Morning ambled in through the window without so much as a by-your-leave and settled on the wooden table, a dusty spectator to my third official day of life in this world. In other existences, I've been greeted by the searing glare of twin suns, by the greenish light filtered through an alien ocean, or by the pale, dying sun of Lothric hanging over a kingdom of ash. The shy, watery light of Demacia, however, had a unique quality: it seemed to be apologising for its own existence. My new guardian, the winged woman with the expression of someone who's lost the keys to paradise and been demoted to gatekeeper, was staring at my basket as if it were an unsolvable logic problem. An equation with too many variables, all of them noisy and prone to leakage.
She had established a routine, a desperate act to impose order on the chaos I represented. Morgana, I had discovered, was a creature of method and constancy. Her life, prior to my triumphant arrival, probably flowed with the predictable regularity of an ancient river. But the introduction of an unpredictable and occasionally damp variable (yours truly) had turned her calculated existence into an exercise in chaotic improvisation. And I, from my wicker throne, was thoroughly enjoying the spectacle.
[Monitoring vital signs remotely. Cortisol levels are slightly elevated, consistent with low-grade stress. Sleep patterns were disturbed on three separate occasions during the nocturnal cycle, corresponding with your vocalisations of hunger. She is exhibiting a state of hypervigilance. In short, she is discovering the joys of forced parenthood.]
The first item on the day's agenda was, as always, hydraulic maintenance. Morgana arranged the table with the precision of a surgeon preparing her operating theatre. Clean cloths, folded into perfect squares. A ceramic basin of water which she warmed with a brief, focused touch of her hand, the steam rising in lazy spirals. Yesterday, she had been caught off guard by my liquid counter-offensive, a rookie tactical error. Today, she came prepared. The look on her face was that of a general who would not make the same mistake twice.
"Step one, cleaning," she muttered to herself, her low, gravelly voice sounding more like a battle plan than a domestic chore.
She executed the manoeuvre with improved strategy. Instead of unwrapping me completely, exposing her flank, she unfurled the soiled cloth with one hand while keeping a clean, dry one positioned like a shield with the other. It was an ingenious defensive move, born of the bitter experience of the day before. Worthy of a shinobi from the Hidden Leaf, had they dedicated themselves to the noble art of nappy-changing instead of political assassination.
With the clean-up successfully concluded (for her) and with no tactical incidents (for me), we moved on to the next logistical challenge: feeding. Yesterday's device, the leather waterskin with a makeshift cloth teat, was on the table, but she was scowling at it like an engineer whose prototype has failed a crucial stress test.
[The nutrient flow was inconsistent, causing frustration for both parties. She has observed your patterns of suckling and rejection. The subject is iterating on the initial design to optimise nutrient delivery.]
She vanished for a moment into a dark corner of the cottage, a place where bundles of dried herbs, carving tools, and strangely shaped artefacts hung. The sound of a small saw scraping against something hard reached my ears. She returned with something unexpected: the small horn of a fawn, sanded and polished until it was smooth and translucent, the base sealed with beeswax. With the tip of a sharp knife, she carved a tiny hole in the narrower end, a work of precision that contrasted with the power I felt emanating from her. Then, carefully, she filled it with the warm goat's milk. It was a bottle. Primitive, odd, but undeniably a bottle.
She tested it on her own wrist first, her expression focused. One drop, then two. Satisfied with the flow, she brought it to me. The horn was smooth against my lips, and the flow of milk was steady and controllable. It was a significant improvement on the sodden strip of linen.
[Noted. Your appreciation for industrial design in a pre-industrial world is, as ever, peculiar.]
Then came the burping ritual, a procedure she approached with the seriousness of a bomb disposal expert. She lifted me against her shoulder. The fabric of her tunic was coarse, but it smelt of ozone, earth, and an ancient sadness that was oddly comforting. One large, steady hand supported my head while the other patted my back lightly. The muffled clink of her chains was the only rhythmic accompaniment, a lullaby made of iron and regret. An absolutely epic burp escaped me, echoing in the quiet cottage with the force of a miniature thunderclap.
Morgana gave a small start, her shoulder flinching beneath my cheek. She still wasn't used to the sudden and... volcanic sounds such a small body could produce.
[Gas production: within normal parameters. Guardian's reaction: moderate surprise, indicating the onset of habituation. The room's acoustics remain excellent for demonstrations of vocal power.]
In the mid-afternoon, Morgana looked at the near-extinguished brazier and the nearly empty waterskin of milk. She frowned, the line between her brows deepening. She pulled on a dark cloak that seemed woven from shadows, the hood covering part of her face and accentuating her mystique.
"Two minutes," she said, nodding her chin towards the door. The voice was casual, like someone saying they were just popping out to the garden to fetch an herb.
[Estimated operational radius: low. Probable objective: replenishment of firewood from the nearby pile and water from the stream fifty metres away. The probability of permanent abandonment is 0.02%.]
The door clicked shut, and the character of the silence changed. It was no longer safe; it was filled with the pronoun "what if". In so many lives, this was the moment. The door that doesn't open again. The quiet desertion. The beginning of the end. I've been left in temples, in arid deserts, on the docks of plague-ridden port cities. The excuse was always different to find food, to throw off pursuers, "it's for your own good", but the sound of the closing door was always the same.
I counted the seconds by the slow drip of water from the roof into a basin and the occasional crackle of wood in the brazier. My infant body was calm, programmed to trust. But my soul, the old, weary spectator, felt a familiar clench in what passed for its heart.
[Analysing behavioural patterns... The consistency of her actions thus far indicates a high degree of personal responsibility and a self-imposed sense of duty.]
Time dragged, malleable and cruel. Each second stretched, thin and taut like a lute string about to snap. The sound of the wind outside, neutral before, now sounded lonely and mocking. The shadow in the corner, once just an absence of light, seemed a little darker, a little hungrier. The memory of a cold orphanage in a world choked by industrial smog surfaced, followed by being abandoned to a pack of sand-wolves under a blistering sun. The circumstances change, the feeling does not.
[Your tendency for catastrophising is reaching notable levels today.]
The wooden handle turned on the ninety-third second. The door opened, and the pale afternoon light spilled in, framing Morgana's dark silhouette. She was carrying an armful of dry wood and a pail of fresh stream water. She entered, kicked the door shut behind her, and for a moment, just stood there, letting her eyes adjust to the gloom. She shot me a quick, objective glance, as if to check I hadn't spontaneously combusted in her absence.
She moved about the cottage, replenishing the fire and water with a quiet, unfussy efficiency. But I noticed. There was a slight flush to her pale cheeks, a breath a little faster than normal, almost imperceptible. She hadn't walked. She had run.
Night arrived unhurriedly, bringing with it another round of routine, and then, the quiet.
Morgana did not sing lullabies. Lullabies imply an optimism about the future she clearly did not possess. Instead, she sat in the chair by the hearth and began to polish one of her chains with an oiled cloth. The sound of the fabric on the metal was soft and rhythmic. One, two. Slide. One, two. Slide.
I watched her hands in the firelight. They were the hands of a warrior and a healer, a duality written in calluses and fine scars. But the motion was gentle, almost reverent.
[Preliminary spectral analysis... inconclusive. The material absorbs light in an anomalous fashion. It possesses the physical properties of an earthly metal forged under immense pressure, but with an energy signature that suggests an extraplanar origin or a celestial forge. They appear designed to both contain and channel energy.]
[Negative. They are a tool. And, most likely, a weapon.]
My attention was drawn back to her. She had stopped polishing. Her eyes were fixed on the flames, but I knew, with the certainty of a thousand lifetimes, that she wasn't seeing them. Her gaze was a thousand years away, lost in a memory of fire and loss. The sorrow on her face, when she thought she was alone, was so profound and vast it was almost a physical presence in the room. It was the ache of a loss so fundamental it had cracked her very soul.
A low, guttural sound escaped me. It wasn't a cry of need, nor a whimper of discomfort. It was a sound of involuntary empathy, an instinctual reaction from my infant form to the wave of pure melancholy emanating from her like the cold from a tomb.
The sound pulled her from her trance. She blinked, her focus returning to the small cottage, to the here and now. Her eyes met mine. For a moment, the vast sorrow was still there, raw and exposed in her gaze. Then, like a mask gently falling into place, the expression of controlled calm returned.
She stood and came to me. Her hand, smelling of linseed oil and cold metal, rested gently on my forehead. The touch was surprisingly warm, a stark contrast to the aura of sadness that surrounded her.
"Shhh, little star," she whispered, the first time she had used the name since the night she found me in the forest. "The shadows are only shadows. The fire keeps them at bay."
Despite my existential cynicism, my treacherous infant body relaxed under her touch. My eyes drifted shut, not from exhaustion, but from a conscious decision to accept this moment, this small sliver of peace. The sound of the chain, the smell of oil and sorrow, the warmth of her hand. The complex and unexpected arithmetic of care.
The quiet clinking of polished metal became the heartbeat of my strange, new life. And for the first time in a long, long time, it was enough.
.