The first thing I ever owned in this world was a blanket that smelled like goat.
Soft, scratchy, and slightly damp—it was tucked around me every night, like a linen cocoon of disappointment. I hated that blanket. But I also loved it. Because I had nothing else.
My new parents, bless them, meant well. They were kind, warm, and patient. Just also perpetually muddy.
Father had calloused hands and a laugh like rolling barrels. Mother had soft eyes and the uncanny ability to interpret every gurgle I made as a divine message.
"She's clearly saying 'milk,'" she would insist, even when I was very obviously saying, "Why am I a baby again, and also a girl, and also covered in mystery porridge?!"
Not that I could say any of that. Not out loud. My tongue at that point was roughly as coordinated as a drunken eel.
The breastfeeding never got less weird.
Yes, yes, natural bonding, essential nutrients, shut up. But I still had the memories of a fully grown man. And the first time Mother popped open her shirt like it was just another Tuesday, I think a part of me died.
I remember going stiff. Not in that way—shut up—but just... frozen. Like a deer caught in headlights. Or a programmer staring at untested legacy code.
"There, there," she murmured. "You must be so hungry."
Was I? Maybe. But I was also spiritually unprepared for this kind of immersion therapy.
I closed my eyes and mentally recited prime numbers until the world made sense again.
Two. Three. Five. Seven. Eleven. Thirteen.
Nope. Still awkward.
Worse, I started forming mental tickets, like a bug tracker: "#002: Involuntary Feeding Session Crashed Moral Framework. Severity: Critical."
Then there were the diaper changes.
Dear future historians, let it be known: changing the diaper of someone with adult-level shame should be a war crime.
It wasn't the act itself. Babies poop. I get it. Biology happens. But knowing what was happening, feeling it, and being physically unable to do anything about it?
That was torture.
Every time someone opened my diaper, I wanted to melt into the wooden floorboards. Or at least install a privacy setting. Anything.
One of the teenage farmhands—Milo, the lanky one—always made the same grimace when it was his turn. The kind of look you make when you step in something you hope isn't alive.
"You've got a gift, kid," he said once while wiping me off. "A real talent for destruction."
I tried to scowl. It came out as a hiccup.
I briefly considered trying to invent some sort of self-cleaning diaper rune. Then I remembered I couldn't write yet, let alone etch glyphs.
Next time, I thought. Next time.
Some nights, I just lay awake in my cradle, staring at the rafters.
I had been a man. A tired, overworked, underpaid systems admin. I liked coffee, disliked people, and had once built a working PC from spare parts and duct tape.
Now? Now I was a living, breathing cherub with an unreasonable amount of eyelashes.
No cheat menu. No guidebook. Just diapers, boob milk, and a strange little world full of magic I couldn't touch yet.
What the hell kind of isekai was this?
I started naming the ceiling beams to cope. The crooked one was Larry. The mossy one was Diane. The one with the spider family? Webflix.
At six months, I managed to roll myself under a chair.
Not intentionally. I was trying to reach for a spoon. It gleamed like polished silver under the afternoon sun, and I had decided it was my Excalibur.
What followed was a slow, determined wriggle, half inch by half inch, until gravity and friction did their thing and I slid head-first under the legs of the table.
And got stuck.
I didn't cry.
I refused to cry.
Instead, I made angry squeaking noises until someone noticed and fished me out like a very grumpy turnip.
I still got a cookie for "adventuring." I accepted it with dignity.
My name solidified around this time. Elara. Not bad, all things considered. Sounds vaguely celestial. Like someone who might design complicated star charts or invent a new kind of wind-powered kettle.
Mother cooed it like a prayer. "E-la-ra."
It stuck.
Father would sometimes chant it rhythmically while bouncing me in one arm and chopping onions with the other. The man was terrifyingly competent with a cleaver.
Once, he balanced me on his head like a chicken while tilling the garden. I think I imprinted on the carrot rows that day.
By one year, I had language basics. Not just mimicry, but real pattern recognition. I could pick out verbs, link concepts. I couldn't speak well yet, but I understood.
Which made every baby talk moment even more insulting.
"Who's a widdle sweetie? Is it you? Yesh it iiiis!"
I considered biting them. Repeatedly.
Instead, I started hoarding pebbles. Don't ask why. It just felt like a thing a future mage engineer would do.
Also, the smooth ones made excellent throwing ammo for future experiments. Like gravity tests. Or goat deterrents.
That spring, I saw my first rune.
A glowing circle on the stone well, faint and flickering, like a tired candle flame. I stared at it for an hour.
The lines were precise. Geometric. Intentional.
Magic. Real, working, visible magic. And no one acted like it was special. It was just there.
I fell in love immediately.
I tried to lick it.
Bad idea.
It didn't hurt, exactly. But it did zap me with a tingle that made my baby hair puff up like a dandelion.
Mother thought it was static. I knew better.
That rune had judged me.
My hands were still too clumsy for carving, but I started drawing in the dirt. Circles, triangles, strange patterns based on the glowing shapes I saw around the farm.
I made notes in gibberish—my own made-up script—and categorized things by color and shine.
Sometimes I tried to activate my little dirt runes by shouting at them.
Nothing happened.
Except once, when I yelled particularly hard, and a chicken startled so badly it ran into a wall.
I called that a win.
I began charting rune locations around the farm: over the hearth, on the barn doors, inside tool handles. Some reacted to touch. Others to sound. One particularly shady rune near the compost pit glowed red when the wind shifted.
I named it Stan.
Stan was probably evil. I respected that.
Every day that passed, I became more aware of the growing gap between my mind and my body. I had so much to say, so much to build—and yet I was still stuck in a body that couldn't properly hold a spoon without flinging it like a weaponized noodle.
But I also had time. For the first time in years, maybe decades, I wasn't racing deadlines. No broken servers, no budget cuts, no impossible timelines.
Just goats. Dirt. And magic.
And one very stubborn baby girl trying to reboot the world one scribble at a time.
More soon...