The adoption of Elara Starwhisper happened on a Tuesday, which I noted was poor planning on the part of whatever cosmic bureaucracy managed such things. Tuesdays were inefficient adoption days. Everyone was tired from the start of the work week. No one was emotionally prepared for major life changes.
But apparently, cosmic bureaucracy didn't consult my opinion on scheduling.
I was in my third year of existence (though only two years into this particular incarnation), sitting in the village square while Lyra spoke with the adoption official. I was nominally playing with a wooden toy that Torvin had crafted, but actually spending most of my attention on not being annoyed about the inefficient way the official was organizing paperwork.
The girl arrived via cart. She was approximately two years old, transported in a small wooden box padded with straw like a piece of cargo rather than a human child.
*This is inefficient,* I thought immediately. *The box is not designed for comfort. The straw will cause itching. She's going to be upset about the entire transport process.*
The girl was, indeed, upset. She was crying—not the gentle infant crying of someone having normal emotions, but the desperate wailing of someone who'd had a very bad time and was expressing that fact to everyone within a three-block radius.
Lyra scooped her up immediately, making the cooing sounds that apparently worked on all children regardless of their actual emotional needs. "There, there, little one. You're safe now. You're with your new family."
The girl continued crying.
"What's her name?" Lyra asked the official.
"Elara Starwhisper," the official replied, consulting a clipboard made of mundane paper and official stamps. "She comes from the Starwhisper bloodline—minor magical heritage, celestial connection, some potential for power down the line. But currently, she's just a traumatized toddler who's been through three foster families already."
"Why does she keep getting returned?" Lyra asked, her tone suggesting she wouldn't accept an easy answer.
"She's... difficult. Stubborn. Refuses to sleep through the night. Throws things when frustrated. Most families don't have the patience for that particular combination of traits."
I looked at the girl who was currently screaming her lungs out and noted: *She has emotional regulation problems similar to mine, except hers manifest as behavioral disruption rather than reality warping. She's going to be easier to manage than the official implies if she just has someone willing to accept her emotional state without immediately trying to suppress it.*
Lyra, naturally, was exactly the type of person who would accept emotional disruption without suppression. She'd been doing it with my power manifestations for two years.
"She'll be fine," Lyra said confidently. "Let's go home."
The girl—Elara—continued crying while being carried toward the house.
This was going to complicate things.
***
## Part Two: Integration Difficulties
The first week with Elara was, from my perspective, a disaster in terms of emotional regulation.
She didn't understand where she was. She didn't understand that Lyra and Torvin were her new permanent family. She didn't understand that the screaming would accomplish nothing except making her throat hurt. She screamed anyway, constantly, with the dedication of someone determined to express her frustration to the entire universe.
My response to this constant emotional chaos was not productive.
The first night, her screaming triggered my Glitch. A window rattled slightly, which could have been wind but probably wasn't. The next morning, my frustration at her continued crying caused the kettle to boil with slightly more enthusiasm than normal, releasing a burst of steam that was entirely too coordinated to be accidental.
By the third day, I'd activated my power at least seventeen times in response to her emotional state.
"She's just adjusting," Lyra explained to Torvin, while I was supposedly napping and actually listening from my crib. "Most children take time to feel safe in a new environment."
"She's certainly loud about it," Torvin replied. "And why does everything seem to malfunction when she cries? The well was acting strange this morning. The cookware is denting for no reason."
"Old equipment," Lyra suggested. "Probably coincidence."
I mentally noted: *Lyra is maintaining her threshold of plausible deniability while also clearly noticing that problems accumulate around me. She's choosing not to fully investigate. This is efficient from my perspective.*
By the end of the first week, Elara had stopped screaming constantly. She'd moved into intermittent frustrated crying, which was progress. She'd also attached herself to Lyra with the desperation of someone who'd learned that consistent emotional storms eventually wore down resistance.
Lyra responded by being so persistently kind that Elara's defenses gradually crumbled.
By the second week, Elara had learned to trust that she wasn't going to be returned to another family immediately. She still had nightmares. She still woke up screaming sometimes. But her baseline emotional state had shifted from panic to cautious hope.
And then something happened to complicate that hope.
***
## Part Three: The Honeycake Incident
It happened on a Sunday morning, approximately three weeks after Elara's arrival.
Master Thistle had brought honeycakes—special pastries from the bakery, only made once a week. They were small, delicate, covered in a thin glaze that made them sparkle in the light. According to village gossip, they were the most desirable food item in Lunaris.
Lyra had set them on a low table while she attended to something in the kitchen. Three honeycakes, arranged in a small pyramid. Beautiful. Perfect. Extremely limited in quantity.
Elara and I were both in the room, which was the critical mistake in retrospect.
Elara noticed the honeycakes first. Her eyes went wide with longing. She was still learning the social concept of "waiting" and "asking" and "accepting when you can't have things." She just saw food that looked interesting and wanted it.
She toddled forward, reaching for the nearest honeycake with the grabbing hands of a two-year-old who'd learned to walk approximately three weeks ago.
I was, at this precise moment, experiencing a complex mixture of emotions:
1. Concern that she was going to make a mess
2. Annoyance that she was being inefficient in her approach
3. A strange protective impulse that I didn't fully understand
The protective impulse won.
What happened next is still somewhat unclear in retrospect. Did I deliberately trip her? Did I make the ground shift slightly under her feet? Did I subtly adjust her balance to ensure she'd fall? Or was it an accident?
I maintain, even now, that it was an accident.
Elara's foot caught on something (invisible). She pitched forward. Her reaching hands grasped for balance and found nothing. She fell directly into the honeycake pyramid.
The honeycakes were destroyed. Elara was covered in glaze. The table was sticky. Everything was inefficient.
But here's the important part: Elara landed directly into my lap.
She looked up at me with tears forming in her eyes, honeycake glaze covering her face, and something shifted in her expression. She wasn't crying about the fall. She was crying about the honeycakes—specifically, about how she'd wanted one and now they were gone.
"I'm sorry," she said, in the small voice of a child learning language. "I wanted... I knocked..."
"You fell," I said, which was technically accurate. "That was inefficient. You should have asked."
"Can I... can I have a honeycake?"
I looked at the destroyed pastries. I looked at this girl who'd shown up three weeks ago traumatized and was still learning how to exist in safety. I looked at the situation and made a decision that my efficiency-obsessed brain would later deeply regret.
"After you ask nicely," I said. "And after they're remade. Honeycakes require proper planning."
Elara's face brightened. "You'll help me?"
"No," I said. "But you'll ask Lyra, and she'll make more, and then you'll eat them. That's the efficient process."
Elara scrambled out of my lap and toddled toward the kitchen, presumably to find Lyra and demand honeycakes with the desperation of a child who'd nearly given up on the concept of wanting things.
I looked down at my lap, which was now covered in honeycake residue, and internally sighed.
*That was either incredibly kind or incredibly manipulative, depending on interpretation,* I noted. *And I genuinely don't know which one it was.*
***
## Part Four: The Vow
What I didn't anticipate was Elara's subsequent behavior.
She apparently decided that the honeycake incident was proof of my fundamental clumsiness. She'd watched me fall over my own feet before (a side effect of my body not quite coordinating with my consciousness). She'd seen me bump into things. She'd observed that I was, generally, more graceful in my internal monologue than in my actual physical movements.
The logical conclusion, from her perspective, was that I was a fundamentally accident-prone person who needed protection from my own incompetence.
This was inaccurate. But I wasn't about to correct her understanding if it meant she'd stop having trauma-based emotional outbursts.
She made this decision official approximately one week later.
We were in the village square—a rare day where Lyra had let both of us play outside simultaneously while she spoke with other village adults. Elara was pushing me into a sitting position on a stone bench.
"You sit," she commanded, with the authority of someone who'd been on the receiving end of Lyra's firm directions enough to attempt replication. "You stay. Don't fall. I protect you now."
"That's not necessary," I said, recognizing this as her attempting to establish some kind of caretaking dynamic.
"You fall. You clumsy. I protect." She sat down next to me, pressing her shoulder against mine with the determination of someone who'd made an irrevocable commitment. "I protect you forever. You're my brother. I protect."
It took me approximately 2.3 seconds to realize what had happened.
She'd observed that I was "clumsy." She'd drawn the logical conclusion that I needed protection. She'd made a solemn vow to be my protector based on a misunderstanding caused by my deliberately tripping her to keep her from getting sticky with honeycake.
*This is perhaps the least efficient outcome I could have predicted,* I noted internally. *A two-year-old has just vowed to protect a god-tier being from themselves based on a foundation of misunderstanding built on my own deliberate intervention.*
And yet... there was something about her absolute conviction. The way she said "forever." The certainty that she would be my protector despite being smaller, weaker, and less powerful than me in literally every measurable way.
It was, in its own way, kind of endearing.
"Okay," I said, which was probably not the most appropriate response but was all I could manage. "You can protect me. That would be... efficient."
Elara seemed satisfied with this answer. She remained pressed against my shoulder for the next hour, glaring at anyone who passed by as if challenging them to make me fall over.
No one did. Not because of her glaring, but because she'd positioned herself well enough that any minor stumble on my part would result in me knocking her over instead, which would presumably motivate me to maintain balance.
It was actually a pretty solid protection strategy.
***
## Part Five: The Starwhisper Situation
The official adoption paperwork for Elara came with some additional documentation that Lyra shared with me once, assuming I wouldn't understand its significance.
"She comes from the Starwhisper bloodline," the documents noted. "Minor magical heritage with potential for celestial power development. History of warriors and defenders. Current status: traumatized, emotionally dysregulated, potential for growth if given stable environment."
Elara, in other words, was somebody's abandoned magical prodigy. Someone had decided she was too much trouble and sent her through the foster system hoping someone else would raise her properly.
This angered me more than I wanted to admit.
*She has power potential, and instead of training her, they discarded her,* I thought, feeling my Glitch twitch with annoyance. *Inefficient resource management. Someone should fix that.*
Over the next several months, Elara began to change. She stopped having nightmares as frequently. She started laughing—not the cautious amusement of someone testing out emotions, but actual genuine joy at small things. She became obsessed with following me around and "protecting me" from various threats that didn't exist.
And very occasionally, when she concentrated hard, she'd have small moments where her eyes would glow faintly blue, and the air around her would shimmer like starlight.
Those moments were rare. Uncontrolled. But they were there.
She had power. Dormant and untrained, but present.
"She might develop into something special," Lyra mentioned to Torvin once. "There's something about her. Magic, maybe. Or just determination. Either way, I think giving her stability was the right choice."
"Better than leaving her traumatized in the foster system," Torvin agreed.
I nodded internally. Efficiency, properly applied, could solve problems. Elara had needed stability and family. She'd needed someone to see her potential despite her emotional state. Lyra had provided that.
And now Elara had decided that her role in life was protecting me—a god in toddler form—from my own clumsiness.
Life had become significantly more complicated.
Also, somehow, slightly less lonely.
*This is not an efficient outcome,* I noted, watching Elara declare war on a butterfly that had come too close to my position on the village square. *But it may not be entirely terrible either.*
***
## Part Six: The Pattern Established
Over the next year, Elara and Haru became a unit in the village.
People would see us together and immediately assume I was the vulnerable one and she was my protector. It was backwards and inaccurate, but it worked so well that I didn't bother correcting it.
Elara would walk beside me everywhere, hand on my arm, ready to catch me if I stumbled. When other children approached, she'd position herself between us like I was her responsibility. When I accidentally manifested power (a book floating, a conveniently placed puddle), she'd just nod like it confirmed her suspicions about my general incompetence.
And I, for my part, began to unconsciously protect her in return.
When the bullies in the village started to notice her, my power would activate to make their paths inconvenient. When someone was mean to her, reality would seem to conspire to teach them lessons about treating children with respect. When she was upset about something, I'd manifest small coincidences that would improve her mood without her understanding why.
We were, in a strange and complicated way, taking care of each other.
The village accepted this dynamic. Children had their pairs, their bonds. That Elara and I had formed one so quickly was just... what happened sometimes.
No one questioned it. No one wondered why coincidences followed us. No one noticed that reality seemed to arrange itself around my emotional state and Elara's needs simultaneously.
They just saw a quiet boy and his protective sister.
Which was, I had to admit, an efficient cover for a god and his human caretaker mistakenly believing they were in a traditional family dynamic.
***
## Part Seven: Mira's Observation
It was during Elara's second year with us that Mira appeared again in my awareness.
She was approximately nine years old now, working in the healer's office as an apprentice. I encountered her at the market while Lyra was purchasing supplies and Elara was practicing her "protection" routine by standing next to me and looking stern.
Mira was there with the healer, gathering herbs. She saw me and stopped.
For a long moment, she just... looked at me.
I recognized that look. It was the same look she'd given me when the book fell into my hands three years ago. The look of someone whose brain was registering something that didn't match her understanding of reality.
"Hi, Haru," she said finally, her voice thoughtful. "You're looking well."
"I'm looking the same as I always look," I replied, which was true and also not the kind of response normal four-year-olds gave.
Mira smiled slightly. "Yeah. You always do. That's weird, right? You don't really change. Not the way other kids do."
"I'm efficient at maintaining consistency," I said, which was not helpful.
"Right. Efficient." She exchanged a look with her healer mentor, who was pointedly not listening to our conversation. "Well, I'll see you around. I'm sure we'll run into each other plenty. For some reason, I'm always where you are."
She walked away, but I caught the tail end of her expression: confused, observant, certain that something about me didn't add up but not quite ready to investigate.
*This is going to become a problem eventually,* I thought. *Someone's going to figure out what I am. It might as well be her.*
Beside me, Elara glared at Mira's departing figure like she'd personally insulted my ability to stay vertical.
"Why does she keep watching you?" Elara demanded.
"I don't know," I said, which was honest.
"I don't like it. I protect you. She should know you're taken."
"I'm not taken. That's not how people work."
"You should be. You're mine to protect." Elara announced this with such absolute conviction that I couldn't really argue.
So I didn't.
***
## Part Eight: The Foundation
By the end of Elara's second year with us (my third year of this incarnation), something fundamental had changed about my situation.
I was no longer alone.
Lyra was kind but ultimately uninvolved in the complications of my actual existence. Torvin was present but absent. But Elara—Elara had decided that my entire life was her responsibility, and she maintained that conviction with religious dedication.
She didn't know what I actually was. She'd built an entire mythology around me being clumsy and accident-prone, and she'd organized her personality around being my protector. None of it was accurate. All of it was somehow better than the truth.
And there were others now. Mira, watching and wondering. Mika, appearing occasionally in the village with increasingly elaborate misfortunes that I definitely wasn't causing on purpose (I was, completely, entirely on purpose, but maintaining plausible deniability was the most important skill I'd developed).
The village was becoming populated with people who would, eventually, matter to me.
This was inefficient. This was also unavoidable.
Ætheria, I was certain, was finding the whole thing extremely entertaining.
I was finding it... complicated.
***
## Epilogue: Cosmic Perspective
In the void, Ætheria was practically vibrating with delight.
"Oh, did you SEE that?" she squealed to Sylvara. "He *deliberately* tripped her! He made her fall onto himself so she'd be dependent on him for comfort! And then she decided *she* had to protect *him*! This is the BEST reversal of roles!"
"That's actually kind of sad," Sylvara observed. "A girl forced to be his protector when he's the one with god-tier power."
"It's hilarious," Ætheria corrected. "Also, that other girl—Mira—she's starting to get suspicious. And the street child he keeps accidentally torturing with his power? She's going to be important later. Oh, this is going to spiral beautifully!"
Valthor, from his ledger station, was updating probability calculations and stress levels simultaneously.
"The Starwhisper bloodline developing actual celestial potential creates seventeen new causality branches," he muttered, making notes. "The protective dynamic between god-tier and human child introduces novel relationship paradigms. And the street child's accumulated misfortune is reaching critical mass in terms of cosmic balance."
"Just add it to the ledger," Ætheria said happily. "In approximately six more years, he's going to hit adolescence and start actually manifesting emotions, and that's when things get really entertaining.
"In the village of Lunaris, I was sitting on the front porch while Elara took her "protection duties" seriously enough to plant herself between me and a completely non-threatening butterfly.
None of us knew what was coming.
And that, I realized with something approaching acceptance, was probably more efficient than if we'd known and had to prepare for it.
The chaos was going to be spectacular regardless.
Might as well enjoy my last few years of relative stability.