Ekhedama was awoken from her midday nap as she heard her youngest son cry.

  "Ah well, at least I tried to get some sleep," she grumbled to herself.

  Even with 9 months of practice, she still was unaccustomed to how little sleep she got.

  She sent a glance to the edge of the circular room where his crib stood and saw his hands reaching out from the wooden box.

  Before she could react, she heard a small yawn from her other son.

  His own bed was positioned beside the crib.

  "Thales, did you have a nightmare?" she heard him ask her little son.

  The cries stilled for a moment before continuing.

  "Or maybe he soiled himself," she answered in his stead as she stood up.

  Praxos made a horrified face. "Suddenly I don't want to know."

  She chuckled as she walked over to Thales and looked at him.

  His expressive blue eyes looked at her, and his little hands reached out. "What is wrong? Was Praxos right?" she murmured gently to him as she bent over and picked him up.

  He nestled himself in the crook of her neck and his brown hair tickled her chin.

  "Is nap time over now?" she heard Praxos ask.

  "You know how hard it is to put him back to sleep," she idly answered as she went over to the cooking pot in the middle of the dwelling.

  Putting a few twigs and some grass into the firepit, she reached out with [Cooking] to start a fire. When she felt the Bion in her start growing hot, she quickly put her hand into the firepit and grabbed a dry twig. Just as quickly, she let it go. The Twig slowly started smoldering. She blew into the mass to make the fire grow.

  "Can I get water from the river?" She looked to the hole in the wall that was covered with a slab of intertwined sticks and saw him stand there with his little bucket.

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  "Do you n-" Before she could finish, he let the bucket drop and used his tiny hands to move the makeshift door aside.

  "I am strong!" He picked up the bucket and made a silly pose. Thales, who watched him, giggled.

  "Be quick and do not get wet like last time!" she called out after him.

  _____________________________________________________________________________________________

  The village we call home, Ektara, was one of the bigger ones. I knew that because Meleagros, this body's father, had a position in the Guard.

  He told me that in the smaller ones there was no need for a dedicated guard because there was little potential for conflict within a tight-knit community.

  Of course, 70 Huts and the 477 people living inside them were nothing compared to any modern city.

  But people were the thing I missed least.

  I missed the modern conveniences, like a toilet or entertainment in the form of music that you could listen to without needing to make someone sing—far more.

  I missed cars or buses because I had to walk everywhere.

  I missed tapwater because I had to carry water in a bucket to a clay pot buried in the earth—just to have something to drink or cook with.

  But this life also had something the previous one did not.

  The desire to see my status—the Pinakos, as it was named here—called it up in front of me.

  The culmination of two months hard work looked at me. Some skills were unlocked with focused work and repeated instructions from my mother or father.

  Some, like Lesser Building Instinct, were the byproduct of unlocking another. The understanding-focused ones were unlocked when I tried to ask about Bion. They were precursors to bion manipulation according to Mother and unlocked when I tried to visualize them.

  Seeing the Pinakos always reminded me that I was in a strange new world.