Chapter 22: Four Months (2)
During those four months, Lukas made tremendous progress with language.
He now understood practically everything his family said. Complete conversations about daily life, the villages, the peasants, and the news arriving from the capital.
The private jokes Clavor whispered to Aurora at night when they thought Lukas was already asleep. Discussions about finances, harvests, and the need for repairs around the mansion.
Nothing escaped his ears.
His voice was still sweet, high-pitched, and childish, which made everyone around him smile whenever he spoke, but his intelligence was impossible to hide.
He formed complex sentences, used rare words that Aurora did not even know he knew, and asked questions that left adults blinking in confusion.
But he needed books. He needed maps. He needed that locked library.
Aurora devoted hours to teaching him how to read.
They started with children’s books full of colorful illustrations, animals drawn with simple lines, children playing in flower-filled fields, and knights posing heroically.
The stories were simple, almost mundane, but Lukas did not complain. Every new word was a brick in the construction of his knowledge.
"This is the letter ’A,’" Aurora would say, pointing to a symbol that resembled Earth’s "A," though with a curved stroke instead of a straight crossbar.
"It makes the sound ’ah.’ Like in ’Aurora.’ Au-ro-ra."
Aurora laughed proudly.
He absorbed the letters of this world with an ease that even he found suspicious. It was not merely intelligence. It was as though his brain had been designed to learn languages, decipher patterns, and store information.
Perhaps it was a side effect of reincarnation. Perhaps it was a gift from this new body. Perhaps it was simply the result of years of hard study in his previous life, which had trained his mind to learn quickly.
’Am I really a genius?’ he murmured to himself one day while sitting on the floor of the main hall with an open book before him. Sunlight streamed through the windows, bathing the yellowed pages in a golden glow.
He frowned.
’No. I’m not. I just... had more time than I appear to have.’
Then he lightly slapped his own cheek, enough to feel it, not enough to hurt.
"Stop thinking nonsense," he said aloud.
"Just study."
Even so, the results were impressive. By ten months old, he could read simple books on his own. They were not complex texts, merely short stories about brave knights defeating monsters, common animals teaching moral lessons, and children learning the importance of honesty and courage.
But it was enormous progress.
Every new page was a window into this world.
During those four months, Tilbo changed as well.
The small black ant that had appeared in Lukas’s crib when he was only one month old was now... different. Not merely larger, although it was, having doubled in size to Lukas’s astonishment, since he had never seen an ant grow so much, but different in essence.
Its shell, once black and dull, now gleamed with a metallic sheen reminiscent of ancient bronze, with silver veins running across its back like tiny lightning bolts frozen in time.
Its antennae were longer, thinner, and moved with a precision that seemed almost intelligent. Its compound eyes, tiny and multifaceted, reflected light in ways Lukas had never seen in any insect from Earth.
’She’s changing,’ Lukas thought as he watched the ant walk across his open palm.
’Ever since the connection... she’s evolving.’
Tilbo appeared every day now. There were no longer any days of absence that worried Lukas so much. She was always there, at breakfast, walking across the table beside Lukas’s plate of fruit, and during study sessions, resting on his shoulder while Aurora taught him new letters. At bedtime, she was nestled between his fingers, her tiny body warm against his skin.
"Are you going to get even bigger?" Lukas asked her jokingly.
"Will you become a giant ant? Will you give me rides?"
Tilbo slowly moved her antennae as though considering the question.
Then she climbed up Lukas’s arm to his shoulder, where she nestled against his neck.
’She doesn’t answer,’ he thought.
Aurora had noticed the changes in the ant, of course. How could she not? Tilbo was now too large to go unnoticed, about the size of an adult’s finger, which for ordinary ants around there was colossal.
"That ant keeps showing up," Aurora commented one morning while watching Tilbo walk across the breakfast table.
"She’s... different. Bigger than before."
"She’s my friend," Lukas replied simply.
Aurora looked at him, then at the ant, then back at him.
"All right," she finally said with a resigned sigh.
"If you like her... but if she bites you, I’ll send her away."
"She doesn’t bite."
"How do you know?"
Lukas did not answer. He simply smiled.
Aurora shook her head but did not press further.
...
Today was a special day.
The sun had barely risen when Lukas was awakened by unusual activity throughout the mansion. Hurried footsteps echoed through the corridors. Quiet voices filled with excitement. The smell of fresh bread came from the ovens earlier than usual.
He sat up in bed, a real bed now, no longer the reinforced crib, and rubbed his eyes with his little hands. Tilbo, who had been sleeping nestled into his pillow, slowly moved her antennae as she woke up as well.
’What’s going on?’
He climbed out of bed and walked to the window. Pulling aside the heavy curtain with a quick motion, he looked outside.
The carriage stood in front of the mansion.
Not the simple carriage they used for short trips to nearby villages. This was the sturdy carriage, the one kept inside the covered stable, protected beneath tarps to shield the wood and metal from the elements. The Dmond family crest, the Three-Tailed Wolf, was painted on the dark wooden door, its silver details gleaming beneath the light of the rising sun. Two strong horses with dark brown coats stamped their hooves against the dirt road impatiently, their breath forming small clouds of vapor in the cold morning air.
Lukas frowned.
’Someone is traveling.’
’Far away.’
