1980, England, Kent County, Town of Tunbridge Wells.
What is childhood?
What does it mean to each of us?
A carefree time?
Or a fight for survival?
For me, my current childhood was a time of self-discovery, a time to plan my life, a time to build the foundation for my magical development, and much more besides.
I could go on about this topic for a long time, but let’s start from the beginning.
Right after I was born, I spent my time doing four things: eating, sleeping, soiling myself, and thinking.
Sleep took up most of my time.
I finally understood all those reborn characters who didn’t want to remember their childhood because of their helplessness.
It doesn’t exactly promote a healthy psychological state.
All my waking hours were spent on thinking.
A child’s brain is very plastic, as is their personality, so every moment I was awake, I spent on “upgrading” my brain.
Every day, I forced myself to put off falling asleep.
It was hard, but it gradually began to bear fruit.
Every day, thinking became easier and easier.
However, there were downsides to this.
I started eating much more.
Breast milk stopped being enough four months after I was born.
My mother, Sara, was very frightened.
They took me to doctors, but every one of them said I was perfectly fine.
Of course I was fine.
All the nutrients were going toward developing my brain and body.
Oh, the body.
How I hated it.
Not being able to control your grasping reflex, not being able to control your limbs, not being able to turn your head at first.
It was incredible.
I’d try to move my hand, and it would end up in my eye or against the crib bars.
I’d grab the wooden rails and just lie there, meditating, trying to get myself under control.
It was so frustrating.
Over time, my body began to adapt.
By four months old, I was crawling like a race car.
By six months, I could stand on my own.
My eyesight improved by leaps and bounds.
With every waking moment, I distinguished more and more details, learning to see the world anew.
It was wonderful.
My parents deserve a special mention.
I was their first child.
They expected sleepless nights, lots of crying and screaming, but they were wrong.
I was as calm as a constrictor.
I cried when I was hungry or when it was time to change my diaper.
I didn’t demand attention.
And all of that together was another reason for my parents to worry.
Another round of doctors followed.
At first, they suspected I had “emotional blunting syndrome.” But that was ruled out.
I had emotions, just not very strong ones.
I was perfectly healthy.
Well, almost.
What else was interesting during that time?
Oh, that moment when I realized I couldn’t use my Seventh Principle.
Here’s how it happened.
When I was about a month and a half old, I was mentally strong enough to enter a meditative state.
When I was born, I had entered a meditative state too abruptly.
After that, I needed much more sleep than usual to recover, plus I had headaches.
In principle, once it became possible, I immediately tried to meditate.
Entering the meditative state, I immediately began examining my shells.
The first thing I noticed was the activation of my First and Second shells.
Which made sense, since I had a body now.
Previously, those shells had been in hibernation; now they were alive and developing.
Prana was simply boiling inside me.
There was an incredible amount of it, which was strange.
I thought that more prana would lead to more energetic behavior, but that wasn’t the case.
I’d have to think about that.
There were also changes in my Third shell.
Previously, it had only vaguely resembled a human body.
Now it was beginning to take on the features of my current vessel.
It seemed to be compacting.
I hoped that the increased density would bring some kind of benefits.
The Fourth shell was unchanged.
The Fifth remained just as small, but it had become more saturated.
About one-fifth of its original saturation.
But the “amount” of emotion was still small, unchanged.
All of this gave me hope for at least partial recovery of my emotions, if not full recovery.
The astonishing change was in my Sixth shell.
Previously, the main blocks for self-identification had been missing.
Now they were there.
In the very center of my memory was my name.
It was like the main part of the entire system.
The name became the head of all my memories.
It was so strongly connected to the other blocks that if you tried to break that connection, it would repair itself.
This was a huge reason for happiness for me.
My name also divided my memories.
All the memories from before my birth seemed to distance themselves from the memories of my current life.
Don’t misunderstand me.
They weren’t forgotten.
Oh no, it was far more interesting.
All the knowledge from my past life became like an external cloud.
I could reach out to it at any time and remember everything I needed.
The response was instantaneous.
And finally, there was my recently activated Seventh shell.
Things were far more interesting there.
What did my Seventh Principle look like?
It was a tangle of channels with a mana core in the center.
This shell was connected to all six other principles of my soul.
Some more, some less.
So what was happening now?
Those channels were beginning to “grow” into my body.
This was a natural process.
The interesting thing was that I couldn’t use mana until this process was finished.
You think I didn’t try?
I did.
But the moment I tried to direct mana outside my Seventh shell, I felt like I’d been electrocuted.
My intuition, which woke up at that very moment, howled like a siren, warning me of imminent death.
After that, I didn’t try to mess with it.
Still, I managed to do one thing.
I “commanded” my magical principle to first grow into my “brain,” my Sixth shell, and to create a more extensive network of channels throughout my body.
And it worked.
Whereas initially the channels had grown chaotically, now most of them were growing toward my “brain.”
The first channels in my brain only grew by the time I was eight months old.
And that’s when I understood what kind of world I had been born into.
***
Summer 1980.
England, Kent County, Town of Tunbridge Wells, a park.
That day, my mother and I were taking a walk in the park.
My channels had been growing for some time now.
Mana was still accumulating in them and going nowhere, but it wasn’t doing any harm.
This interested me greatly, and I spent all my free time watching it.
Because of this, I was less emotional than usual.
Sara noticed this and decided to go for a walk.
So there we were, walking through the park.
The weather was sunny, birds were singing, and Mom was pushing the stroller I was in.
Nature was alive.
Leaves rustled in gusts of wind.
Trees seemed to be trying to capture as much sunlight as possible with their crowns.
Somewhere in the leaves, a squirrel rustled.
Small rodents ran through the grass.
It was beautiful.
Then, a pack of stray dogs came running around the corner, heading straight for us.
It was immediately obvious that the dogs were aggressive.
Their appearance didn’t inspire confidence either.
They all looked mangy.
Some had tufts of fur and skin torn out.
They were bony.
A greenish-colored saliva dripped from their mouths.
Their eyes glowed with an unhealthy light in the sun.
Or was it not just in the sun?
Sara saw them, grabbed me in her arms, and ran.
She left the stroller behind.
But no matter how fast a person is, they can’t outrun a pack of dogs.
They were quickly gaining on us.
Mom looked back, saw this, and tried to cover me with her body, hoping that while the dogs tore at her, help would come running at the screams.
I watched it all as if in slow motion.
I saw the dogs, their mouths open, jumping at us, trying to reach my mother’s body.
Emotions boiled and overwhelmed me.
This was a completely new state for me, and not a pleasant one.
A single emotion consumed me: fear.
Not fear for myself.
I had faced death before.
I knew what it was like.
Fear for my mother.
The only thought in my head at that moment was, “I wish we were somewhere far away from here.” And right then, the mana that was in my body, specifically in the channels that had grown into my “brain,” activated.
It burst out into the real world, “embraced” me and Sara, and carried us away.
The next second, we found ourselves in the living room of our house.
I saw my father’s eyes widen in shock.
I heard the crack that signaled our appearance here.
But I only noticed this at the edge of my consciousness.
With that thought, I passed out.