When night fell on the fifth day, the three men carrying me did not stop to set up camp. Continuing on in their worn out state, only intermittently gasping out words through gritted teeth.

“I hope they’re continuing because we’re close, not due to a lack of supplies or pure desperation.”

An impending sense of overwhelming doom slowly crept up my spine.

I was cursing my inability to do anything, when I was turned over in my carrier's grip and saw a flickering light shine through whipping snow. Moments later, he once again turned me away from the biting cold, pressing my face against his armor covered in fur.

Now on the final leg of our journey, the three presumed slave merchants slowly scaled a steep hill. Treacherous and slippery as it was, my caretaker almost fell on top of me several times. Once, he dropped me into the snow, failed to find me again and I had to make my displeasure heard before he picked me back up. The wet snow covering my face was painfully sapping my warmth, forcing my mind into an annoying state of focused wakefulness. Useful as an adult, annoying when a useless bundle of feigned cuteness.

One moment howling wind blocked out every sound, the next, calm crackling from a fireplace filled the air. Flickering shadows danced across the stone blocks of the wall. Furs covered large portions of the wall and the opening we had just stepped through. My three stooges stood quietly next to each other at the door. A large number of words were exchanged between an old raspy voice outside of my line of sight and two of my captors.

The one carrying me moved into an adjacent room and started undressing.

“Turns out that ‘slave merchant’ is a viable career for both genders in this place.” My carrier revealed herself to be a stoogesse.

“Can’t blame me for that mistake, she doesn’t have much going on in the chest-department and the helmet obscured her features. Why didn’t I notice anything from her voice?”

She laid down in bed with me, tucking me carefully under the furs. I was still too awake for sleep, so instead I absentmindedly played with her flowing brown hair and thought about a few things.

“Hilarious, the first time I ever sleep with a woman and my attraction to her is purely Freudian. Pervy bastard would’ve had a field day.”

“I need to figure out the language ASAP, this deficit of information is driving me insane.”

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I woke from my shallow slumber when a lock of hair was ripped out of my grip. My caretake trying to sneakily abandon me in her bedroom. I defiantly stared up at her, sleep still blurring my vision, then made my displeasure heard until she picked me up.

The main room consisted of a large fireplace, a bed with an old man in it next to the flames. A female statue above the fireplace, in her hand she held a cross with a circle around the three smaller branches at the top.

“Looks like a malformed ankh, probably some kind of religious symbol.”

My caretaker sat down on a stack of furs, cradling me carefully in her arms. The old man started talking to her in his raspy voice. His words were very different from what I had heard until now, they sounded far more melodious to my abused ears, more like Italian or Japanese than German or Russian.

My caretaker sat in silence as the old man became more agitated, eventually he started coughing. She put me down and moved over to caress his head, he slapped away her hand and turned towards the wall, leaving her standing in silence with a hand outstretched.

She slowly let her hand drop back down her side, the entire movement emitting a feeling of hopeless sadness.

“I need to do something, this is horrible. Anything to lighten the mood, a distraction of any kind will do.” During his monologue the old man had used a specific set of syllables many times. I presumed, hoped, that it was my caretaker's name.

“Au-ri… ah.” Of course I butchered it completely, I tried again, this time with more effort put into each sound: “Auria”, I was somewhat satisfied. Nodding internally, feeling self-satisfied I thought: “There are still a few minor inconsistencies, but I almost have it.”

The old man had turned back around and looked at me in abject, sideways shock. Auria had her mouth hanging open in a baffled expression. I realized why she had sat in silence the entire time.

“Someone cut out her tongue?! Fuck whoever did that sideways with a wet cactus on a tuseday!”

My body stiffened with an all too familiar feeling.

For a moment my mind failed to process what had transpired.

Overflowing rage drowned out any feeling of empathy. I screeched in pure, condensed fury.

My field of vision narrowed, creeping darkness coming from the edges.

I looked down at my right hand and for the first time, I noticed a splotch of silver poke through the skin.

Mercifully, I fell into darkness.

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A vision filled with stormy waves and lightning flashing across the sky followed me out into the waking world. Someone cradled me in their arms, slowly moving me side to side. My eyes snapped open, remembering what had happened, I looked up into Auria’s brown eyes, her measured expression looking back at me.

She walked to a fur hanging further inside, pushed it aside and stepped through. Instead of leading outside, this one resulted in us stepping into a much more primitive wooden building, two men slept loudly on beddings of fur.

“What’s with these people and all this fur? Where is the tanner at? Oh right, mom and dad.”

Auria walked to the farther bed and quietly shook the blonde man sleeping on it. He instantly propelled himself into a sitting position, grabbing for nothing at his belt. Then deflated as he saw us standing half-a step back from our original position.

She motioned for him to follow her. Nothing complicated, just instinctive human body language. “Funny how that works, even wherever the flip I am now.”

As we walked back into the main room, I stared hatefully at the splotch of silver on my hand.

Oldie was waiting for us sitting on his bed at the fireplace. When we entered with Blondie in tow, he addressed him in the same guttural language of my parents. Disbelief, followed by a bit of fear, then resignation, resolve and annoyance washed across his face during his lengthy conversation with the ol’ cracker.

Eventually he turned to us, pointed at himself and said, “Phethuma”.

“Welp, there’s a universal way to teach language.”

“Fuma”, was my response. He sighed and tried again, but I just lacked the air to complete that monstrosity of a name. He ended up being satisfied with “Phuma”.

“Good enough for him, is good enough for me. ‘I dub thee Phuma’.”

Phuma pointed at the old man, once again lying on his bedding. “Vonier Ib Al Bran Kon.”

“Fuck you old man! I don’t care how many dragons you’ve killed, a name has three syllables maximum. The Nathanials of the world can get porked!”

“Vonier”, I tried.

A small spherical ball of flames appeared, floating centimeters in front of my eyes.

I jerked back and bumped my head into Aurias chest.

“What the heck? Floating fire? Is time borked? Why did someone throw fire at me?”

Looking up at my backrest, I discovered that time still did its thing and she was looking at the old man in extreme displeasure.

“How is the ol’ cracker doing this? Floating fire without fuel, that’s some paranormal bullshit, not to mention a fire hazard.”

I leaned forwards in her grip. As curiosity overwhelmed me, I stretched out an arm and poked at the fire while watching the Oldies expression. When I felt a searing pain, his face changed to satisfaction, then worry when I failed to draw back my hand. He panicked as I began to swirl my hand around in the sphere, in an attempt to disrupt its integrity and return its fire to the governance of physics.

“My hand isn’t even cooking, what kind of lukewarm plasma is this?

Auria had been watching in shock. She got her ducks in a line, jerked me back and began making a series of irate squeaky-hissy-sounds at the old man, probably an attempt at a lecture.

“I am sooo going to murder whoever did that to her!”

The expected lockup came and went, I had already accepted its temporary presence.

My favorite ball of mystery-fire had slowly dispersed during the failed lecture. I felt annoyance, having my new toy, cough, experiment vanish.

When a pause in their conflict appeared, I tried again: “Bran”, both in a vain attempt to provoke another ball of fire and to finally finish my initial task.

Phuma nodded, so I figured it was okay.

The last stooge had been woken by our increasingly loud gathering. Short, black hair on his head, he came thundering into the room. Only to immediately turn around after seeing everything being fine. His lack of pants in front of Auria may have been a contributing factor for him to initiate a quick departure.

Phuma pointed at the closed leather flap and said: “Erik”.

For a moment I sat in disbelief: “We have a Dragon-slayer-wannabe, an angel, a disfigured cat and fucking ‘Erik’. What a lineup!”

On the outside I calmly, and perfectly repeated Erik’s name.

We sat together and continued my language lessons, until Erik and Phuma had to leave.

I still had trouble moving around, even though I could now communicate at a basic level, proper crawling still eluded me. As a consequence certain indignities had to continue... for a time.

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Days later, it became obvious that my new family had no plans to sell me. Weaning me off breast milk had been a necessity, since Auria was useless in that department. My stomach hurt like crazy, which made it harder to sleep. They had fed me small pieces of well-cooked meat, which for some reason had failed to sate me in the beginning. Now it worked, but the mess was horrible.

My inner ear seemed to work well enough, so I tried to skip crawling. Thank god for the furs everywhere, otherwise my existence may have ended prematurely.

I had found a word for potty/toilet that Auria understood. Now I could pull off a reenactment of a cat, by crawling to the leather flap and calling for her. Slightly less of my dignity was shaved off every time. Considering the alternative, that was far from a large achievement.

My hand had been a bit swollen after dragging it through pop’s magic fart, but it had healed completely. Which was great, but it also meant that the silvery bullshit became more visible. I was going to try to keep it hidden for as long as possible.

Phuma, just like his namesake, was an avid hunter. Erik… less so. Nonetheless he was good at dressing the kill. Most animals around here seemed to be large-, to enormous birds. Odd, but what did I know?

The old man, Bran, tried to teach me a series of hand-movements when Auria left him to watch over me. “I’m not sure he’s supposed to be doing that, but he seems awfully excited whenever I imitate him perfectly. I hope it has something to do with creating a lukewarm ball of plasma”.

I am learning words at a decent speed. Following proper conversations is still impossible, but if they talk with me, I can very often understand what they want to tell me. Talking in more than single words or short, prefabricated sentences is still too much for me.

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A month passed. Snow had piled up to an unreasonable height. Phuma stored kills under layers of snow next to the entrance. If he had not done that, we might have starved to death.

Our stone tower is sitting on a hill, the surrounding area is covered in even deeper snow.

“How do humans here survive winters like this? This is extreme for everyone, even Inuit.”

I could finally ask coherent questions and get decent answers back. One of the first things I asked was the purpose of the radioactive stone, its current location and its origin.

Supposedly it kept away bad spirits/monsters/evil animals and much more. Probably superstitious nonsense, I was the newbie in this land, so I just tried to ask them to keep it in an enclosed space. Just in case.

I asked Brad about the orb of fire, but I only got “It’s magic”, out of him. Stubborn git. Then I asked him to teach me his supposed ‘magic’. He got excited and told me about feeling a cold feeling in the back of my mind or something, taught me a set of movements my body failed to perform and left me to my own devices. “I’m not even a full year old and I’ve already got homework. Great, what a life!”

Auria is much more pleasant to be around than anyone I met back on earth.

I finally came to terms with my departure from Terra, Phuma brought back a gigantic lizard that had frozen to death. Definitely not earth. The thing exploded into a fiery inferno when poked with a sharp stick. Cooking it for a long time made it taste kinda like chicken.

Not bad, not good, just kinda bland.

Deep frying it afterwards would’ve probably helped.

Time passed, the biting cold got even worse, the snow gained several layers of frozen ice-sheets on top.

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