Fin POV
I stood in the middle of a field with a blindfold tied around my head and goats surrounding me.
This had become my life.
I adjusted the cloth over my eyes and lowered myself into the grass, trying to ignore the smell of dirt, sun-baked weeds, and goat. My breathing slowed. The bleating faded into the background. I stretched my senses out the way I'd been practising these last three months, not forcing it, just letting it happen.
Observation Haki really was an insane first roll.
I still wasn't good at using it, not really. I had the instinct for it now, like the skill had already carved out a place inside me, but instinct and competence were very different things. Sensing something was one thing. Doing anything useful with that information before a goat turned me into a toddler-shaped speed bump was another.
Then I felt it.
A faint tug at the edge of my awareness. Something to my left shifted. A second later, I heard the clack of hooves on stone.
Gotcha.
I turned slowly, careful not to overcommit. The trickiest part wasn't sensing them anymore. That part was starting to feel weirdly natural. The real problem was that my body still had the proportions of a slightly confused potato. Reaction speed mattered a lot less when your legs were this short.
Another presence flickered to my right.
Closer.
I tensed and lunged.
For one glorious moment, I thought I had it.
Then my hands closed on absolutely nothing, and my face hit the dirt with enough force to make me briefly reconsider self-improvement as a concept.
"Dammit," I muttered, spitting out grass.
A goat bleated nearby.
Not just a normal bleat, either. That thing sounded smug.
I yanked the blindfold off and glared at the little bastard. A scruffy brown goat stood a few feet away, chewing lazily on weeds, looking so offensively calm that I immediately decided I hated it on a personal level.
I pushed myself up with a sigh and brushed dirt from my clothes.
Observation Haki was great and all, but it lost a bit of its magic when I could sense an incoming attack and still eat dirt anyway. I could feel where the goats were. I could sometimes even tell when they were about to move. Actually moving in time, though, was still a work in progress.
Literally.
Still, it was progress.
Three months ago, I wouldn't have noticed if a goat was sneaking up behind me. Now, I could at least avoid getting headbutted.
Most of the time.
I retied the blindfold and took another slow breath. The goats weren't going to wait for me to become competent, and neither was the world. If I wanted to survive whatever this place eventually threw at me, getting bullied by livestock was apparently a necessary stepping stone.
"Alright," I muttered, settling back into a crouch. "Round two."
The goats bleated back at me like they were accepting a challenge.
Rude.
"This time," I told them, "I won't embarrass myself."
A pause.
"Probably."
...
By the time Helga called me in, I was sweaty, dusty, and pretty sure one of the goats had developed a personal grudge.
The blindfold hung around my neck as I splashed water from the bucket over my face. Mud dripped down onto my shirt. Behind me, the goats had already wandered off, no doubt to hold a private meeting about how funny it was watching me fail.
"Fin! Dinner's ready!"
Helga's voice carried across the farm.
"Coming!" I shouted back.
I wiped my face with the back of my hand and jogged toward the house, brushing dirt from my clothes as I went. The scent hit me before I even reached the door. Fresh bread. Roasted vegetables. Something thick and savoury is simmering in a pot.
My stomach reacted immediately, making a noise loud enough to qualify as a cry for help.
Inside, Helga was setting the table. Her hair was tied back in a loose braid, and her apron was dusted with flour and marked with grease from cooking. She glanced up the second I stepped in and narrowed her eyes.
Ah.
She had noticed my state.
"You've been out playing with the animals again, haven't you?"
"What? No," I said smoothly. "I was just, uh... playing in the field."
That was a shit excuse. Helga crossed her arms and gave me the same look she always gave me when I said something stupid.
"Playing in the field," she repeated. "Then why do you smell like a goat?"
Crap.
How the hell did she even catch that? Did she have Haki too? Was there a passive farmwoman skill that let you detect goat residue from across the house?
I scratched the back of my head. "Maybe one of them followed me."
Her eyes narrowed even further, which I honestly hadn't known was possible. Then she sighed and shook her head.
"You are impossible, you know that? You're barely over two years old, Fin. You should not be out there chasing goats, wrestling goats, getting trampled by goats, or doing whatever suspicious little activity you were clearly doing."
"I wasn't chasing anything," I said, brushing past her toward the table. "Honest."
That part was technically true.
For at least the last five minutes, the goats had been the ones chasing me.
Helga muttered something under her breath that I was pretty sure was not particularly flattering, then went back to the kitchen. A moment later, she returned with a steaming pot of stew and set it down on the table.
"Sit," she said. "Eat before it gets cold."
Now that was an order I could respect.
I climbed into my chair, which was still annoyingly too big for me, and grabbed a chunk of bread before she'd even fully sat down. Helga watched me tear into it with the long-suffering expression of a woman who had somehow become responsible for a tiny feral goblin.
"You're going to be the death of me," she said.
I swallowed. "That feels dramatic."
"You smell like livestock."
Helga snorted despite herself and spooned stew into both our bowls. The smell alone was enough to make me feel emotional. Or maybe starving. Hard to say.
As I dug in, she rested her elbow on the table and looked at me.
"You know," she said, "Agatha told me there's a festival in town next month. Music, dancing, games, all that sort of thing. We could go together."
I nodded while shovelling stew into my mouth.
She smiled a little. "They're even bringing in a petting zoo."
I paused.
Then slowly looked up from my bowl.
She was absolutely doing that on purpose.
I narrowed my eyes.
She smiled innocently.
I went back to eating.
The thing was, I wasn't ignoring her because I disliked her. That would have been easier, honestly. Helga was kind. She worked hard. She fed me, took care of me, and somehow managed to do all of it while running this whole farm herself.
That was exactly the problem.
She cared.
Genuinely.
And I had no idea what I was supposed to do with that.
In my last life, I hadn't had parents. Not really. I had the church, the other kids, a life built out of things that were close enough to normal to function but never quite the same. Family had always been this thing I understood in theory and watched from a distance, like everyone else had been handed a manual I never got.
Now I was here. In a new life. In a house with warm food and someone who looked at me like I mattered. And instead of handling it like a normal person, I sat there in silence, avoiding eye contact with the woman who raised me.
Way to go, Fin.
"Fin?"
I blinked.
Helga was watching me now, chin propped on her hand.
"Are you even listening to me?"
"Huh?"
Very intelligent response. Strong showing.
I shoved another spoonful of stew into my mouth before she could keep going.
She sighed, though there was no real annoyance in it. "You're always somewhere else."
I kept my eyes on my food.
What was I supposed to say? Sorry, Helga. I'm a reincarnated adult in the body of a toddler, and I've never had a mom before, so I genuinely don't know what the correct response is when someone offers to take me to a festival.
Yeah. That would go well.
She was quiet for a moment, then smiled softly.
"Well, at least you're eating. You've been running around so much lately, I'm amazed you haven't collapsed."
That made me glance up.
There it was again. That easy concern. That care she gave so naturally, like it didn't cost her anything.
A small knot of guilt twisted in my chest.
I managed a faint smile and looked back down at my bowl.
We finished dinner mostly in silence after that. Helga tried filling the quiet here and there with little bits of conversation, and I answered when I had to, but my thoughts kept drifting. By the time we were done, I helped carry the dishes, moving carefully because dropping one at my age would absolutely get me banned from kitchen labour for another month.
As I passed by the table, I caught Helga watching me.
Not suspiciously.
Just... thoughtfully.
"You're a strange one, Fin," she said.
I looked at her and gave a small shrug. "I do my best."
That got a laugh out of her.
She reached out and ruffled my hair as I walked past, her hand warm and gentle.
"But you're my strange."
I didn't know how to answer that.
Didn't know how to bridge the gap between what she felt and whatever confused mess I had going on inside me.
But for the moment, standing there in that little farmhouse kitchen with the smell of stew still hanging in the air and Helga smiling at me as if I belonged there, I thought that maybe I didn't need to know yet.
Maybe, for now, just being here was enough.
...
End of Chapter!