Diligent training. That’s all I did. What else are you supposed to do as a baby? The annoying pseudo-cold had become a staple of my existence. Much easier to tolerate than the constant mind-cracking pain of repeated suffocation.

At first, just prodding the little shard of ice had left me incapacitated for half an hour, then it apruptly returned to its original state. Grilling Bran with single-syllable questions had gotten me affirmation. This was a normal step in becoming a ‘magic’-user. Whatever that meant.

He always launched into long explanations to follow up my questions. I committed as much to memory as I could. Useless babble as it was to me now, eventually it could be vital to further my understanding of this world’s nature.

The white wasteland outside was rapidly ejecting itself from reality. Bushes had swollen, green buds ready to burst. My experimenting had gotten further than just getting seizures on command. I could consistently let a ghostly, faint, glowing cloud erupt from just above my chest. Initial attempts which had reached the casting phase, failed due to lacking timing. They left me with thousands of burst blood-vessels in my hand, some of them open to the air.

Risking that kind of reaction near my heart seemed dangerous at first, but it was a convenient crossroad and even catastrophic failures only damaged skin.

Bran seemed to exclusively use his hands. When asked, he explained that it kept aiming disconnected from casting. Making the entire process less stressful and exhausting. Magic seems to be exclusively used for fire or ice, at least in Bran’s place of origin. He had been utterly fascinated by my early successes. Waving his hand through the faintly glowing cloud and dispersing it before I could study it properly.

“I’ve reached a standstill in my understanding. I should focus on increasing my vocabulary, so Bran can assist me with my bottleneck. Wouldn’t want reason and logic to get between my study of magic.”

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Fresh grass peeked through wilted husks of its forbearers. Auria stood outside with me in her arms, closed eyes, relishing in the warm breeze. The nights had gotten much shorter, icy winds sneaking their way through gaps in stone had been replaced by the refreshing and nauseating smell of spring.

A sound from behind made Auria turn around.

Phuma was slowly helping Bran through the leather doorway. Carefully, slowly moving his limbs for him, to not hurt the old man.

“Still don’t understand their relationship. Seems like a son repaying a good father, but they certainly aren’t closely related.”

Wind whipped Aurias hair into my eyes. When I untangled myself, Bran was sitting on a chiseled boulder from a ruined section of the tower. Phuma leaning on the tower beside him, idly scanning the horizon.

A calm silence descended. Wind intermittently howling through the small field of stones surrounding our home.

Bran hesitantly broke the blissful silence: “The Shaá did not name the little tyke, correct?”

Phuma kicked off from the wall and answered: “They only name their children once they are certain they want to keep them... At least I think so, Eric mentioned it.”

Distaste flitted across Bran’s face: “We should ask him. That seems crass, even for them... Selea’s mercy upon them.”

“I will go get him.”

Phuma climbed back through the leather entrance.

Auria sat down next to Bran, crossing her legs. She grabbed me by the chest and raised me up into a standing position. Surprised as I was, I had to fight for a second to adjust my center of mass to make it less uncomfortable. Slowly, she placed more of my weight on my feet. Finally, she just kept her hands around me, in case I fell over.

“Woman, if I fall off this rock and faceplant, I swear I’ll find a way to haunt you!”

I stood there, wobbling slightly as I continuously adjusted my stance to not topple over.

Bran watched attentively in silence, which he immediately decided to break: “He is really small for having lived through two winters…”

“The heck old man? I was born in this year’s fall.”

“One, winter! Two, wrong”, I interjected.

“Right, certainly”, he laughed, his rough voice grating my ears.

Before I could put together a coherent series of words that would denote him my stepson, Phuma and Eric returned.

“Eric, how old did they say he was?”

“His father told us that he was born shortly before the smell of winter came upon them.”

“How many winters did he live through?”

“They did not say…”

“His father told you no name?”

“No.”

“They kept him for two years without naming him?”, Bran’s voice was coloured by disbelief.

“The decision to name… odd... children is not done lightly.

“Okay, that one actually hurt! Eric, I’ve got a stone with your boot’s name on it.”

I was crying inside, but the slight smile never left my face. Eric continued unabated.

“Just look at him. His eyes give me the creeps. Constantly moving around and whenever they do settle down, they look at you like he is trying to peel off your skin. He is evil!”

“Nice job judging a book by its cover. You’re not wrong about the evil part, but imagine if I was innocent. Rejecting a child because of the way they move their eyes. Holy Jes-”

“You say’n I’m evil ya git?!” Phuma became agitated and fell into some kind of bastardized dialect, which was barely understandable to me.

“No. You are a hunter. You move your eyes like that for a reason. He is a newborn!”

A dangerous silence hung in the air... dangerous to me, that is.

“God forgive me for this deception, but I wanna live.”

I plastered a smile on my face: “Aura, Fuma, Bran, Erik, love you!”

“Not exactly a lie, they’re better than my original family. At least they haven’t started abusing and beating me yet. I just wish it’d been natural and not forced like this.”

The atmosphere noticeably improved and Auria finally let me sit down.

“What are we going to call him?” Bran eventually asked.

“Dunno? ‘Creep’ maybe?”

“Eric you absolute motherfu-!”

While I was struggling with my outrage I noticed that Auria had picked up a stick and was drawing something in the sandy dirt. It looked suspiciously like some kind of writing-system.

“If that’s just different words for ‘creep’, I’mma be outstandingly disappointed in you Auria.”

I tried to divert Bran’s attention to Auria’s drawing, using babybabble.

“We cannot in good conscience name a baby something as detestable as that.”

“What about Crépe or Crëëp?” Eric tried.

“Literally all you did to that word was to change the original pronunciation.”

Intensifying my original efforts to gain Bran’s attention, saw me stand up and walk over to Bran on wobbly legs. I slapped him on the thigh and pointed at Auria’s drawing.

“Hmm... Doyle, Fred, Kain and York?”

“Auria! Why?!”

“My bad, that says; Hurk. Does it not?” Bran corrected himself.

“How is that any better?!”

Eric inserted himself again: “Doyle is too dignified for him. Hurk too manly, just look at him, he’s tiny. York makes him sound like a wise leader… guess that just leaves Kain.”

“Wait, what?! How is Fred in any way similar to-?”

Bran agreed: “Yeah, Kain seems like a good name, he does feel like a hunter.”

“Cain was a farmer ya dips-”

To my horror, Auria nodded in agreement.

“Anyone disagree? Phuma?”

“Could be better. At least you kept Eric from naming him… I guess it’s nice to have a fellow hunter.”

Eric walked back inside, probably still miffed at having his prejudice against a baby dismissed.

Auria picked me up and put me back on her lap.

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This world might have ghosts. I woke up in the middle of the night hearing faint squeaking and whining sounds. When I tried to grab Auria's hair or clothes I found nothing.

“She probably went to investigate the sound.”

I got out of bed, my naked feet pattering on the cool copplestone. My investigation came to an abrupt halt, when I reached the door.

A heavy wooden door with iron holding the boards together. Auria’s room was inside the only original, remaining side-room of the tower. Which meant that Phuma and Eric simply had repaired the original door, instead of replacing it with a leather curtain.

I pushed against the door. It did not move an inch. Giving up after a few seconds, I instinctively moved into a prime spot for an ambush, then remembered that I was a baby and hid where the door would leave a gap if thrown open.

I ended up falling asleep while standing up, leaning against the wall. The sounds had long-since quieted, but my paranoid mind kept me in hiding… what would be hiding, if someone opened the door.

Auria found me sunken against the wall in the morning, dragged Phuma with her, who woke me up. He then gave me a lecture, while I frantically tried to explain my actions.

He would have none of it.

“This world is taking a toll on my nerves. Back home ghosts were just imaginary, here magic is real. Also, sleeping like that was a bad idea. Every bone in my body hurts.”

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Eric made a small field of tilled dirt at the foot of the hill. The area was marshy for a long time after the snow melted. I waddled my way down there and inspected his handiwork.

The soil was dark and thick. Something that was in stark contrast to the sandy soil at the top of the hill, where our tower stood.

Eric seemed like a very reserved person, so bothering him always forced me to suppress an automatic psychological compulsion to leave him alone.

“Yadda, yadda, loner code; We leave each other alone, I guess.

My curiosity ended up squashing all psychological barriers: “Eric, what you, planting?”

He seemed somewhat surprised at my interest, stopping the rhythmic movement of his wooden digging implement: “Zitterweed, Harnicorn and a few other things.”

Thanks to his answer, my stock of questions had increased by a factor of three.

“Make food taste better?”, I tried.

He smiled patronizingly, with a bit of sadness mixed in: “No, Zitterweed is necessary so we do not lose our teeth... living out here. Harnicorn keeps meat edible over the summer.”

“That first thing might be scurvy. Dunno how a plant is going to keep meat fresh. I’ll see, I guess.

I tried to use Eric’s workload as an excuse for more variety in my magic testing. I ended up with a bleeding foot, from trying to form a cutting edge at the bottom of my sole. Eric panicked when he saw my blood stain the grass and carried me back to Auria.

“Should’ve seen that one coming, physical interaction like that is unheard of in my current data on magic. Trying to apply it on the extremity which is the furthest away from the point of origin was just asking for disaster.”

I got scolded by Phuma again. I am starting to see a pattern here.

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The surrounding area is positively swarming with lizards. They are everywhere, even inside the tower. Spring had started normally, plants started growing, insects exploded everywhere, birds arrived from the south. Then… boom! Lizards everywhere!

Swarms of tiny bloodsuckers were the first to go. Vanished from one week to the next. Then the sound of crickets grew quieter and less frequent. Finally lizards swarmed into the tower from every crevice.

They are entirely harmless. Still... incredibly annoying to get woken up by a neon-green asshat who has trouble distinguishing my eyelashes from a fly.

“It’s not like the discount mural on my hand keeps me from murdering them all. It just seems like a waste of time to clean up the mess afterwards and it would probably leave my normal parts traumatized. Not even mentioning the impact on my relationship with the others. Guess I’ll have to live with the tiny green dicks everywhere.”

Bran and Phuma were annoyed with the lizards too: “Never seen them show up this early before. Must be bad luck...”

“We are going to need more Harnicorn at this rate. I’m going to search for a wild population.”

“If bad comes to worse, we could probably survive on grass-lizards alone”, Bran said with his face stretched into contemplative disgust.

“Yeah, nah! Let’s keep that one between picking berries and eating the kid”, Phuma said with a playful grin in my direction.

I gave him an exhausted wave in response. Warding off lizards all night, had taken its toll.

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