Chapter Seven

Celebratory times

"Adam do you wanna go open your presents?" My mother, Aleana, asked quickly after fumbling with the realization that she had just forgotten that it was my birthday. I found it entertaining, to say the least, watching her face go red from embarrassment as Michal looked over at her with a look of obvious dumbfoundment that she had forgotten her own child's fifth birthday.

Deciding that I had had enough of their 'amusement,' I responded, childishly, giding, "Yay, I want presents." Immediately after, I remembered how uncomfortable it made me speaking like that. It felt inherently wrong to be acting like a child at the age that I actually was considering my past life.

After the three of us made our way to the tiny living room, I noticed that my parents had set out a few boxes that looked to be… wrapped. The wrapping paper -at least that's what I assumed it was- was a simple brown paper wrapped around the present in a slipshod manner. Instead of the colorful presentation that was common on earth, the gifts my parents had presented me were lackluster in their presentation, to say the least.

Mostly pushing past the look of the presents, I made my way over to them and looked over to my parents, hopefully pleading with my eyes to let me open the presents. I had never been on to get overly excited for trivial things like birthday presents. Still, I was extremely eager to open my presents for some odd reason. It could have been that living as a child for five years now has started to make me more immature, either that or I was just excited to be receiving presents from parents again. Hell, it may be both.

Before opening my presents, I made sure to look back at my parents again and ask, "Can I open them?!"

Even with both of my parents' tired faces, they both gave their biggest smiles before saying in almost perfect sync, "Go ahead, you can open them." Each of their eyes shone just as much as I could imagine mine shining. Both sitting there intently watching as I grabbed the first present.

Cautiously I picked up the present and gave it a slight shake before examining it. Even with the messy wrapping paper slightly obscuring the dimensions of the object, you could tell that it was about thirty centimeters wide and forty-five to fifty centimeters in length.

Overall it was a nice sized present with a good heft to it. Curiosity getting the better of me, I tore the paper off the item with reckless abandon revealing a book.

Moving my mouth without thinking, I asked, "Dad is this the book you wer-" I slapped my mouth, realizing that I had just outed my dad for telling me about one of the presents he was getting me.

Every fiber of Michal's being stiffened as he slowly turned his head to look at my mom. The room had become deathly quiet with the revelation that I had accidentally spilt upon my mom. To be honest, I was half expecting to hear my father's neck squeak like it was a door hinge with how slow he was turning his head.

Surprising both I and my father, Aleana burst out laughing. In between breaths, she said, "Oh that reaction was wonderful. Did you guys not think that I knew you were talking about that by the window." Laughing to herself a bit more, she sarcastically breathed out, "I have ears you know."

Astonished was personally the only word that could come to my mind. Obviously not at the fact that she had ears. That is pretty obvious. The look on my dad's face also confirmed that he was surprised that she had known he was getting me a book. Well, I can only assume that it was about the book… not her having ears.

"Good god are you boys gonna close your mouths or are you just going to sit there and gawk at me."

"Of course, we are going to be surprised. Adam and I thought that we were being sneaky when we were talking about the book," my father sputtered.

"Don't worry I hear everything," my mother said ominously. After letting her words hang in the air for just a moment, she quipped, "I'm just kidding," before falling into laughter.

As they began to talk about how 'omnipresent' my mother was about the events going on inside our humble little abode, I examined my new book a little more thoroughly.

I noticed a few things about it. Firstly, the book was titled "The Guiding Hand of Magic," and it appeared to be a textbook of sorts. It was similar to the textbooks that appeared in my past life. They had large pages and a thick spine filled to the brim with pages that I had begun to sift through. There was some basic information in the book, such as the classes of mages. Long-distance defensive mages, long-distance offensive mages, then there were the mid-range variants of each defense and offense. What surprised me more was that there was no mention of any close-range mages from the little bit that I had seen. There was a brief description on how to fight a sword-faring non-mage, but that was the only mention that I had seen of a close combat fighter. The book also went into the different elements that I had learned about earlier and simple spells to test your affinity for each element.

I thought to myself about how I would have to try those affinity spells whenever I had successfully become a mage. With my thought thoroughly derailed by talking about mages, I remembered that I was on the cusp of becoming a mage. By my estimation, it would take me around two weeks at the max for me to become a mage. It was even sooner than my father, who had been hailed as a prodigy by my mother, had awakened, giving me a giddy feeling of anticipation for when that day finally comes.

Realizing that I had derailed, I came back to the book in my hands. I could have sworn that there was something scurrying across the cover, but when I looked, I just saw an extremely faint glow in one spot of the book. Curious as to what it was, I turned the book over to get a better look at it, and the glow vanished. Trying not to think more about it, I just chalked it up to the light hitting it at a weird angle.

After determining that I had spent sufficient time skimming through and examining the book, I reached for another one of my presents and started unwrapping.

This one was larger and heavier than the book. It was about seventy-five centimeters in length, and it was extremely thin. It was like one of my parents, most likely my father, based on the wrapping job that was even worse than the others, had wrapped up a long pipe.

I turned around to look at my parents only to see my mother looking at the present almost as curiously as I was, and my father gleaming at me with a big smile, obviously plotting something though I didn't know what he was up to yet. With curiosity getting the better of her, my mother said in her motherly way, "Why don't you open your present Adam?"

Responding to her question, I said, "I am. I just wanted to look at it a little." With that, I grabbed the wrapping paper and started tearing it open.

Inside the brown paper, there was an item made of wood, and at least the bottom of it appeared to be something like I had thought. Something like a round wooden pole. Seeing that confused me even more. What could this be? Confused as I was, I began to open it further. Whenever I saw the edge fall in, I realized that I wasn't looking at some random wooden stick I was looking at the handle of something.

Noticing that it was a handle, I quickly tore off the rest of the stiff brown paper to reveal something that I had been extremely fond of in my past life.

A wooden practice sword.

I had quite a few types of weapons back on earth, but my favorite was always either fighting with my fist or using a sword. I may not have been particularly good with a sword, always preferring to use hand-to-hand combat because that is what was drilled into my head during my years in the military. However, I did still enjoy the practice of using them.

In my house, there was a rack with that I kept some of my favorite keepsakes. Things like my parents' rings, the rubber duck I was given when I was still a boy -well, the first time I was- and one of my swords.

Seeing the wooden practice sword brought back a flood of memories, all the good that came from them, the people I had met, but also the bad, the times that I had to leave people behind. All of those memories sent tears to my eyes, it wasn't many, but my mom somehow knew even with my back to her. She came up and sat behind me before asking, "are you ok? Did you get a paper cut?"

That was before she saw what I had in my hand. After witnessing the sword I was holding, she turned to my father and scolded, "Why did you get him a weapon Michal? What in the world is he going to use that for!?"

"Well I just th-thought that I would teach him how to fight with it a little before he becomes a mage. Either that or if he never becomes a mage he can get good with a sword and still be able to protect himself."

"Yes I would understand that, BUT HE IS FIVE! He doesn't need a sword at five."

Trying to think quick on my feet for a reason to keep my newly acquired sword, I said to my mother, who at all but forgotten that I was crying just a moment ago, "But I wike my sword. It's cool and now I can be strong like dad."

This had seemed to throw my mom off of her game because she looked at me with a thoughtful gaze. It took her a little while to finally respond, but I was nonplussed by her reaction when she did. She had said yes. I was fully expecting that I would have to pull out the puppy eyes to convince her to let me keep it.

"Yay! Thankyou mommy!" I said gleefully before bolting over to my mom to wrap my arms around her in a tight hug.

"Your welcome sweetie," she answered as she returned my hug.

My father made his way down from the couch to the floor where we were both sitting before joining in on our hug, jokingly saying, "Why wasn't I invited to the group hug?"

After giggling along with my mother and father for some time, I gradually went back to opening presents. I only got two more things apart from the book and sword. My mother was the person that got the other two gifts, so they weren't as extravagant as my father's, but I still appreciated them.

She got me another book, except this wasn't a magic book. It was a simple storybook with interesting talkies of the hero slaying the mighty villain. The next thing that she got me was a new set of fancy clothes. The last thing she gave me came out of her pocket and wasn't set on the table but had to be handed straight to me.

She looked at me thoughtfully before saying, "This is a present from both your father and me, but this ring was something that we have had in our family for a very long time."

My father hoped where she stopped saying, "My father gave it to me when I turned five and his father before him and down the line, our hope," He continued. At the same time, he looked and opened his hand towards my mom, "is that you can do the same when you get older and have your own son."

"Ok, whenever I'm old like you and mom I will give it to my kid," I shot back, trying to sound only a little confused despite being at a total loss as to why they would give a five-year-old something like this.

Responding with a joyful smile, my mother responded with, "Exactly, now why don't I make you boys some breakfast."

With her resigning to make me and my father a morning meal, we were left seated on a couch with nothing else to do. I said that I wanted to go read one of my new books, but I had some ulterior motives. I wanted to make more progress on my mana. I knew that I would only have around an hour to practice, but even that was quite a lot compared to the usual mere minutes that I get.

I made my way back to my room and sat myself on the hard floor like I was earlier when my father had first picked me up this morning. There wasn't much more progress to make in awakening as a mage. The only thing left was to make the mana brighter. It already filled the entirety of my body. All I had to do now was make it denser, thus making it brighter. I didn't mind that at all because, to me, increasing the brightness was the easiest part about awakening as a mage.

Some books that I had read talked about how that was the most challenging part about becoming a mage was the density of your mana and evolving it to its next stage. It may become harder after I awaken, but if it doesn't, it may not be as hard as I thought to become a strong fighter.

I sat down and meditated for around thirty minutes before I started to feel it. It started off as a gradual thing but slowly got more pronounced. It was a slight tingle under my skin at first but escalated to my whole body feeling like it was vibrating, then it happened.

It was like a wave of air pulsed off of my body. It ruffled my bedsheets and lifted me ever so slightly off the ground. After the little boat off the ground, I closed my eyes again in excitement and took a good look at myself.

I had done it. I had awoken at the age of five, earlier than even my dad, who had awoken quite early for human standards. I opened my eyes and quietly giggled to myself before muttering, "I did it. I fucking did it."