Mana

Opening my eyes as much as I could bear, I tried to take in the world around me. Although I wasn't able to turn my head to get a better look and everything still appeared very blurry, I was able to make out that I was in some sort of crib in a warmly lit room.

'Where am I.. What happened?' I wondered. 'Who am I?'

Lost in thought trying to remember, I felt an unbearable searing pain burn through my brain like a hot knife. 

After wailing, like the child I was, from the pain that assaulted my head I heard a pair of muffled voices followed by the sound of a creaky door opening. Not a moment later I was scooped into the air faster than my mind could muster. 

"Un-hand me woman!" I tried to say, though all I could muster was a pathetic, "Waaa!"

"Aww, my Sunshine, were you having a bad dream? Don't worry now, Mother is here," the woman said in a soothing voice.

I tried to piece together what I had just heard but it only sounded like gibberish. Getting impatient and confused I looked to the woman who was holding me above my crib. I unknowingly held my breath as I looked into her eyes, never in my life had I seen a woman like this. She had an oval face and fair skin free of blemishes aside from the small streak of dirt across her forehead like she just left the gardens. Perhaps the most striking features were her bright, amethyst eyes accompanied by her dishelved shiny, silvery azure hair. 

Caught in my reverie as I stared at this woman, she suddenly moved her right pointer and index fingers to the center of my forehead before lowering her gaze and quickly muttering a couple words. The moment she finished talking I could feel soothing stream of energy leaving her fingers and traveling first through my head that down through the rest of my body before stopping at the ends of all four limbs. Before I knew it, I was being lowered back down into my crib fast asleep.

---2 Months Later---

Crawling around in front of our small fireplace I couldn't help but to become more frustrated every day. I finally gained enough strength to stand up if I hold on to the wall but that's all I can do.

'Dammit! Why won't this stupid body listen to me! I know how to walk!' falling back down into a crawl I sprawled down on the floor and gave up.

"Aww is my little Sunshine tired, come now, Zeph have dinner before you go to bed," my mother said.

Over the past couple months, I've been able to piece together a little bit about my life. Aside from our 2-room hut there are only a couple dozen homes of varying size in our village. One side of our village had vast grassy fields with mountains on the horizon while the other side was dense forest with what looked like blue leaved oak trees as tall as redwoods. Beyond only observing the nature around me, I soon learned the strange, yet kind woman is my mother. My father is a rugged looking man with a beard to match but with kind eyes, smile and a very.. odd.. sense of humor.

The past two months I have started to understand my parent's language, and although I can't understand much, I've been able to make out that my name is Zeph. Mother enjoys calling me Sunshine or Zephy, making me think at times that she would have rather had a girl..

Crawling over to Mother, she lifted me swiftly off the ground and fed me dinner.

'Ugh, I can't wait until I grow my teeth,' I thought, disgusted, 'I know she needs to feed me but real food would be nice, and this is.. gross,'

Luckily there is a benefit in this, in these 2 months of listening and hardly being able to mutter a proper word, I did find out how mother was able to ease my pain that one night and put me to sleep. It's called mana, or energy and Mother uses it to water our garden and to heal my scrapes from falling down so much. While I'm not sure what Father uses it for, due to how many times he's stumbled through the door injured, it must physical.

After finishing my nightly dinner mother carried me over to my crib and laid me down for bed.

"Goodnight Zephy, can you say goodnight, come on Zephy say goodnight...," Mother continued like this for a while until I muttered something sounding nothing like 'goodnight', but mother was happy nonetheless and left me to rest after giving me a peck on the forehead.

'I really need to get this talking thing sorted out,' I inwardly mumbled, 'Now, let's get to it'.

While lying in my crib I closed my eyes and started to control my breathing, 

'In for 4, hold for 4, out for 4, hold for 4..,' I repeated in my head until I lost myself into the rhythm of my breath. Each breath I drew in I tried to feel for the mana in my lungs and the mana in the air around me. Saying there was not much mana was an understatement. Giving up on the mana around me, I focused on the milk in my stomach and most notably the boundless mana coming from it. 

Each cycle of breathing I completed, I gathered more and more mana from the center of my stomach and concentrated on holding it in a ball around my solar plexus. I repeated this process for what felt like hours until I had enough mana that I felt that I couldn't keep it in one place any longer, I then let the mana move freely through my whole body focusing on only keeping it from leaving my body. 

I didn't know if doing this was helping or if I was just growing stronger naturally, but it did feel good. It was the same familiar warm feeling of when Mother healed a scrape except everywhere. I couldn't help but to think that the mana coursing through my body had the same soothing feeling of a hot spring. 

'How do I know what a hot spring is,' I thought, 'I need to try to remember again'

This had turn into my nightly routine, gathering what was left of the mana I had freely running through my body I focused all of it into my head and just tried to remember. Anything.

I focused, feeling my mana almost instantly deplete followed by an all too familiar searing pain inside my head.

'It hurts much less than the times before, I must be close...,' my thoughts leading me into a deep sleep.