The next few months were pure bliss. I would wake up, consume sustenance, play with Mia, and occasionally Mother, then go back to sleep. A life devoid of complications, yet still so full of life. If I said that I missed my old one, I would be lying.

 

After that first day, they stopped talking much about Father, whom I don’t even know the name of. Speaking of parents, my Mother’s name was Olivia, Olivia Sterling. Likewise, my name was Aurelius Sterling, but Mia called me Aura. Mother, on the other hand, called me Aurelius.

 

She lacked the smile that Mia had, and her eyes always seemed to have a thunderstorm ongoing deep within them. But other than that, she looked like the spitting image of an older Mia.

 

Over the months, I had tried to glean some information on magic, or mages in general, but my efforts had turned up fruitless. It seemed that magic was a sensitive topic for this household. But I wasn’t going to let myself be deterred so easily.

 

I tried everything. From feeling my body for foreign energies to chanting random incantations I had made up. But I soon found out that speaking without teeth was much harder than I had imagined.

 

Whatever magic was, it wasn’t as simple as light novels and anime had made them out to be.

 

Currently, I was crawling around my room. Our room, to be specific. There were really only two habitable rooms in this house. One was the living room, where the crackling of the hearth was almost constantly present. The other was the room where we slept, the only place I had really been to.

 

I heard Mia giggle in the corner.

 

“Your expression’s so funny, Aura!” She spoke as though I could understand her. Whenever she was free, she would let me out of my crib and let me crawl around, speaking to me as though I were a real person. Unfortunately, she seemed to purposefully avoid sensitive topics, despite Mother not being around.

 

How large an impact must magic have had on this family for them to not even want to speak of it? Nonetheless, I was determined to discover the truths of magic, family matters be damned. After all, this is what Father would have wanted of me, right?

 

The bedroom had a few books…well ‘few’ was overstating it, they only had two. I had spent a great deal of time begging and pleading and gesturing toward the books to get my guardians to read them to me. They were always reluctant to and always tried to divert my attention to something else, which only furthered my resolve. But I was thoroughly disappointed when they held no useful information, other than some crudely written legend about a swordsman who hated swords.

 

A stupid tale, really.

 

There was only one window in the entire room, and it was currently overflowing with bright sunlight. I bathed in the light, savoring the supple warmness on my skin. Gotta get that Vitamin D in. Good for the body, they say.

 

My expression must have been hilarious because Mia giggled again. I really loved that giggle. I couldn’t understand how someone could abandon it. We have a brother. Well, had a brother. He was the firstborn, and he had left for some ‘calling’.

 

According to my sister’s words, he had left quite recently. She never specified when, but I guessed that it was a few months before I was born. He had left a needy mother, young sister, and soon-to-be brother on a whim. True scum.

 

But Mia, bless her kind soul, had long forgiven him. Mother hadn’t. She refused to speak of him or discuss him, so I had gotten most of my information from the conversations Mia had with me. Well, I did most of the listening, since I couldn’t really talk.

 

I had decided long ago that my first words would be ‘I love you, Mia’ or something of the like. I could tell that Mother cared a lot about us, but I just couldn’t get myself to love her the same way I loved Mia. It just didn’t feel right. Her attitude to a child, her formality when speaking to close ones, everything. I had never heard her laugh before.

 

I took a glance at Mia. She had just finished a conversation with Mother, and it had not sounded good. The floors were thin, so I could hear everything that happened in the living room below.

 

Even with Mother, it was Mia who did all the talking, started the conversations, kept them going, and laughed at her own jokes. It was like she was speaking to an unmovable wall. And it looked and sounded depressing. Sometimes, when she thought I wasn’t looking, her smile would waver, her eyes would dim, and her expression would grow bleak. An expression that stabbed at my heart.

 

Behind that bright smile was a face ridden with holes. I couldn’t bear to see her like that.

 

I crawled towards Mia, which prompted her to pick me up and place me on her lap. “You wanted to see sissy?” She cooed.

 

“Did you know I managed to sell another blanket today?”

 

“They were so nice, they even gave me extra!” She excitedly produced a few coins. “Now that I think of it, I haven’t introduced them to you yet. I should think of a date for that.”

 

She chattered on and on, but I wasn’t even the slightest bored. She talked of her day as a weaver, how many blankets or clothes or decorations she had sold, and how nice the customers were. She would go into extra detail on how nice they were. She must really be an angel.

 

“There was this group of boys and they bought three blankets. Three whole blankets! They said that they were doing me a favor. And they said I was…beautiful,” Mia giggled, lingering on the last part. “Then they asked me out, but I said no.”

 

Her smile didn’t falter.“They didn’t really like that…They got a little upset and wanted to refund them and I tried to explain that I couldn’t do that, but that only upset them further. So in the end, I just let them refund the blankets.” It looked as though she was recounting a happy tale.

 

“Enough of that, I shouldn’t be telling this stuff to you,” She brought my face to hers. “Does little Aura want to play with sissy?”

 

Soon, Mia was called down to dinner, and I was left alone, and stuck, in my crib again. The sun was setting, and I could barely see through the ever-increasing darkness. I could smell the mouth-watering aroma that came from below. I wondered what could they be eating? Stew, maybe? I urged for the day that my teeth grew and I could eat with them to come sooner.

 

I spent my time pondering over magic. I did the usual. I checked my body for any foreign energies that had hopefully popped up over the day, to not much success…and nothing else, really. There wasn’t much a baby stuck in a room in a crib could do about studying magic. So instead I thought of the day, about Mia’s stories, and about the group of boys that had harassed Mia. The day I learned to walk would be the day of their downfall.

 

I sighed. But I couldn’t do anything other than crawling as of then.

 

I closed my eyes. Even now, I could hear Mia’s one-sided conversations from below. You need to talk to her, Mother, she’s sad. She’s lonely. Help her. As those last thoughts drifted into my brain, sleep took my consciousness.