When Zeverous woke up the next day, she felt like she was in a dream. She touched the floor with her feet and they only felt numb, when she wanted to move her body, it was as if she was underwater. Zeverous’ body seemed to have a will of its own as it moved without her and talked on its own in a monotone, bored-sounding voice. It was slightly amusing to hear her lisp contrasted with a voice that sounded dead. It was not amusing when Zeverous finally realized what was happening.

Although she was not a physiatrist, she had read up on certain mental disorders for fun in her previous life. The symptoms she was experiencing seemed very close to what was called DID, Dissociative Identity Disorder. The feeling of being a passenger in her own body as some other ‘person’ piloted was certainly an odd experience. Zeverous could reach over into the figurative driver’s seat and take control to some extent, but doing so was rather tiring on her mind. She decided to let that new being be as it walked and waddled its way to the main room for breakfast.

Zeverous began to theorize the reason for generating DID, and it did not take long to narrow down the list to just a handful of reasons. Being as young as she was it would make slight sense that experiencing a traumatizing event would scar her mind, such as being taken away from her parents or having an encounter with some divine/eldritch creature. Another hypothesis is that damage was done to her mind/body due to certain harmful elements introduced to her like some sort of unknown energy or magic.

Ribren had cooked eggs for breakfast for both of them and then left, only telling her he was going to the training grounds. Reversous, as Zeverous called her, scarfed the eggs until she was full with no resemblance of manners though considering that persona was at most a few hours to a few months old Zeverous did not hold Reversous in a barbaric light. What she did next was more difficult to rationalize as she began to roll along the floor, get on her feet, hop up and down then proceed to run laps around the interior of the house. Reversous was doing workouts even though she should be as smart as a smart toddler at absolute best.

Could it be possible that Reversous shared Zeverous’s mental maturity? It caused her mind to twist and twirl in theories, and not having notes to put her spiraling thoughts on only caused her head to spin more into confusion. Of course, It did not help that as her body became more and more physically tired it became harder to think as her mind was affected by Reversours’ constant movements of sore muscles. Eventually, their body became too tired to move and Reversous was stuck on the floor panting. This gave Zeverous some time to set her mind in order and try to regain control of her body. It was surprisingly easy as the other consciousness was smothered with Zeverous’s will and it quickly retreated deeper into her mind leaving control to Zeverous. The numbness slowly faded away as the sore pain of her muscles replaced the nothingness.

Zeverous rolled out of the kitchen and down the house's main hall until she reached Ribrens room with he had carved his name into the door frame in crude letters. She did not know if that was his name as she could not read but that would hopefully change soon. Her eyes tiredly looked up at where a doorknob would be only to see a small metallic indent in its place. She had lucked out this time with having to deal with a sliding door as she should have most definitely been stuck if it had been a doorknob instead of a grip.

With much effort, she slid the oak door open revealing the inside of Ribrens room which was surprisingly clean only having some books laying around. His bed was slid to the far right of the door against the wall, he had a single short bookcase and a desk put in the corner to the left of the door. In the left wall was what looked like a dresser, but Zeverous was not interested in Ribrens underwear she disregarded it. She rolled her what over to her actual point of interest, the bookshelf. There were three levels to the bookshelf each containing different styled books assorted to the level of the shelf. The middle shelf was emptier than the other two having those books laying on the floor and Ribrens bed instead. Zeverous placed herself at the bottom of the shelves and began her search.

She was looking for a book with simple pictures and big visible letters, something that would help her place meaning to each letter. After pulling out several thin books Zeverous found the one she was looking for with its’ bright colors, bold letters, and a full alphabet on the back page which had thirty characters in total. Besides the front, back, and last page each page had four words and a single picture under those words. The first letters of the word were colored differently than the rest which meant that the language was phenetic. If the language was like Chinese she would HAVE to have someone teach her how to read. Since it seemed that was not the case Zeverous began to flip through the pages looking for a picture she knew the word to. Once she found a word she knew she would pronounce it slowly and dissect it into syllables before finding the symbols in the written word. Doing so allowed her to slowly decipher what each letter sounded like. This opened more words to her and she repeated the process over and over until she had completed the whole book. Zeverous also spent time memorizing the whole alphabet phenetic and in written form, in order of course.

From inside Ribren’s room, she heard the door to the house open, and Ribren shout he was home. Zeverous set the book down, rolled out of his room, and slid the door closed. She closed it just when Ribren rounded the kitchen corner seeing her suspiciously positioned at his door.

“Ah.” She squeaked meeting his eyes from his towering position.

“Just couldn’t wait for big brother to get home could you?” Ribren said smirking slightly.

“Bwg- Big Brofer!” Zeverous awkwardly smiled at him as he kneeled to pick her up.

“Yes, yes. I am your big brother.” They began to move to the kitchen. “I think lil’ Sis is hungry for lunch, right?”

“Mhm!” She quickly nodded her head-hopping he was not going to think about why she was at his door.

“Great! Then after we can do some training!” Ribren stated joyfully.

Zeverous could almost feel a sword be driven through her when he said that. She was still sore from Reversous’ house workout-adventure and could already taste the pain that awaited her after lunch. At least she could take solace in those moments as she rested and waited for tasty food to be given to her starving body…