When I woke up, I saw an unfamiliar wall. Judging from its size, the room was quite small. I struggled to look around as I felt constrained. It felt like I had a giant rope tied around my torso. As I continued to move, the ropes twitched. I realised they were not ropes, but the arms of a young girl. I struggled to turn around and saw the sleeping face of an 8 year old girl. She was in an exhaustive sleep, but my movements alerted her. When she opened her eyes I saw her smile. It had been a long day for her. She looked at me. We stared at each other as I saw her lime green eyes. They radiated her curiosity and simultaneously showed me my reflection. I was surprised I could see it. First of all, babies shouldn’t have a good sight for a long time, often even tens of months and secondly my reflection should be too small to see in so much detail. This did not make sense. I noticed that my hearing was unnaturally good as well. But what do I know? This world is a foreign place to me. I have zero ideas about the common sense here. As I was thinking, the girl moved her arms and patted me on my head as she smiled. I played the ever interested baby as I reached for her fingers and pulled on them. The force could be barely noticed by her as she caressed my tiny hands. At first she was reluctant and scared but slowly she started adapting. Not long after she took a deep breath and stood up.

She carried me to another room, where several other girls that looked about 10 to 16 years old. Most of them had newborns in their arms. As I was carried to an older looking woman, I heard the two converse:

“Tina, good job!”

“I am not ready yet. I never had to take care of a baby. I am still too inexperienced. What if I do something wrong? What if I do something that could ruin his childhood? What if I raise him t- *sob*”

There was a long pause before she continued.

“What should I do Anita?”

The elderly lady sighed.

“We are never ready to raise children. We all make mistakes. But we learn from mistakes and they make us stronger. It is not a bad thing to make mistakes, the only terrible thing is if we don’t learn from them. The same is with raising children. Every child is different. When I had my 3rd son, he was completely different from the other two. I thought that I had experience but I was severely lacking. Just like you will undoubtedly make mistakes, I made many. I assumed he would be the same as the others, but that could not be farther from the truth.”

Tina continued to look down gloomily but she was clearly in thought… But the silence was interrupted when a quiet growl came out of my stomach. Tina was stunned while Anita chuckled and said:

“We need to feed him. There are over a dozen children that still need breastfeeding and there are only 3 women that can do it. For now bring him to Natasha.” Tina nods as she leaves the room.

She tried a few rooms but most of them were empty. There was a lot of dust in them. They were obviously emptied recently and not cleaned properly yet. At last, she found the right room. There were 3 women in the room. One of them had a large bulge in her stomach clearly indicating her pregnancy. She looked around 7 months in. As I was pondering a loud voice sounded “Oh you must be little Allan. Nice to meet you, I’m Natasha!”

Natasha looked at Tina.

“And you must be Tina right? Such lovely emerald eyes!”

Tina blushed at the compliment as the second woman said:

“As bashful as ever, eh? Don’t you see you are making Tina embarrassed? *Sigh* you really need to be less energetic! You gave birth YESTERDAY and today you are already running around. I truly envy you.” As I was eating, the two were conversing. I looked at the pregnant lady, who held both an annoyed and tired expression on her face.

The liquid was really sweet and quite thick. It was filling.

“You seemed to enjoy it Allan.” She said as she pulled at my cheek.

“It's too bad we don’t have enough of it to feed everyone” the pregnant lady says with a sigh.

“Luckily you started producing it two months early otherwise we would have struggled. They don’t seem to like the substitute. And it's so hard to make. We need cow milk from other islands and several dozen other things to ensure the nutrients. We can’t afford to lower the quality. These babies are the source of motivation for the others and soon the men will leave the island and we need to make sure the babies are healthy.”

As Tina listened, I could see the determination building up in her eyes.

A moment later, the door opened and in came a 14 year old girl holding a newborn. She awkwardly looked at Natasha and the others as she pointed at the baby.

“Aren’t you shy? Well I’m all out so you have to talk to Eve and Hina. The little guy was really hungry.”

Said Natasha as she smiled. But I could see she was just putting up a front. She was hurting inside. She probably lost someone dear to her in the masacre. But it wasn’t my business and even if it was, I couldn’t do anything. The girl walked to the pregnant Eve as she handed over the baby.

Soon we left the room and I started getting tired. I closed my eyes and tried to stay awake. It was time to train my mental strength. It would come in handy everywhere. Were my thoughts as I tried to cling to my consciousness. But it didn’t last long as I fell into a deep sleep.

***

Months went by as I continued to meditate and train my mental strength. It was the only productive use of my time I could think of. Tina, like usual, brought me to eat. Or drink, I am not really sure. But semantics aside, I dreaded my next meal. Today was one of the days when I had to eat the disgusting substitute instead of the authentic natural and certified sweet goodness.

In the first few weeks of testing my tastes, I found that Natasha’s brand was the most nutritious. The others were too watery and weren’t filling enough. And I made sure to be vocal when I wasn’t given the right one.

I imagined the taste while forcing down the substitute feed. I made my displeasure known so I rarely drank it. But I still did sometimes. “You are doing this to diversify your diet” I repeated in my mind. I lifted my head from the bottle as I looked at Eve who was breastfeeding her month old child in envy.

After the whole ordeal was done I was carried out. I bonded a lot with Tina. She was the youngest of the girls but showed unexpected maturity. It was good, since it meant that she had no experience in raising a child and I could get away with the occasional mishaps.

To entertain myself while I was bored I often played with her hair. I tried to be gentle and control my strength which she greatly appreciated. We often saw other babies pulling on their caretakers' hair with their full strength and many toddlers were not any different. So it was a relief to Tina that I wasn’t too aggressive.

After we arrived outside she placed me in a space where the other babies were crawling around. Although I was only 3 months old, I could already crawl together with the older babies. I tried to develop my miniscule strength even while playing. I tried to rush around energetically while avoiding others. But I only did it when I knew I was getting the deluxe meal afterwards since I had to regenerate my muscles.

As I slowly grew older, I noticed that the babies around me were doing things they surely couldn’t do back on earth. Their physical strength was quite a bit higher than on Earth. And I was the pariah even among them.

In any case my training was progressing smoothly. I practised everything I deemed important regarding mental strength. I put special focus on both long and short term memory, thinking speed, analysis and pattern recognition. And most importantly, I wanted to learn how to clear my mind. I wasn’t sure if magic was the reason behind the abnormally good physical body but if it was, I needed to train early. So I started my meditation once again.