Chapter 3 - School Cliques

I awoke the next morning to find the room dry, and void of any evidence from the previous night’s experimentation. Ciel must have cleaned it up after I fell unconscious from mana exhaustion.

Speaking of mana, I need to see if my aggregate mana has increased. I should stick to using a single spell in the future so I have a baseline to compare with. Ciel was across the room and sleeping like the dead, which is probably from mopping up our mess.

Almost like clockwork, Chey came in and we went through our morning routine of changing, feeding, and playing. I’m almost 6 months old at this point, so I start saying basic words that she repeats a lot in order to maintain my façade of a slightly gifted baby. Her expression was priceless when she first heard me say ‘Chey’. It reminded me of when my daughter, Leah, had first called me ‘papa’. In her excitement, she woke the other children sleeping in the room. Turning red from embarrassment, she quickly apologized to the shell-shocked orphans for waking them earlier than normal, and went to prepare breakfast.

After everyone had shaken off their grogginess, and left for the den to go play, I began testing the limits of my mana. I chose to cast a high temperature fireball as it would merely dissipate when I exhausted my mana completely. With my current amount of mana, I’m able to keep the spell active for ten minutes before I start feeling heavy, and another 2 minutes before I lose consciousness.

I wake up a few hours later to Chey lifting me from the crib, right on schedule. As if intentionally trying to foil my plan for the day, she moved me to the den with the other kids. Tch, now my plans are foiled. I try not to admit it, but I feel as though I’m acting more immature each day. To go from 63 years old to newborn is something everyone wishes for at least once in their lives. Maybe I should put some thought into making the most out of this second chance until I can figure out how to return to my world.

Having been sat down in the den, I took some time to observe the other children. I’ve been so absorbed in getting used to various things about my body, that I never really had a chance to learn anything else.

The Demi-humans were the ones with the partial animal anatomy, like Ciel for example. It wasn’t only limited to cats apparently as there was a 5 year old raccoon Demi-human named Rukh running around. It makes me wonder how many other variations there are.

The others playing with Rukh were: Talia and Ulrich, the human children, and Thurr, the dwarf. Apart from Rukh, they were aged 7, 6, and 9, respectively. Elena, the elf girl, who didn’t speak by the way, was reading on the other side of the room trying to pay as little attention as possible to the other children.

I sat there, in the center of the floor, stacking some blocks like a good little baby whilst observing the kids, when Ciel finally rose from the dead. He groggily made his way over to me and plopped down beside me.

“Thank you for cleaning all that up last night Ciel.”

“What are you talking about? Do you really think I had time to clean all of that up before Chey came running into the room?”

“Then what happened?”

“Chey came running in and I told her the truth.”

“You…!”

“I told her I was practicing magic and that I was sorry that I’d made a mess.”

“Does that ‘thank you’ still stand?”

“Good kitty.”

“Now that’s just rude.”

“Heh, sorry. Thank you, Ciel.”

Ciel is a good kid; I think I can trust him from now on.

While we were talking, a leather ball flew at us from across the room. I didn’t know how much physical damage this body could take, so I panicked and raised my hand about to cast water ball, but Ciel dashed in front of me, pushing my hand down. The ball was made out of rough leather, and hit him hard enough for the ‘ping’ to reverberate in my eardrums.

The ball came from the group of kids and the two human children were playing ‘keep away’ with Elena and her book. Why do kids have to act like this? Thurr, the dwarf child stepped forward with the look of contempt.

“Hey what’s a sub-human like you thinking!? Our ball is filthy now!”

Ciel whipped his head back around and jumped at the dwarf, but before he could get to him, Chey walked through the door.

“Stop.”

The whole room stopped breathing except for one: the physical manifestation of terror incarnate. The slow pace she was taking, coupled with how she was visibly trying, and failing, to conceal her anger. When she reached the two of them, she snatch up Ciel and his face up to her level.

“What have I told you about fighting?”

“But, he-…”

“What did I tell you about fighting.”

“I’m sorry Chey. I won’t do it again.”

“Good boy, now apologize to Thurr.”

Dejectedly, Ciel apologized to the bearded boy who was wearing a nasty smile that was hard to notice unless you were staring at it from my level. I noticed the elf girl stealing away to the shared bedroom in the commotion.

After Ciel received his punishment, Chey came over and picked me up to feed me.

“I don’t know what to do Cal. I know that we’re a little isolated out here, but we’re not far away from town and I need to help these kids find families of their own.”

I let out an ‘Mmm’ to try and reassure her as best as a baby can and she just gave me a wry smile.

She set me down in the crib after I’d eaten my fill and then left with Elena to get the other kids’ dinner prepared. Ciel joined me just after Chey had left. Apparently part of his punishment was being sent to bed with no dinner.

“Do not be too mad at Chey, she didn’t know any better.”

“I know Cal. It just makes me mad is all. Oh, and I’m sure you’ve heard me use compound words a lot. Would you mind using them? It sounds so… weird hearing a 6 month old baby talk like that.”

“Is ‘don’t’ correct in this case?”

“Yup. Also try using ‘you’re’, ‘your’, ‘hasn’t’, and ‘won’t’.”

“I’ll work on it. Do you want to try learn some wind magic with me? I don’t think we’ll get caught with that”

With a plan laid out, I told him that I needed to check something tonight, before they all finished dinner, and that I’d run out of mana again, so we’d be learning wind magic in the morning.

As it turns out, my theory was correct. I was able to keep the spell active for almost twice as long as this morning. Of course, that means that I was out cold… again.

I'm sorry that it took so long to get this one out. It's been one hell of a day. Let me know what you guys think and thank you to the two of you that left me reviews. I'll be taking it to heart and working on it as I go along.

Cheers and thank you for reading!