Months passed and Danny worked on not just his mana, but talking and walking. He had learned the names of his family members. Many of the strange sounds required to speak their language held no English comparisons. So he decided to assign them names based on feeling. His father got the name Stan. Stan was a handsome guy with dark auburn hair and blue eyes. Stan was quick with smiles and erred on the skinny side. He liked to play with all the kids of the house at once. Being the smallest Danny just sat nearby until attention was centered on himself.

The two other women in the house he named Sarah and Barb. Sarah was a slender, tall, and a very pretty woman with black hair. When she moved it seemed as if she floated instead of walked. Barb, on the other hand, had short blonde hair and looked like she stepped out of a bodybuilding magazine. Even though she had a serious face, she was always very nice to Danny.

There were two older girls he named Jane and April. He was pretty sure they were Sarah's daughters. They both had dark hair and thin features. He enjoyed playing with them and especially playing the baby card to get them to do things for him.

The only other boy in the house got the name Gary. Gary had light brown hair and Danny assumed he was Barbs kid because he was with her most of the time. He didn't interact so much with Danny as much as near him. Something to do with safety in number he guessed. After debating and agonizing over what to call the current leading lady in his life, Danny finally came up with the perfect name, Mom. It had everything he liked in a name, short, simple, and definitive. Danny was given a name which he memorized and learned to respond to.

Danny had come to a decision, before he learned to speak, that he would reframe from telling others about his condition. He would also play the part of the baby/toddler/child, until he was old enough for his strangeness to be seen as gifted. If a baby or toddler was to start talking in his old life, solving advanced algebra, and doing magic, society would laud them as a genius. If he remembered history right, those people who stood out when they were not supposed in ancient cultures, were deemed evil and killed in gruesome ways. Until Danny could find proof he wouldn’t be tortured, set on fire, or drowned, he was going to be the best unknown child actor in the world.

Walking was harder than he remembered, and why did everything have to be made from stone around here? He seriously needed to figure out how to cast a healing spell to get rid of these bangs and bruises. Danny could only roll his eyes as his mother just kissed them. He could guess she thought it built character to endure.

He eventually managed to make a tour around the first floor of his home. There was the main room, or hall, with the hearth, which was opposite the front door. On one side of the main room was a large dining table and chairs, and on the other was a small sitting area with comfortable looking sofas and chairs.

In separate rooms were the kitchen and pantry to one side. He wasn't allowed in either by himself yet. Stairs ran up behind the hearth in the main room, to what he was sure was more bedrooms besides just his mothers. He hadn't worked up the courage to climb the stairs by himself yet. Under the stairs by the kitchen was a door to the backyard.

On the opposite side of the main room from the kitchen was the room where he usually stayed during the day. Next to that was a small room with a primitive toilet, and another with a bathtub. Danny learned how the toilet worked when he was home alone with his mother and she left the door open so she could watch him play. There was also a spout next to the toilet that was used to fill fresh water in the bucket.

The bathtub was square shaped and made of stone. It had a spout that released warm to cold water depending on the time of day and weather outside. If you wanted hot water that had to be heated over the hearth or in the kitchen and poured in. Mom usually made Danny's bathwater warmer this way. His mother would take baths with him, which he found really awkward.

After his first few baths, Danny had looked over while his mother was drying herself with a towel. She was an attractive woman, but he already classified her as mom in his brain, so he preferred to not dwell on that. What had attracted his attention was the scars on her lower abdomen. At first he thought it was a tattoo, but as he looked closer he could see how someone had finely cut a pattern with great detail into her skin. Three circles, one inside the other, with a repeating pattern in between them. Then in the middle was a symbol similar to the ones for the elements but it was more ornate. Then two long jagged scars starting from outside the circles cut an "X" across them through the middle. Whoever had cut the "X" was someone different or had rushed. Danny reached out to touch it and his mother immediately stopped drying her hair.

Before Danny could react his mother slapped his hand away. A strange, dead, look was in her eyes before she seemed to come back to her senses. His mother reached down to pick him up, and Danny started to flinch away. His mother’s hands stopped and tears came to her eyes. She then knelt down and opened her arms. Danny ran into them and she hugged him and started to cry. Danny understood something traumatic had happened to cause those scars and wondered if it had something to do with his own special predicament. His mother never bathed with him after that.

Danny had finally managed to climb into a chair in his room downstairs. The reason was that this chair was next to a cabinet that was used as a bookshelf on top. He suspected that this was a sitting room that doubled as a playroom for the smaller children. He apparently didn't need to sleep as much as a normal baby, so he spent that time training his mana. Standing up on the chair, he reached out across the front of the cabinet. He could just barely reach the books on the shelf. His chubby fingers were able to slowly nudge the book he wanted off the bookshelf. Danny looked quickly behind him and listened. His mother had stepped outside and he knew with him being this young she would probably be back quickly. Getting off the chair he heard his mother come back in through the back door. Falling the last foot, he didn't waste time crying and pushing the book under the table that held the basket they used as his crib. The polished stone floors made sliding them easy. His mom walked in and he immediately rolled on his back and tried to grab his toes. He had seen a panda try this on TV once and remembered thinking it cute. It did the trick and his mom left smiling, thinking him safe and preoccupied. Fortunately she didn't notice the missing book.

Sitting up, Danny pulled the book out from under the bed. Their house had only a few books and, as far as he knew, they were all kept here. He needed one with pictures or this would be useless. He confirmed it was the book he had been after. He had seen Barb work on this book with Gary, who he was slowly suspecting was his half-brother. He had seen Stan be overly affectionate with all three women of this house, and Danny was still trying to decide how he felt about that.

Danny opened the book to find pages with pictures and a single word below each. Jackpot, thought Danny. He read through each page quickly memorizing the word on each page. Now all he needed was to match the letter combinations with the sounds. Danny noted that the symbol for the elements did not look anything like the lettering on these pages. The written language for this area must have evolved before the runes were discovered. Now that he thought about it, Danny had seen Gary and his mother work on this short book most nights. Gary must not have access to his mental sanctuary yet. Otherwise he would memorize it quickly. Maybe there was also a comprehension aspect to this photographic memory. This meant that Gary probably hadn't been taught yet how to meditate to enter it. A child Gary's age probably lacked the attention span to learn meditation. Danny couldn't remember if he had the photographic memory before he gained access to the sanctuary or not. He left that puzzle to figure out later.

Turning to the other books on the shelf, Danny crawled back over to the bookshelf and he climbed the chair. He saw some other books with spines that looked similar to the one he had read. He was impatient to start reading and learning more. Mana manipulating could only be done infrequently. Maybe every two to three hours, then in a few seconds he was almost empty and it was time to wait again. He noticed the number of seconds that it took for his mana to escape was slowly increasing. He had tried casting spells again with little success. He was pretty sure now that the skill books in his sanctuary implanted little hints into his memory that made him believe they were his own. Even with those hints he had hit a wall.

Not wasting any more time Danny grabbed the last two books on the shelf and was able to get them to fall on the chair before eventually falling onto the floor. The first one made it to the floor like a ninja, but the second decided to be a drama queen. With the loud slap of the book on the hard stone floor, Danny momentarily slapped his little hands to his forehead. Of course Danny chose that point to realize that in his impatience to get the new books he forgot to hide the old book back under the table again.

Looking from the old book to the new ones he quickly pushed the new ones as far back behind the cabinet as he could before waddling over to the book beside his crib. His mom came in right when he got to it and called out his name. She scolded him as she put the book back up on the bookshelf. She paused momentarily and looked around for something on the floor. Danny held his breath. His mother shrugged then moved the chair back to where it was supposed to be. Turning around she scolded him some more before bending over and picking him up to give him a hug. She then carried him with her out back to work on her leather creations.

It wasn't till the next day that Danny was able to retrieve the books from their hiding place. Fortunately Gary hadn't advanced yet to the books he had stashed, and no one noticed them missing. Opening the two books he found them both to have more pictures. The difference was in the number of words on each page. He chose the obvious next book in the teaching series and sat down to get to work. This book had appeared to teach actions associated with the pictures shown. The third book expanded upon the previous two books, using the words previously learned in sentences so you could understand the new words introduced were. Danny was a bit bewildered why they would stop their education at this point. The books had obviously been previously used, more than likely by the girls when they were younger. Maybe they waited till they could help the children unlock their mental sanctuaries.