By the time I turned two, I could finally walk without falling on my face and speak in basic sentences.
The shock of being in an unknown world had faded into a cold determination. I didn't have a guidebook, so I had to figure things out myself. That meant understanding the locals.
Learning the language was a humiliating process. For the first year, I was trapped in a body that couldn't even form consonants. Once I could finally speak, I turned into an interrogation machine.
My main tactic was a single question. I pointed at the table. "Wassat?"
"A table, Rowan," Mom sighed. She went back to chopping vegetables.
I pointed at the hearth. "Wassat?"
"Fire. Hot. Don't touch," Dad warned.
I drove my family insane. I pointed at dogs, dirt, clouds, and tools until they were ready to pull their hair out. The effort paid off. By my second birthday, I understood the language perfectly. I still had the lisp and chubby cheeks of a toddler, which completely ruined my dignity, but I could string together coherent sentences.
That brought me to the most exhausting part of the day: playtime.
"No, Ro! You have to run! The monster is going to get you!" Ralph shouted. He waved a jagged stick in the air. At seven years old, my older brother had boundless energy and zero tactical awareness.
We were in the dusty patch behind the house. It was Ralph, my four-year-old sister Lianne, myself, and Elir.
Elir was Master Gaelen's grandson. He tagged along when the older elf visited the village. He wore a moss-green tunic and had silver hair and long, pointed ears.
"I can't run fast, Ralph," I huffed. I waddled behind a wooden barrel. "My legs are too short. It's not fair." My body was just too heavy with baby fat.
"Just hide!" Elir called out. He jumped over a small ditch with natural grace. "I'll distract the Orc!"
I peeked out from behind the barrel. It was fascinating to watch Elir and Ralph. They were the exact same height. They wrestled and ran with the same level of coordination.
But Ralph was seven, and Elir was fourteen.
Dad had explained the village demographics to me a few weeks ago. Elves, or the Lyn as they were collectively called, aged exactly twice as slow as humans.
At first, I thought living longer sounded great. Then I watched Elir struggle to lift a bucket of water that a normal human teenager could carry with one hand. Aging twice as slow meant they were trapped in a weak state for decades. A human reached physical maturity at eighteen. An elf didn't reach it until thirty-six. In a world with harsh winters and disease, being a fragile child for nearly forty years was a terrible disadvantage. It made sense why they allied with fast-growing humans like us.
"Rawr! The Orc is attacking the barrel!" Ralph yelled. He charged at my hiding spot.
I tried to step out of the way, but my foot caught on a weed. I fell hard on my butt and kicked up a cloud of dust.
"Ha! Got you!" Ralph cheered. He poked my shoulder with his stick. "You're dead, Rowan! The Orc ate you!"
"I tripped," I complained. I swatted the stick away and rubbed my nose. "That doesn't count. And why is the Orc attacking the barrel anyway? Do Orcs eat wood?"
Ralph groaned and dropped his stick. "By the Goddess, not the questions again. He's doing the question thing, Elir."
Elir jogged over with a smile. "He just likes to know things, Ralph. Grandfather says it's a sign of a sharp mind."
"It's a sign of him being annoying," Ralph muttered. He offered me a hand and pulled me up.
"I just want to know what we are running from," I said. I dusted off my tunic. "Are they green? Are they big? Do they live in the woods?"
"They're just Orcs, Ro!" Ralph said in exasperation. "They're big, they're ugly, and they eat kids who ask too many questions!"
These people were hopeless at explaining things.
"Rowan," a voice said right next to my ear.
I jumped. Lianne had sneaked up right beside me. She shoved a dripping pile of gray sludge toward my face.
"I made pie," Lianne announced proudly. "Eat it."
"Lianne, no," I said, leaning back. "That is dirt. Dirt is for worms. Not people."
"It's a pie!" she insisted. She glared at me. "Eat the pie or the Orc gets you!"
"I'd rather the Orc eat me," I replied deadpan.
Elir and Ralph burst out laughing. They didn't understand why I was so serious, but they found it funny. To them, I was just a bossy baby brother who talked like an old man.
"Alright, I'm done playing," I sighed. I turned toward the farmhouse. "I'm going to see Mom. You guys are going to get me covered in mud."
I waddled back toward the house. Ralph went back to chasing Elir with the stick, and Lianne angrily smashed her mud pie into the ground.
I pushed open the heavy wooden door. The inside of the farmhouse was cool and smelled of baking bread and roasting vegetables. Mom stood at the table, kneading dough. Dad sat nearby, mending a leather harness with a thick needle.
"Well, look who survived the Orc attack," Dad chuckled. He looked up from his work.
I waddled over and grabbed the edge of the wooden bench to pull myself up. "Ralph is too loud. And Lianne tried to feed me dirt again."
Mom paused her kneading and looked at Dad. She wiped her hands on her apron and smiled.
"I still can't get over it, Reynan," Mom murmured. She looked at me in bewilderment. "Listen to him."
"He's a sharp one, that's for sure," Dad agreed. He tied off a knot on the harness. "Lianne was smart. She was talking at a year and a half, but she mostly just shouted for food. Rowan puts his words together like a scholar."
I accepted a small crust of bread Mom handed me. My twenty years of past-life memories were doing a lot of the heavy lifting. I had spent months aggressively piecing together the facts of this world, and my vocabulary was expanding fast.
The biggest breakthrough was understanding my own family.
Gaelen had called me "Mudborn" when I first learned to walk. I thought it was an insult. But Dad had recently explained that "Mudborn" was just a biological classification.
Humans in this world were divided into groups based on their traits. We were Mudborn. We had sturdy builds, high physical endurance, and a natural affinity for the earth. That was why Dad's plant magic worked, even if he barely had any actual magic power. We were connected to the soil.
The elves were categorized similarly. The general term for their race was the Lyn. Master Gaelen and Elir belonged to a branch called the Faelyn. That explained their green tunics and their ties to the forest. There were other Lyn out there with different traits.
The people in this world sure cared about their classifications.
Suddenly, the front door banged open. Ralph and Elir tumbled inside, laughing. Lianne followed them. She was completely covered in gray sludge.
"Mom! Lianne fell in the pie!" Ralph announced.
Mom let out a long, weary sigh. "Goddess give me strength. Lianne, don't touch anything. Stay right there on the mat."
"I am the Orc now," Lianne declared. She raised her muddy hands.
Dad chuckled and put the leather harness down. He stood up and clapped his hands together. The room immediately went quiet. Even Elir stood a little straighter.
"Alright, settle down," Dad said. "Wash your hands in the basin. Your mother and I have something we need to tell you."
I dropped my crust of bread.
Ralph scrubbed his hands quickly and hurried over to the table. "Are we going to the capital for the festival?"
"No, Ralph," Mom said softly. She moved to stand next to Dad, and he wrapped a thick arm around her waist. She rested her hands over her stomach and smiled nervously.
"We are going to have another baby," Mom announced. "You're going to have a new brother or sister by the time the winter snows melt."
The room went completely still.
"A baby?" Ralph yelled. A massive grin broke across his face. "Can I teach it how to use a sword?"
"No," Mom and Dad said at the same time.
"Baby!" Lianne cheered. She clapped her muddy hands and sent dirt flying across the floor.
I sat on the bench and blinked.
A baby. I immediately thought about our food supply. We had two rooms and barely enough food to survive the winter if the turnip crop failed. We didn't have the money for this.
But then I looked at Mom's face and Dad's proud smile. The warmth in the room pushed away my practical concerns. They were happy. We were a family.
I slid off the bench and waddled over to Mom. I wrapped my arms around her knees.
"New baby," I said. I looked up at her and tried my best to sound like an excited two-year-old. "I will protect."
I just needed to figure out how to use magic properly. We were going to need a lot more turnips.