A few months later at lunchtime, Danny was surprised to realize they were having his first birthday party. He thought it was suspicious when his mother's parents and siblings all showed up at once. His family was all there and the house was packed. Everyone took turns holding him and praising how big he was. Danny realized, when he quickly got tired of this, that his introverted nature must have carried over with him from his old life. There wasn't a cake but they did eat a lot of delicious foods. He got a gift from his family. New clothes, mostly repaired hand me downs from his brother. He smiled and laughed, thanking his family with the few words he was supposed to know.

He was curious why he didn't remember there being birthday parties for his siblings. Maybe they only celebrated birthdays at certain milestones. Danny really only saw his other siblings in the evenings, when Sarah, Barb, and Stan came back from working their family store, or on the one day of the week when the store was closed. Gary and Danny would usually play together in the hall, while April and Jane would occasionally play with them. Their age differences made it difficult. Danny really didn't want to play with Gary that long but he had to keep up the illusion he was a regular child. Fortunately Gary was a well behaved kid, so it wasn't a nightmare. Jane and April were very similar in demeanor, except Jane was obviously the older sibling. She felt the need to take care of her other siblings, and boss them around. April was her shadow and tried her best to get attention from their mother by doing things as perfectly as possible. On the days the store was closed, their parents would sometimes take them to a local park. It was beautifully designed with places for the children to climb and play. There were other children there, but Danny was supposed to still too young to be interested in playing with them. During his days and evenings, Danny would practice his mana manipulation, as he feared any spells would be noticeable to those with magic. Life became a monotonous and boring routine and he couldn't wait to be old enough to have a bit more freedom.

Another year passed and the only real change in his family had been when Danny's oldest sister, Jane, left for the girls’ academy. She was to stay there till she graduated, but she could come home on holidays and important family events. He hadn't really gotten to know her as well as he would like, but this was apparently the way of their world. April was very upset with her sister’s departure and was depressed for days.

Danny's mana capacity grew slowly, but he still hadn't made headway with spell casting. He felt it was right there in front of him and he just couldn't see it. Now that he could string more than a few words together in his new native language, Danny thought about asking his mother. The only problem was that Danny hadn't seen anyone use magic. He figured that not everyone would be throwing fireballs around or conjuring otherworldly beings from another plane. People should at least be using magic to light stoves, fill buckets with water, or heal injuries. He had seen a few cuts and scrapes in his family but those were all treated the old fashion way. April got sick one time and a woman came, some sort of apothecary, and gave her medicine that worked by the next day. Thinking maybe no one knew about the mental sanctuary he looked for evidence to disprove this. He observed his mother sitting quietly for a few minutes late some nights before sleeping. He believed this to be meditation and not praying, as his family never spoke to him about gods or other deities. He had hoped magic or meditation would surface in day to day conversations but nothing noteworthy occurred. His parents mostly spoke about the city they lived in, Diadem, and the store they owned.

If magic wasn't common here then what would they do with someone that had magic powers. Thinking about what was done to supposed magic users in his time, Danny decided to wait till he could gather more information on his own. It is possible that they blamed the sorcerers for the events of the past. He better do his best to hide it if he ever figured out spell casting. Danny also took efforts to watch what questions he asked. Kids were naturally curious, but his family could get suspicious if he asked something unusual even for a child to care about.

Right now his efforts with mana made him look like a mime pushing on an invisible wall. He didn't have to hold his hand out like that, it just felt like the thing to do. He had also started trying to control the amount of mana that flowed out through his hand. He found he could extend the amount of mana that escaped indefinitely. It was just that the focus required to choke his mana flow at an infinitesimal amount while redirecting at the time was taxing. He would do this for as long as he could and then just release the rest.

One day his father came and helped load his mother's latest creations into a cart. Then they all left together, with Danny getting to ride in the cart on top of the merchandise. Holding his mothers hand while she walked next to the cart, Danny looked around the city they lived in. He didn't know how many people lived here but it was definitely the center of a metropolitan area. They didn't live far from a massive street that ran through the city. Danny had yet come to an intersection that didn't contain a park or public space. The buildings in the city appeared to be set up in a grid pattern with aqueducts running in between two rows of homes. He also learned from his mother that the toilet and bath in their home drained through a sewer system the exited downstream of the river the city was originally built next to. The river actually now flowed through the middle of the city.

The houses in the city were all stone with wooden roofs. Every building in the city was uniformly square or rectangular. Danny couldn’t help but find this immensely odd. It seemed some home and business owners decorated their buildings by chiseling them with different patterns or murals. Danny suspected, like his home, the first level floor was a stone foundation with any subsequent levels having wooden floors. There was glass windows, but the glass was imperfect and appeared clouded. It still allowed plenty of light through. The houses were usually one to three stories. Then there was the walls surrounding the city. Apparently there was a second set of walls on the other side of the river to the north. Danny could just make out a large structure on the other side that could be a temple or palace.

While Stan pushed the cart back behind the store, his mother picked him up and took him in through the front door. Sarah was behind the counter smiling while helping a customer who was debating between different items to purchase. As his mother went towards the back of the store he noticed Gary and April were playing with toys behind the counter and they waved at them as we went by. Danny waved back before they went through a rear door.

Danny was surprised when he realized the back area of the store's walls, floors, and most of the ceiling were all stone. Then he was hit by a wave of heat. He immediately saw Barb, busily pounding away over an anvil. He couldn't tell what her work was going to be yet but judging by the items up front, she was pretty good at her craft. Next to her was a younger woman he had never seen, an apprentice maybe. Barb stopped long enough to wipe her brow, smile, and wave before going back to work. They apparently owned a store and smithy that sold my mother's leather bags and equipment as well as Barb's tools and weapons. The best he could tell his father helped stock shelves and any other odd jobs that needed doing around the store. How on earth he got three women to marry him confused Danny to no end. Danny had trouble keeping one girlfriend and here Stan, "The Man," had attracted not only his mom, but Sarah and Barb. He would need to observe his father and take notes.

One evening, Danny was walking through the main room looking for his mother, when he saw Sarah writing in a large book he hadn't seen before. Climbing in the chair next to her, Sarah stopped briefly to look over at him. Danny noticed that the corner of her mouth lift up. From the gridlines, Danny guessed it was a ledger for finances but couldn't be sure they did things the same way here. "What's that," Danny pointed at the book.

Sarah had obviously been waiting for this question, because she patiently said, "It is a book that helps me track how much money we make in our store."

Trying to get more time looking at the ledger, Danny hammed it up, "Oh, is money yummy, I want some!"

Sarah laughed her musical laugh. Barbs laugh was loud and fun. His mom's laugh was always soft and reserved. Sarah seemed to be incapable of to doing anything without an air of refinement. At the top of the page was a word Danny hadn't seen before.

Pointing to the word, Danny asked. "What's that?"

"That's our surname, Creek, it means small river, it comes from my parent's family."

Taken aback for a second, Danny didn't know how to process that. He asked, "Why your parents?"

Sarah looked surprised by this question, and responded, "Because when a new family is formed it takes the surname of the woman with the highest social standing... Or to say it another way, the family people in the city like the most."

Danny nodded his head as if he knew this already, "Right!"

Danny had heard his last name before but never had seen it written in any of his books. He hadn't known that it meant little river.

Danny looked down again at the ledger. He had been introduced to their number system in the books from the downstairs room. They didn't go into any elaborate mathematics or algebra. Just enough to let you be able to purchase something with the money you have. It took him surprisingly little time to figure out how the ledger was organized, given he had not been that great at math in his previous life. He always had to work hard to get problems correct. Pointing to a certain figure said, "That's wrong."

Frowning, Sarah looked down at what he was pointing at and said, "Your right it is wrong, I forgot to car..."

Sarah looked back up at Danny with wide eyes.

Danny quickly realized his error and, while smiling with his biggest grin, started pointing at other parts of the page saying, "And this is wrong, and this, and this is wrong."

Sarah quickly looked back down and when she saw nothing wrong, smiled and said with fake exasperation, "Looks like I will just have to redo the whole page!"

She ruffled Danny's hair in a messy manner and shooed him off to play.