In my previous life, I never had the memories of my earliest ages. All I knew was I suddenly grew big enough to walk by my own and skilled enough to speak the words I wanted to express.
Although there were some fractions of little memories that lingered, most of them had vanished from the back of my mind alongside my age count.
For now, I was experiencing the exact opposite of what I had said beforehand. I was fully aware as a baby and not having full control of my body was disorienting. Feeding myself with necessary food and drink was impossible for I could not raise my feet to overcome the encasing cradle.
Not to mention I had to defecate inside my own cloth, proceeding to discomfort me even further. Despite all that, my father figure patiently exchanged my underpants several times and wiped my body until it was clean again. He seemed to be worrying for me since I was always being silent if not letting out some squeals when I got in trouble.
Once my stomach growled eerily, I opened my mouth wide and pointed my finger to it, signaling and begging him to bring me anything that I could eat. Rather than giving me a meal or two, he picked me up from my self-proclaimed bed instead and escorted me downstairs to the first room where the woman delivered me into this world.
When we entered the room, the lady was sitting on her bedside grabbing her legs to make sure they were fine. Her scarred face was showing a sign of tiredness but she was lively enough to get off from her sleep with that condition. She agitated as soon as we closed our distance with her especially after she saw me in the man's carry.
"Dapa anakita?" She asked something to the man without realizing her bafflement.
"Inimo keja, tada mungki kita tingali endiri," the man answered the gibberish with a composed manner and started to pass me into her.
"Huhhh?! Kuta merti carana toh," she sounded like complaining to the man as she received my body.
"Dahla, kawpa estibisa! Oran nete riu segala," he replied while shrugging his hand and left us two staring at each other confusingly. "Dahya!" he continued shortly before kissing the woman on the forehead and left the room not so hastily.
The woman stared at the door with disbelief as he disappeared from it after turning. The daze she had was finally stopped when my stomach rumbled again heavily on her proximity.
Her expression quickly turned into worry but she was also being hesitant to do something at the same time. After a dreadful moment of silence, her hand slowly reached the intersecting part of her robe and the first thing she did was revealing her chest.
My mind immediately came to a stop after she did that, but then I remembered the thing that mothers would do to their baby if they cried. People called it breastfeeding.
Her hands were trembling when she fed the liquid inside her chest for me and I truly suffered from the same embarrassment as her. A guilt was residing inside me as I felt dirty to drink everything that came from her even though I had to fill my stomach with something.
I was grateful that only women could do this because I didn't even want to think that my grandfather did the same thing to me. After gulping a lot of sweet thick water from her chest, the pain that struck my stomach had been reduced but it was barely enough to quench my hunger. Thankfully her pose had already relaxed by that time and she promptly noticed my ongoing condition.
With me in her grasp, we took a stroll onto the part of the house I had not recognized yet. The room was located across the big hall that occupied a large portion of the house, a place I had passed for several occasions already. We approached one door on the left part and she slid it open to reveal what someone would call a cooking room.
It took me a while to realize that this particular door was the place where I spotted the peeking girl for the first time. I could find everything that one needed to eat there; plates, spoons, knives, and cups; all organized on top of a table very tidily. There was also a stove made out of some kind of clay with a big hole on the middle to place some combustible woods in it.
The cooking pot was also present, but it looked way shinier than the one I used back then. On our right, there was another door which stood at the very corner of the room.
"Saira! Saira! Tulun labatu dabunsi ini!" she was shouting towards that door trying to call someone that perhaps inhabited the room. After getting silence as an answer, she tried to call again one more time, "Saira!"
"Yaaa!" a reply was heard immediately from inside with a high-pitched sound that was akin to a young girl. There were stepping sounds that echoed within the locked room before the person behind the door exposed herself. Standing there was the girl with the brownish hair I could not remove from my memory.
"Kasidi yadu diku resi ya dik, nati batu dabun makasim wakuh," she spoke like she ordered the girl to do something before lowering herself and gave me to the girl. She seemed unready to my body weight and quickly adjusted her position to support me, then, the girl brought me out to the central room and put me on a chair.
After carefully leaning me onto the chair, she dashed back to the woman and I watched from afar as they prepared a meal. The woman rubbed her fingers repeatedly to a sheet with a harsh surface on it before they showed sparks of light and ignited a big flame afterwards.
The whole process reminded me a bit of what the man did last night. So the woman was also able to create and control the fire with her hand. She burned the woods before pouring water, vegetables, and something that resembled white grains into the pot. She then made the water float just like the turtle woman did and threw it inside.
From the look of it, she must be making a stew or a soup that a toddler like me could eat. Quite a while later, the smoke had emerged from the pot and marked the completion of my meal.
After pouring the content into a small bowl that served my portion, she brought it onto the table before leaving again to the cooking room and picked up a cup. On the bowl, there wasn't any drop of soup or stew that I expected, but a hot porridge with greenish color.
She checked the bucket under her for something that didn't exist as it was empty. I assumed the bucket should had been brimming with drinkable water since the shape was strikingly similar to the water container in my room.
She let out a sigh and then dragged the bucket outside without having a second look to me. Wasn't she going to feed me first at the very least? Water was definitely crucial for living but at the moment my starvation was popping out again.
I didn't know for how long she would be out from the house and the girl would be my last fort of hope if I wanted to get the food shoved down my mouth. I pointed my finger towards the bowl as a sign for her and asked her to approach me with a hand wave.
She seemed to notice and took a seat next to me on the table, visibly confused because of the thing I asked her to do. I demonstrated the motion of using the spoon and using it to feed my mouth in front of her, explicitly asking her to do the same for me.
She nodded eagerly and repeated my motion with the real thing, digging a spoonful of hot porridge with her hand. I opened my mouth widely and pointed my finger into it again to guide her but then she opened her mouth instead and plunged the food into her mouth.
'No!' I screamed inside.
Instantly, her eyes were jolted open before she threw the spoon back into the bowl and stick out her tongue in desperation. Unexpectedly, she let out a laugh afterwards and looked at me with the same eyes of awe like before.
Was she trying to joke with me that time? I wanted to hit my forehead so hard if I could. By then, I realized I had to do the feeding by my own. My hand attempted to reach the spoon with much difficulty and I had to alter the position of my body.
A little more, a bit more until my fingers would be able to grab the spoon.
The woman made her sudden entrance into the house, dropping the bucket recklessly and caused a thud that shocked me. My body fell forward due to the forceful body bend and my hands thrusted onto the table by their own to stop myself from moving further.
I accidentally pressed the spoon down too hard, causing the content to spring onto the air and flew straight into me. Everything felt slow as I witnessed the boiling porridge that would eventually land on my head, probably causing a burn that would not heal very easily. My eyes were too delved into the scene as I could not even close them or look away.
But then, the lump of hot porridge suddenly got slammed sideways and never reached me. My mind took some time to notice what was happening. The woman was standing beside me, posing a drastic move with her extended hand.
Did she do this?
She panically checked if there was any injury on me and she was relieved when she found none. I was too speechless and spent the rest of the day only thinking about that occurence.
After that moment, she was becoming more anxious when taking care of me. Everywhere she went in the house, she would never forget to bring me along on her clutch. Although she was way worse than the man in terms of taking care of a baby, it was obvious that she brought out the best of her capabilities for me. She kept up with me until her lover finally made his way home.
That night, I was spending time inside the cradle by looking at my hand. The pinky finger was unscathed, which mean the promise I made with Aria didn't have a clear marking. Then I remembered the pair who were becoming my parents, I wondered if I and Aria could become like them if we succeed back then.
I knew the promise didn't go as far as making a family, but I wanted to just imagine the possibilities. We, or maybe only I in particular never realized how far the distance we went until we reached this point. I was thinking hard to remember the exact point of when I truly met her. She once told me that we had met quite long before I knew her name, and only one occasion came to my mind.
My first elite warrior recruitment ceremony.