My first waking thought was that I needed to find a new hobby; waking up gasping like a resuscitated zombie was wearing out its novelty fast. However, I could tell that something was different about this time because it seemed like the wool had been thrown off my mind for the first time. I felt buzzed and invigorated with energy, so much that I could feel it at my fingertips, brimming with potential like a nocked bow.

My vision was clear and my hearing was so sublime I could hear sounds I’d never paid attention to. My olfactory perception was also acute enough I could tell what Mrs. Kaufmann had been setting for lunch before I woke up.

If the alien disembodied entity was to be believed, rather than an evolved sense of perception bordering on the supernatural, my mind could now pay attention to and react to more things than before.

A human being could only pay so much attention to their surroundings without being overwhelmed and so our brain essentially filtered much of what happened to us. Much of our working memory was devoted to concentrating on at most 4 things at a time or else we’d have cognitive overload.

Thanks to the limiter’s unlock, I could now hear the sounds of frantic steps coming up the stairs amidst the crunching of tires on gravel outside the house. While I was marveling at my newfound abilities, Mrs. Kaufmann had called someone on her cell.

Nonetheless, the first person to barge into the room was the family’s ankle-biter. Adelheid, or Heidi in short was the only bundle of boundless energy that eschewed propriety as they barged into my borrowed room.

“ Big brother Ryan!” Heidi squealed, slopping snot and tears. What was it and everyone crying all over me these days? As soon as the ginger haired girl slammed the door, they leapt into a flying tackle that would have knocked the wind out of me and outrightly slammed the back of my head against the headboard. It was thanks to my new reflexes that I caught them and leaned into the motion effectively killing their momentum. That is when I also realized she was light as a puppy―

“ There there your little highness,” I murmured, patting her back. She was bawling her eyes out, whatever had she seen to provoke such a reaction? Perhaps they’d walked in on me at the time I was insensate?

Normally, it was rude to even think about a lady’s weight but by my guesstimate, Heidi had to have weighed at least 20 kilograms. I know because I’ve lifted kettlebells with Lucas on one of his gym jaunts.

Before the incident, I wasn’t exactly a prime specimen for my age but now, I could comfortably say I had an olympic swimmer’s body of lean and toned muscle. I noticed that the polo shirt I’d been sleeping in a day before was still on me and that the sleeve had gotten noticeably tighter.

Soon enough, the Mistress of the house came into the room tutting at her progeny’s antics. She had a generous serving of food on a platter, leeks, potatoes and sausage in soup of course. With some rye bread at the side―this must be what they served in those medieval inns Lucas loved to fantasize about.

“ Good afternoon to you dearie,” Mrs. Kaufmann said, placing the platter on the bedside table. The aroma was so tantalizing my stomach couldn’t help but growl; it was understandable because I had been out of it for a day and an hour. The homely matron chuckled with mirth as she poured me a glass of cold water from the glass jug by the dresser.

“ Heidi dearie, will you give us a moment?” Mrs. Kaufmann said. Heidi let out an unintelligible grumble as she clung to me like a Koala―and yes, my polo shirt was now full of snot. Regardless of her proclivities, the little fille of the house knew better than to earn her mothers ire as she extricated her grasp amidst sniffles. It was at that moment that more footsteps came up the stairs and soon, the guest room had one too many guests.

First came the house doctor. A mid-aged brunette with motherly eyes, she was kind enough not to swamp me with a hundred questions at once as she checked by heart rate, pupil dilation and Asclepius knows what signs of my vitals. She was half of a mind to drag me to the hospital for a brain scan but I was stubborn about seeing the inside of a hospital. I don’t know what Lucas told them to hold them back from whisking me to the nearest ER but I owed him one. However, every single prod from her creased the crows feet further until she was staring at me with slit-lidded eyes.

Mrs. Kaufmann asked the question that was on everyone’s lips

“ Is he going to be okay?”

“ He’s fitter than your cows Julia―he doesn’t seem to have any lingering effects of a seizure,” she frowned as she pulled back her latex gloves. I gave Lucas a one-arched-brow over the doctor’s shoulder as she rummaged around her doctor’s case. The smell of sanitized pricked my nose soon after as she cleaned her hands.

“Hmm, If I didn’t know better I’d think he was exhausted or stressed,” she said with a frown. “Hearing about what happened to him he is lucky that is the worst to have happened. In case of anything, please give me a call, ” she prompted as she gathered her things and walked out. As soon as she was out of earshot, but well within range of my hearing, Mrs. Kaufmann herded everyone outside including Heidi. She locked the door behind her and leveled an all too knowing gaze a mother would have.

“ There is something you’re hiding…both of you,” she sighed, as she sat alongside. “I know you’ve been through hell and back and I was content to give you the space to recover, but this seems deeper than it looks,”

I squirmed under her amber eyes as I tried to keep my hands from fidgeting. I did not like where this was going―

“ Lu refuses to tell me anything, but your eyes don’t lie. You tried to…”

Her voice petered out as though she was wary of her daughter eavesdropping. But I caught it even though it had dropped to a whisper. I didn’t know what to say about that, how was I supposed to react to such a thing? Of course my immediate response was to refute it; sure I’d been down on my luck more times than I could remember but it was my life.

Gifts like it freely given came from a place unfathomable and indescribable using the frame of reference we humans could scrounge up. I feared many things, but not a mediocre or average life because, who gave anyone the right to say whether another was content or not? For every person we ever knew, when did we forget we were still strangers on the outside looking in?

“ You don’t have to worry about that Mrs Kaufmann,” I said in placation. “ I think I am going to stick around for a while―” I met her eyes with sincerity. I owed the barest amount of decency to her as a fellow human with feelings; as a mother who raised three boys and one little girl. She seemed to struggle with her words for a moment, finding none forthcoming, she enveloped me in a bone crushing hug of motherly warmth. She smelt of freshly baked rye bread, spices and home.

“ Whatever happens, you’ll always have a place to come back to okay?” she said, her voice almost breaking.

A very wise man once said “if you believe you are what you think you are, you are mistaken.” I once read that on Quora during one of my slumps. It was one of those phases I’d been trying to stoke the fires of initiative, believing myself a high functioning person who set out to do what they conceived in the morning.

I believed that the best version of us was who we were at the start of the day when the weight of reality had yet to settle fully on our shoulders. Needless to say, I burnt out—after that I always went with the flow. I decided to crest my highs and do whatever the hell it is people did with their lows.

Today was one of those highs. After wiping off the soup and bread, I got cleaned up and decided to go get some air for a change. Before that I had to fend off the mistresses’ insistence to hover over me like a mother hen, and also face some awkward stares from Lucas’ second oldest brother and father. Even little Heidi looked at me funny as if I had grown an extra head.

I didn’t see Cassandra anywhere on the compound, she must have left in her truck. I noticed the silver SUV was nowhere in the parking lot. I assumed that she was the one who’d driven off with the doctor.

All the better. I wanted to get out of the house and get the story straight between the two of us. After half an hour’s drive in Luca’s SUV , we sat in companionable silence as we stared into the Bernese Alps.

“ So…seizure huh?” I murmured, initiating the conversation.

“ What was I supposed to do, bruv?!” Lucas groaned, throwing up his hands. “ You suddenly blacked out like an android running out of power!”

“ Despite the fact, your folks were staring at me funny,” I said, recalling how Mrs. Kaufmann had severally tried to ask me something before muttering that she’d been seeing things.

“ K,” Lucas said, suddenly looking at me as if he could see through me. His hands were on my shoulders “ Have you seen yourself in the mirror lately? Noticed any changes…er, do people have a growth spurt in their tweens? I swear you grew a couple inches.”

I could only answer stupidly, “Huh?”