22) Listening (LV 26) Meditation (LV 31) Swimming (LV 23)

Humming (Lv 20) Sneak (Lv 21) Whistling (Lv 20) Singing (Lv 20) and Drumming (Lv 20)

Running (Lv 10), Acting (15), English (Lv 15), Spanish (Lv 15), Japanese (Lv 15),

German (Lv 10), French (Lv 7) Dodge (Lv 1) Breath Control (Lv 1) Sight (Lv 11)

Scent (Lv 11) Detect (Lv 11) Taste (Lv 11) Bulosa (Lv 1) Draw (Lv 1)

Tier 2: Sense Mana (LV 29) Eavesdrop (LV 22) Memorisation (LV 20) Composition (Lv 20)

Recall (Lv20) Pain tolerance (Lv 8) Piano (Lv 20) Violin (Lv 20), Trombone (Lv 20),

Saxophone (Lv 20) Linguistics (Lv 15) Translation (Lv 15) Stealth (Lv 10) Quick reflexes (Lv 1)

Tier 3: Echolocation (LV 22) Expel Mana (Lv 29) Absorb Mana (Lv 29)

Mana Manipulation (Lv 12) Ignite (Lv 11) Freeze (Lv 2) Boil (Lv 1)

Tier 4: Mana Drain (Lv 20) Multiple Minds (Lv 10)

Tier 5: Mind fortress (Lv 15)

Skill experience: 200

Origin experience: 0

Combat experience: 0

Crafting experience: 0