A few monts after I ended the call with my friends, a woman walked through the front door of the house. She had dull copper-colored hair, a vacant look in her eyes, and a vacuous smile on her lips. She didn’t wear very much clothing - her clothes seed more designed to show off her body than to cover anything up. Her expression looked…strange.
She gave an odd smile, before giggling randomly, and then began making her way towards a part of the house that was occupied by… nothing.
Perhaps she was drunk?
As I was thinking that, she flopped over onto the ground and began randomly twitching her arms and legs. Her strange smile and vacant look never quite left her face, even as she spasd and giggled to herself.
I felt as if a cold hand was gripping my heart and squeezing it, and it felt hard to breathe. I felt worried.
Part of my body was also giving the sa instinctual response I usually had towards my new mother, but the emotional response I had towards my mother in this life was very… muted. I normally felt a surge of love and affection for my mother in a given life. Even if my body was largely on autopilot until my brain developed enough to properly house my soul, so instinctive responses towards my parents were usually still present. Why was my response towards my mother so muted?
I was also pretty sure that my mother was blissed out on so kind of drug. My mothers reactions were simply far too odd for to think that she was simply drunk. The vacant expression and hollow eyes didn’t really scream ‘drunk’ to . Of course, it was also possible that this world’s alcohol was simply different.
But either way, I now strongly suspected several things.
First, I strongly suspected that my mother worked as a… certain kind of woman. One that probably worked in this world’s equivalent of the red light district. I could be wrong - I didn’t have all of the information available to yet. But it seed plausible right now.
Second, we were seriously struggling with food. My mother’s figure wasn’t much better than mine: she had slightly bony arms and legs that detracted from her looks and made her look… rather frail, in a strange way. I wasn’t the only one suffering from malnutrition - my mother wasn’t really in a much better state. I didn’t know whether my mother’s possible drug addiction was the reason we were struggling with food, or whether there was a famine going on, or what - but either way, food was going to be much more important in the early parts of this life than it had ever been before. In the first two worlds, food had been plentiful enough that it wasn’t really a concern. This was no longer the case, at least until I got a bit more established.
Third, my mother was probably struggling with so sort of drug addiction. This actually explained a lot about the strange state I had been in when I awakened. I had been very hungry, my status screen had stated that I was malnourished, and our house was closer to a mold cultivation field than a proper living environnt. Also, the fact that I had been set in the middle of a baby crib despite being about four years old had struck as very odd. I had originally wondered if I was born in the middle of a famine, and perhaps my family was too busy to clean up. And the baby crib could have been explained by my current species simply having so odd genetic characteristics.
However, after seeing my mother, I suspected that it was just a case of negligence. My mother didn’t seem capable of taking care of herself, much less a baby that needed ti and attention. She might have simply left in my baby crib while in a blissed-out daze.
I wondered where my father was. Perhaps he had died after I was born, leaving my mother and I in this state? Or perhaps he had simply left? Since my mother was in the midst of a daze, I took a closer look at our moldy, three room shack, but I didn’t see any evidence of a third person living here. There was my baby crib, so other revealing clothing, and a small bed that couldn’t fit two people in one room. The other two rooms seed to be a dusty kitchen and a ratty living room.
In other words, my father, whoever he was, wasn’t particularly relevant right now.
My current situation seed dire. I needed food, and my mother seed unlikely to be a reliable source of anything in her current state. I didn’t feel any judgnt towards my mother for working in the red light district. Sotis, things happened, and one was forced into hard situations and needed to make decisions to survive. But a drug addiction was much more problematic, at least in my eyes.
Could I heal her drug addiction? I had never tried healing a drug addiction before. I was able to regrow limbs given enough ti and essence, but drug addictions were a lot more complicated. Was my renewal spell able to cope with such a complex type of damage to the body and mind?
It was hard to guess.
I also needed to make a decision. What was I going to do about my mother? It was clear that she was probably more of a hindrance than a help in this life, but she had still raised for four years, and she hadn’t turned violent towards at any ti. I also didn’t have any sort of instinctive fear of her ingrained into my body, so she probably hadn’t been actively hurting before I regained my consciousness. However, she was actively neglecting , and I wasn’t really sure how to handle that. I was used to loving my family and having them love , so having a more dysfunctional family wasn’t sothing I had needed to think about or manage before.
The question was whether I should try to help her, or just leave and see if I could find a better way to survive. I hesitated for a few monts, thoughts spinning around in my head… before my thoughts turned towards my friendship bracelet.
Maybe my friends had a good idea for how to handle the situation.
I sent to my friends.
Asked Sallia.
I sent.
Sent Sallia.
I slowly maneuvered my weak and malnourished body back to my mother’s side, and then examined her eyes. She didn’t seem to really notice my actions, and simply continued convulsing and giggling in the corner. I checked her eyes, before I nodded to myself.
I sent.
said Sallia. Sent Sallia.
.
Sallia sent over the ntal equivalent of a grimace, before she sighed. Sallia paused.
Sallia trailed off, losing herself in her thoughts. Then, sounding much more worried, she sent another ssage. , sent Sallia.
, sent Anise, rejoining the conversation.
I felt a little warm in my heart. My friends were so ready to imdiately offer help when I needed it. Even though they were only four years old, just like , and didn’t really have much power or influence right now… we were still a team. Sohow, the cold hand that felt like it was squeezing my heart when I saw my mother blissed out in the corner felt like it lightened its grip around my heart, just a little bit.
I thought about both offers. I was really quite hungry - I needed a stable source of food. Otherwise, I might starve to death before I could accomplish anything aningful this life. I needed to find Sallia if I wanted to take advantage of her noodle bowl. However, Sallia’s family was very poor, and she said that she heard gunshots outside of her door regularly. I suspected that, if anything, I was living in a worse part of town than her. I wanted to at least be able to defend myself if I needed to, before I went anywhere.
The biggest question, however, was still what I wanted to do about my mother.
No matter what else I thought about, my mind kept circling back to what I was supposed to do about my drug addicted mother.
Did I want to help my mother? Could I help my mother? I had no idea if I could cure sothing like a drug addiction, and if I couldn’t remove the drug addiction from my mother, sticking around might be a bad idea for my own long term health and safety.
In my previous two lives, things hadn’t been so complicated. My families in both lives had been comprised of people that clearly loved , and didn’t have any major issues. My father and mother in my first life had been simple fishern, and in my second life, the biggest problem I’d had with my mother was that she was too controlling - but even that had been rather mild, and we had been able to talk things out. I had been more than happy to return every bit of love that they extended to . Having a lovely and kind family twice in a row was a blessing that I had never quite realized was a blessing until now.
Now, I needed to figure out what to do about a family mber with a drug addiction. My mother… probably cared about . She had kept alive for four years, despite her drug addiction and the fact that she barely seed to be able to take care of herself. But I had no idea if I could even get the food I needed to survive if I stuck around. I was used to just… being able to care about the people around , without it being complicated. And now, suddenly, it was actually complicated.
I looked at my mother, who was still convulsing in the corner, and then sighed.
I didn’t know what to do, so for now, I decided to just see what I even could do. I wasn’t sure how my powers interacted with the situation, after all, and that might change how I thought about things.
First, I would try to help my mother and heal her drug addiction. If it didn’t work… I might have to leave and take shelter with Anise or Sallia. I felt bad leaving my mother here to fend for herself, when she clearly couldn’t take care of herself. But right now, my emotional bond with my mother was also at its weakest, since I barely knew her. If I couldn’t help her, and she couldn’t help herself, I might need to be away from her - for the sake of my own sanity.
If it did work… hopefully everything else would work out sohow. I wasn’t really sure what I would do in that case, but I would figure it out later.
Of course, to test anything, I needed to get my attunent back.
Since my mother seed… indisposed at the mont, and I still incredibly hungry, I waddled from one corner of the house to another, searching for sothing to eat. It took several minutes, but I managed to find a slightly rotten apple and so sort of unidentified brown grain that probably wasn’t moldy.
My stomach churned a bit, but I was too hungry to care right now.
I quickly stuffed the slightly overripe apple into my mouth, chewing it rapidly as my empty stomach scread for food. It tasted rotten, but I tried not to think about what I was putting into my stomach. At least I was pretty sure I could heal food poisoning, once I got my attunent back online. Then, I turned my attention to the weird grain.
What… was this thing? How was I supposed to prepare it?
I asked, sending a picture of the grain to the others.
sent Sallia, a few monts later. I examined the grain more carefully, and didn’t see any white coloration on the grain. I thanked Sallia for the information and got back to work.
I summoned my dress and then borrowed a bit of water from it, before I tossed it into a bowl with so of the strange grains. It took a little longer to find a few logs, as well as a little kettle one could set up near the fireplace, and a few matches to go along with it.
Apparently, matches were cheap enough in this world that my mother still owned a few, along with the iron cookpot. Which was a small relief. Starting a fire without that would have been difficult.
I spent a few minutes boiling the water and the brown grain, before the brown grains started to mix into the water. In minutes, it started to resemble a very bland soup. I grimace at my food, before I dug in.
It wasn’t very good. Swallowing it was a bit difficult.
As I ate, I thought of my favorite food. Ever since my first world, on the islands, I had beco rather fond of eating fish. During the ti we had spent on the second world, fish had been rather easy to obtain, but I had no idea whether we were even near the ocean in this world, or whether we had any major rivers nearby. Sallia had ntioned a river that was filled with factory waste, but I doubted any fish were living in that river. And if they were, they probably weren’t edible.
I sighed, and shook my head. I tried sending a few questions to my friends, to see if I could get any more information, but sothing must have co up on their end, because they didn’t respond to .
As I finished my bland, slightly bitter porridge, I thought about what I needed to do first, before I sighed.
The first thing I needed to do, no matter what my plans were, was to regain my attunent, and possibly a few runes. Then, I needed to figure out what to do when things were hard for .
With my mind made up, I walked back over to my crib, sat down, and got to work.
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