Alister rushed to the nearest bathroom, his small black shoes rapping against the marbled flooring with urgency. A few servants gave him an odd look, but no one dared to interrupt the young lord on a mission. After all, it looked important.

He locked the door behind him and lost his stomach contents into the toilet. Gripping the latrine, a small voice in the back of his mind noted, entertained through his incredulity, that indoor plumbing did, in fact, exist now. How else would he have known the term? But what child thinks about how waste was dealt with in detail?

The boy laughed, one of those pained, broken laughs of hysteria, and muttered aloud to himself between gags, “I don’t even know how toilets work anymore! I’m worthless. A totally useless child in a world he doesn’t understand! I… ugh.” Alister puked again, anything left coming up in chunks.

He spent the next half an hour swapping between hysterical bursts of laughter at his situation and the buzzing discomfort of a panic attack. There was nothing more in his stomach to throw up, so he was just crying his eyes out. By the time he was done, his eyes were puffy and angry red. His nose was a sniffling mess. Alister was calming down by the end, rubbing away salty tears with the bottom of his palm. He felt like shit.

A soft rapping at the door was what finally brought him back up to his feet. The female voice on the other side was one he recognized. Harriet, the butler, spoke with worry clear in her gentle voice, “Young Lord? I… ah, I’m sorry to bother you, but are you alright? You’ve been in there for quite a while. Some of the other servants have expressed worry and concern.”

“I… I’m alright,” his voice squeaked, and he cursed under his breath. He opened the door to look up at Harriet, who looked concerned for how red and puffy his eyes were. Alister sighed, “I’m okay now. I… just… had some realizations. Past life… stuff… I guess.”

He clearly wasn’t convincing her. Harriet frowned, her black hair held tightly in a low bun, white eyes boring into him with distrust of his words. She held back a sigh and knelt to his level, “Yes, Lord Alister. Would you like to go on a walk with me? The crisp spring air would do you good.”

Alister’s nose scrunched, “I mean… I guess. I want a glass of water. My throat burns.”

Another half-hour passed of drinking water and recovering from his panic. Harriet was undeterred by the passage of time, patient as ever, and persistent as ever. She wouldn’t let the idea of a walk go. He gave in, too tired to argue against it. Any emotion he had was wrung dry for today.

He changed clothes to something light, a white billowy shirt and olive pants with bare feet. If he was going to bother going out for a walk in the grass, he wanted to feel it. Harriet, still in her butler’s suit, gave him a polite bow and a grin as he walked past and lead them outside.

“Where do you even want me to walk?” Alister grumbled softly, nodding kindly to a servant that opened the door for the two.

“Just through the garden, my Lord. No shoes today? You might feel a bit cold.”

“I like the feeling,” Alister said. It was something he had picked up in his short life here. Before, he much preferred shoes. In part, that was because not having shoes wasn’t a choice but rather a fact of being an orphaned child. It sat with him to wear shoes since then. In this safe abode, however, no shoes felt freeing.

The cobbled pathways that made up the driveway and other paths around the outside of the house were smooth enough that it felt soft and warm beneath his feet. He looked to the sky, where wispy clouds failed at covering the sun, and squinted at the ball of fire. What time was it? Around midday? A little after?

“Lunch is in an hour. Your father is running behind,” Harriet answered the unsaid question.

Alister gave her a small, surprised glance, “Ah. Thank you.”

She nodded, “My pleasure, my Lord. The petiflass have begun to bloom.”

They moved across to the righthand side of the mansion, around the corner, and into the wide gardens that his mother started nearly a decade prior. The gardeners tended to an orchard of trees and many beds of flowers and bushes, as well as a small personal herb farm. Petiflass was a small flowering plant often used in potioncraft. They had thin petals whose veins glowed blue, giving them the appearance of crystal or glass. And indeed, as they got closer, he could see the thick bunches of blue flowers blooming. At night, the glow of a single flower would be comparable to a candle. During the day, they just gave off a very soft light.

Alister and Harriet walked close to the flowers, in between rows, and Alister knelt down to cup a bud. He smiled at the small plant, “In my past life, the blue of this flower was much paler, not as bright of a shade. I had a friend who was fond of crystal flowers… Petiflass is a much better name, I think. Demerieth grew them. Multiple variants, not just the common blue. She would think I’m being so silly, getting flustered like that.”

Harriet sat a gloved hand on top of his head, “Lord Alister. You have a lot on your shoulders as the son of the duke. You have even more on your shoulders thanks to your past life. Please go easy on yourself. Regardless of who you used to be, and regardless of your future in the Mare Kingdom, right now you are a child. You are allowed your emotions and your turmoil. Memories alone aren’t everything. I can only imagine your frustration being small… not fully in control of yourself. Focus on what you are in control of instead. How you feel will only get better with the passage of time.”

Alister didn’t take his eyes from the flower, tears slowly rolling over his cheeks, “I was so ready to die when I did. I wasn’t scared. I knew I wouldn’t see them again… but… I miss them all so much right now… I miss things making sense.” He sniffled and removed his fingers from the flower bud to rub his face on the back of his sleeve. Harriet was silent as she petted his hair in comfort.