It had been almost four years since Joe was born.
For the first year of that life, there was nothing particularly strange about him. He cried when he was hungry, slept most of the day, learned to recognize familiar faces and gradually picked up the language spoken around him.
Then, shortly after his first birthday, he remembered dying.
The memories arrived together. His parents. School. Work. The apartment he had lived in alone. Years spent sitting in an office, answering emails, staring at spreadsheets and working overtime for pay that never seemed to increase as quickly as his responsibilities did.
He had lived an ordinary life, perhaps too ordinary. He never married, and friends gradually became people he occasionally promised to call. After his parents died, he stopped taking particularly good care of himself. Cheap takeaway was easier than cooking after work, while sleep became something he borrowed from whenever another deadline arrived.
Eventually, his body stopped cooperating.
The cancer was already advanced when it was found. Joe remembered sitting across from the doctor, listening to treatment options while thinking mostly about money. His savings were enough to keep him alive for a while, but not enough to give him unlimited choices. Surgery was eventually recommended.
He remembered the hospital lights above him and the anesthesiologist telling him to relax.
Then nothing.
There was no memory after that.
Joe sat silently in his new mother's lap while decades of another life settled inside his head. Before he could properly sort through them, pale words appeared in front of his eyes.
Past Life Memory awakened. Soul activity increased.
Joe stared at the words until they faded several seconds later.
Lily noticed his expression and pressed the back of her fingers against his forehead.
"What's wrong with you?"
Joe looked at her.
He understood what she had said.
That was another strange thing. The language was not English, yet it felt completely natural. He had apparently absorbed it during his first year like any other child.
Lily frowned when he continued staring, shifted him higher against her chest and returned to whatever she had been doing. Joe did not object.
He did not immediately decide that he had been reincarnated. There was not enough information for that. He remembered one life ending, he was clearly living another, and the strange text had appeared at the same moment those memories returned.
Those were facts.
Anything beyond them could wait.
There was very little a one-year-old could do about the situation anyway, so Joe watched.
His second birthday gave him another piece of information.
The pale words appeared again.
Perfect Health. Perfect Body.
Joe had been waiting to see whether the phenomenon would be repeated, so this time he paid close attention. The text remained for several seconds. It did not respond when he blinked, looked away or tried touching it, and once it disappeared, nothing he did brought it back.
There was no menu, no explanation and no convenient list of abilities.
He experimented anyway, trying to call the text silently, repeating the words and concentrating on the place where they had appeared. Nothing happened. After enough failed attempts, he stopped.
The talents themselves became easier to understand over time.
Perfect Health was the more obvious of the two. Joe rarely became sick, and in Green Hollow that mattered considerably more than it might have in his previous life.
Children in the village frequently develop fevers and coughs. Stomach illnesses could leave someone weak for days, and small wounds sometimes became badly swollen. Most recovered.
Some did not.
Green Hollow had a healer, although Joe remained cautious about him. The man could splint broken limbs, clean wounds and identify several useful plants. He also considered bloodletting a reasonable treatment for illnesses where Joe strongly suspected that losing blood would be the opposite of helpful.
Still, Joe did not dismiss him. The healer possessed generations of practical knowledge mixed with theories Joe knew were wrong. One did not automatically erase the other.
Perfect Health seemed simpler. Joe almost never became seriously ill, and when he became sick, he recovered quickly.
Perfect Body was less obvious.
He was not unnaturally strong. A bucket full of water remained far beyond him, his legs became tired if he walked too long, and the furniture continued to be designed for people considerably taller than him.
Instead, his body simply developed well. He was healthy, proportionate and unusually coordinated for his age. Scrapes healed cleanly, lingering weakness was rare, and food seemed to benefit him even when the household meals were not particularly varied.
Joe was satisfied with that.
In a village where survival itself could occasionally become uncertain, good health was already an excellent talent.
His third birthday came and nothing appeared.
Joe had expected another message, but after several days he stopped thinking about it. Two birthdays had produced something. One had not.
There was no rule yet.
He had other things to learn.