Time was a trick of the light in Alistair's world. It poured through the warped glass of the farmhouse window in syrupy ribbons, burning away the dregs of sleep and painting everything in cheap gold. There was no sense of day or night.
Just cycles of hunger and drowsy fullness, of drifting and anchoring, of waking to the wet warmth of skin and the soft thud of his mother's heartbeat.
His family called him "sprout," "starling," "little bear." Sometimes Eira pressed her cheek to his and whispered secrets meant for his baby ears alone, nonsense words, but sweet as honey poured over bread. His father, Gareth, would scoop him up and swing him wide, grinning his jagged grin, voice all thunder and promises: "There's my boy! Strong as a badger already, eh, Eira?"
The old woman with the smoke-stained hands came and went each morning, checking Eira's stitches, pinching Alistair's legs with a look of clinical approval. He was, he gathered, a satisfactory infant.
'Imagine being a grown man and celebrating because you managed to grab your own foot,' he thought, after a morning spent locked in mortal combat with his left ankle. The foot had won, but he vowed revenge.
The world outside his cot was a muddy blur. Smears of green and brown, the occasional red flash of a chicken darting past the window.
Inside, there was the constant background drone of Eira's voice: humming through chores, muttering as she pounded dough, laughing at things only she saw.
Alistair let the sound wash over him, each repetition sharpening the edges of familiar words. He had no mouth for speech, but he hoarded the syllables, turning them over and over until they fit.
Within a week he had learned the word for bread "volka", for warmth "len", for mother "mahr". When Eira dropped a pan on her foot and hissed "bloody cinders," he filed that away too. Useful.
He suspected, from the cadence and consonants, that this version of Valeria was stitched together from at least three fantasy languages, a little Latin, and the local farmers' dialect that only half cared about grammar. He could work with that.
The indignities of infancy were many. There was the inability to roll over on command; the complete lack of privacy for even the most basic personal functions; the way adults assumed he was made of glass but also, paradoxically, that he should be content to lie in a basket like an inert vegetable for hours on end.
Mostly, though, it was the helplessness, the way every want and need had to be broadcast with volume, because there was no other way to make the world pay attention.
'If I ever get control of this body, I'm abolishing nap time by executive decree,' he resolved, as Eira tucked him under a hideous orange quilt and set about her tasks a room away.
He tracked her by sound, by the rhythm of footsteps and the offset tap of her wooden ladle against the rim of the stewpot. Through the haze of sleep, he could hear Gareth outside splitting wood, his voice carrying across the yard as he cursed at stubborn knots.
The farmhouse was alive with these petty symphonies: the squeak of the pump handle, the snap of dry kindling, the way the ceiling groaned when the wind changed. All of it rooted him, made the place real in a way that pixels and polygons never had.
He counted time by the number of times Eira would come in, check the swaddling, and kiss the top of his head. After kiss number three, the sun was high and the air in the room had thickened with the scent of herbs and baking. He found himself wide awake.
That was when he noticed the shimmer.
Sunlight skittered off the wooden beams and pooled on the floor, but some of the flecks weren't dust. They hovered, motes of blue-white light, swirling just out of reach. When he stared at them, they seemed to pulse in time with his own heartbeat, a slow, tidal rhythm that made his skin tingle and his scalp prickle with static.
He tried to reach for them, but his hand wobbled and flopped against the mattress. Pathetic. He focused instead on breathing slow, the way he once had during panic attacks or especially brutal PVP sessions. In, hold, out. Each cycle made the light brighter, tighter, as if it responded to his attention.
He squinted, and the motes drew closer, clustering over his palm in a loose spiral. He could feel the air shift, a faint warmth pooling in his hand. Sweat prickled on his brow, and something inside his chest unspooled, not unpleasant, just unfamiliar, a gentle current, like being carried by a lazy river.
He closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them, the motes had formed a tiny constellation, hanging in the air above his thumb. He flexed his fingers, and the constellation spun, trailing after his movement like a will-o'-the-wisp. He grinned, or would have, if his face could manage more than an involuntary grimace.
'Mana manipulation. Actual, honest-to-god magic. Suck it, tutorial levels.'
The motes scattered at the thought, fracturing into nothing. He let his hand fall back to the sheets, savoring the weird electric aftertaste that lingered on his fingertips.
The next time Eira checked on him, she shot a wary glance at the patch of air where the motes had danced, lips pursed. She muttered something about "thin veils" and made a sign over her heart before leaving the room.
Alistair catalogued that, too.
He drifted in and out, chasing the feeling of mana through shallow sleep and sudden, hungry alertness. Days telescoped together, each one a slow grind toward mastery.
He learned to bring the motes faster, to shape them into loops and lines. He could even, with enough concentration, make the warmth in his chest jump to his other hand, though it left him exhausted afterward.
On the sixth morning, it happened: the soft chime, not in his ears but inside his mind, like a notification ping from inside the skull.
[ADAPTATION CYCLE — 37%]
[NEW FUNCTION: MANA FLOW DETECTED]
[MAGICAL POTENTIAL: ABOVE STANDARD HUMAN PARAMETERS]
[STAR AFFINITY: UNKNOWN]
[BEGINNING PASSIVE CALIBRATION...]
'So the System's watching,' he thought, fighting down a smug swell of pride. 'But what's Star Affinity? That wasn't in the game.'
The interface flickered out, leaving only a pale afterglow across his field of vision. He reached for the feeling again, and the motes gathered, loyal as ever.
'Figures,' he thought. 'Even in another world, tutorials vanish before you finish reading them.'
Outside, the world kept turning. The rain eased, and Gareth's voice rose in song as he unloaded firewood. Eira's steady footsteps came closer, then paused at the doorway. For a moment she just watched him, her face caught between suspicion and wonder. Then she smiled, all the way to her tired eyes, and crossed the room in three strides.
"There you are, starling," she whispered, scooping him up and swinging him high. "What secrets are you hiding, hmm?"
He blinked up at her, and for the first time, the baby laughter that bubbled out was real. The blue motes danced above his crib, bright and wild and free.
The world, it seemed, was finally paying attention.