"Iviaaan, toileeet," I looked up from the window to shout for Ivian's help.

Ever since the first day I'd seen Mr. Barker kapnozing meat in the yard, I had been curious about the man. Some time had passed now, and Ivian finally agreed to bring me a chair, so that I could sit by the window and peek over the sill.

I used the window to look at the fields and sky, but mostly to keep track of Mr. Barker's shenanigans. He was the best entertainer around.

For better or for worse, I had already eaten semolina twice today, even though it wasn't even lunch time yet. And actions have consequences.

"Oops, there we go," Ivian held me up from under the arms and then settled me against her shoulder. "You really are special aren't you. I told Grita about you the other day when she came to check if everything was well and she said she'd never heard of a baby as incredible as you."

"I was there." I reminded her. Grita was the village midwife who came to poke me last week. So rude.

"Oh my, there you go again, you little troublemaker", taranachos meant troublemaker, I had found out, "Were you eavesdropping on my conversation?"

"Noo," well, yes, but how could I not? I can't move or leave, so how can I not overhear what you say about me right in front of where I am?

"Ivian, sorry." I added, just to make sure I stayed on her good side. I'd be pretty helpless without my caretaker beauty Ivian. I felt blessed to be born into a household where Ivian lived devoted just to looking after me.

"What a gentleman."

"Uughie," I shook my head as she pinched my nose.

"There we go." The chamber pot was in my small bedroom just next door to Ivian's where I had been watching from the window.

"Just tell me if you need me to move you around, okay?" She said as she held me from under the arms over the porcelain bowl.

It was now a couple weeks since I'd started with the chamber pot.

Eight months of wet linen eternity was far too long when I would keep on having sensations of wrongness and keep on seeing squatting people on big water filled bowls flash through my mind.

Not so long ago, it had all fallen into place when Ivian had rushed us into the house and left me in my crib as she ran to use the chamber pot in her own adjacent room, the door left open in her hurry. I stood up to look in curiosity, wondering if something was wrong, and even though it was hard to see, the spectral images filled in the blanks and I realised that I didn't have to have stinky linens.

So whenever I felt that a big one was coming, I'd call Ivian and she'd only be too happy to chaperone me.

I don't even want to imagine what it's like for most families.

Even so, I had two big problems.

One was that I had to anticipate. Maybe I had some terrible disease, since I couldn't hold it in.

Nighttime was still a time of uncomfortable rumblings. I didn't even wake up, it just seemed to happen... So my mornings still bring with them inevitably dirty linens and sometimes even an itchy rash.

My second problem, was my legs. They weren't good for anything yet. I couldn't even crouch over the pot on my own.

Maybe sometime, I would be able to go by myself. But, as it is, my legs and arms are only just flexible enough to crawl now, let alone squat.

Crawl a couple meters before my knees and elbows start to hurt, not to mention the small range of movement that made it difficult to go anywhere at a reasonable speed.

All in due time, I guess. I'll be a big kid sometime.

At least I can use the chamber pot during the daytime.

"Now, let's go wash you up."

Ivian said, lifting me once the rumblings receded.

"Ivian," I mustered some courage. "I can wash up now, let me!"

The words still didn't come out as well as other people spoke them, either the solid or wispy ones.

"Wow, you're so grown up, my little lordling." Ivian said in that tone that I had always thought meant she was happy with me, until I started learning sarcasm from the images.

Why didn't my angel believe me?

I tried to wriggle out of her hands and crawl towards the basin, but was swooped into my angel's inescapable arms.

I closed my eyes and tried to get past the next few unpleasant minutes of splashing water and embarrassing contact without a single thought passing through my mind.

Soon enough, I was back at the window. This time Ivian had me sit on her knee so that we could both look outside.

"Mr. Barker's cleaning the cousina this morning," Ivian told me. "Look at all the ashes from the hearth."

You might think it would be a bit boring to watch an old man heap up ash into a pile, but it gave me lots to think about.

I now knew a man was father or Saul, anyone who didn't have soft features like mother or Ivian. So I was again convinced that Mr. Barker was a mage.

Like the white haired mages in my dreams, he was always busy doing experiments and he even had a thing for fire.

Even now, Ivian said he was making all sorts of ashes in the cousina. That means he was playing with fire! And fire is magical energy, that's what the lecture man had been saying.

Maybe the cousina is Mr. Barker's laboratory?

I stared at him from one meal to the next and to the next after that, until I couldn't hold my curiosity back anymore.

"Ivian, why so much ashes?"

"Hm? You're still looking at Mr. Barker cleaning?" Ivian looked up from where she was changing the sheets in my cradle. "Well, the cousina is where we make your semolina and meals for your parents and maids like me as well."

"Maillard!" I shouted, showing off my knowledge of making food. I could see someone cooking right in front of me. The white haired man was putting the food through a magic stone powered heat normalisation apparatus to give the food a standard maillard all throughout. Yum.

"Maiyard!" Ivian squealed back at me with a smile. "You're so funny Tilly. Are you interested in the kitchens or not?"

And here I was pretty pleased with myself. I guess maillard was just one of the white haired people's words.

I was thoroughly confused now. If the cousina wasn't Mr. Barker's lab, but the kitchens, then why was there so much ash? Wasn't that dangerous?

The lecturing mage said that the flame energy was like the acid spells, leaving a corrosive and toxic ash behind.

Talking about kitchens made me hungry, so Ivian brought me some more semolina to ponder over. It seemed they made this over the fire too.

Ivian told me that semolina was the heart of the wheat.

Unlike the meat and vegetables that were often served to my parents, the semolina was cooked evenly in a kind of paste they called porridge. I guess even on a fire, you could cook things evenly as long as you could stir.

Nevertheless, Mr. Barker was surely still a mage. Maybe he didn't have his own lab yet, but there had to be someone who could summon the fires. I would have to ask Ivian if she could take me sometime. I bet I could learn so much in the kitchen.

After my meal, I looked out again at Mr. Barker who switched tasks.

Now, he was now rolling over a barrel on its rim. He liked barrels, used them for all sorts of things.

But there was another thing that caught my attention, it was a little bird with a worm in its beak. Animals that seemed familiar somehow to me, except for the hook to its beak and the green and yellow stripes on the worm that both seemed strange to me for some reason.

But the bird flew off after gulping down its treat and I looked back at Mr. Barker who had begun carefully measuring out the ash he had collected from the kitchens and throwing it inside the barrel on top of rocks and straw.

I watched attentively, wondering what he was up to next. How many things could Mr. Barker think up to use the useless, corrosive by-product of fire for?

Mr. Barker then brought over another barrel filled with water. He poured water into the barrel and then it slowly started to drip out the bottom into a pail below.

I watched Mr. Barker pour pail after pail of water into the ash barrel, over and over again.

... Over and over, until I was woken up by Ivian.

"Did you have a good nap, Tilly?"

I looked up and thought I saw Ivian's head roll upside down. I felt a bit dazed still seeing all that repetitive work. Mr. Barker should use spells more. I want to see something more exciting next time.

In the end, I didn't figure out what he was trying to do.

"Our little troublemaker is so quiet today," Ivian picked me up and then put me on a sofa chair and started tickling me all over. I hated when she did that. "You were making me so worried, looking out the window all day. Don't you want to play with the doll Lady Cianna gave you?"

Lady Cianna was mother. And father was Quirios Feles or Lord Feles. Though sometimes, Ivian would use the words lord and lady instead, which produced more flickers of ideas and images on the edge of my thoughts, but only as titles relating to a great monarch and his family.

I didn't understand why Ivian was so formal with mother and father. Were they relatives of the king?

"Hahahaha," why did I feel happy when she tickled me so dreadfully? I wriggled around until it stopped.

“What are you taking your time thinking about it for. You either like him or you don’t.”

"Mmh, I like Semolina, but I sleep with him every night, so why play any more?"

Semolina was the name I gave the doll that looked a bit like a rabbit. Like a rabbit, except for the big horn on its head and two red jewels it had for eyes. Not creepy at all.

Why did I call him Semolina? Well, I was eating at the time. I had my priorities.

It wasn't that I disliked the doll though. After getting him from mother, I would always go to sleep more peacefully, snuggled up to my red eyed friend.

But during the day, there wasn't much time to play. There was Mr. Barker to watch, images to learn from, and, most of all, I wanted to get stronger and smarter so that I could make things easier for Ivian.

"I'm glad you're you." Ivian said, making me smile. "My niece could only speak a word at a time before she was 2, but you're already talking to me like a proper gentleman."

"Niece?" I asked innocently. She was talking about a little person like me. I totally wasn't feeling jealous.

"Hmm? Yes, Evrolina. I used to go help take care of her while my sister helped in the bakery. That was before you were born and I was brought to meet Lady Cianna. I love my niece to pieces, but a little genius like you is so much easier to take care of."

She looked at me with a rotten smile, "I know, instead of a doll, maybe you are ready to have a little girlfriend."

No thank you, definitely not, bad idea, stop, stop.

"I already have Ivian!" I shouted.

"Heheheeh. See? My lordling already knows how to talk to a girl," Ivian enjoyed herself at my expense. "You really are a little wonder. I wonder what secrets you're hiding."

I don't think she was asking me, but maybe this was the right time to talk about this.

"Ivian... um..." I squirmed in, "did Evrolina see them too?"

I flinched as Ivian's smile collapsed into a frown. Perhaps I shouldn't have said that.

"See who?"

Even without talking to others, I somehow knew the images were something wrong.

Whenever they appeared, mother and Ivian wouldn't even see them. And sometimes, they wouldn't even really be somewhere, just sticking to my vision as I rolled around.

I once even tried to poke them when they were in my pillow, but there was nothing but pillow beneath my hand and then they disappeared.

I thought that it was just something all babies had, to help learn the ways of the world. But sometimes I would see babies flicker by with ghostly parents, somehow less attentive, speaking baby gibberish and bleating like lambs even though they looked bigger than me. Sometimes the white haired and black haired people were very different, but maybe black haired babies didn't see them either.

"Tilly? Who is them?" There was a hint of worry in her tone as she repeated herself.

"It's a bit like, when I touch things, or taste things, sometimes when I see Mr. Barker do things outside the window, they suddenly appear. They tell me things, usually, though sometimes I don't understand."

Ivian was smiling again now, but it wasn't her usual smile. There was something about her eyes. I could tell she was worried.

"That was a mighty big sentence, Tilly. You're not repeating your mother... no, you're not..."

"Evrolina doesn't see them too?" I tried again, but silence was my confirmation.

Okay, shut up now.

"Tilly?" Ivian smiled a bit scarily, "don't tell anyone what you just said, okay?" I wanted to nod along with Ivian, but I was hesitating.

"What about mother?" I asked.

"Don't worry, I'll talk to Lady Cianna tonight. Everything is going to be alright."

"What do you mean alright? Did something bad happen?"

"Tilly, nothing bad happened yet. Don't worry."

I didn't know why I saw and knew what I did, but I didn't think it was a bad thing. If I didn't have the phantoms to guide me, I don't even want to think how helpless I would have been.

But it wasn't normal. That's why I told Ivian about it in the first place.

Could she be right? Was something bad going to happen to me?

Ivian suddenly hugged me tightly.

As the seeds of panic started to grow within me, I got the feeling Ivian was really really bad at calming other people down. But what could I do? I just had to hope Ivian and mother would know.