A Tale of One Deviant (Book One)

Chapter 19: Nine Months Later...Trouble

I am ten months old now. After nine months, I finally have some teeth. And more hair. I can crawl wherever I like and do it so fast the maids can't find me in time before I'm in the next room or out the house.

I grew closer with my father over this time, not messing with him (at least, as much) as I had promised to when I first met him. It turned out to be that he was just extremely lonely because his former wife had left a deep impact in him, and even Mother couldn't drag him out of that stupor. Add in the command of his villagers on the battlefield and the losses on his shoulders, and you would wonder why he hadn't committed suicide already.

I played and smiled with him every day that Mother wasn't attached to me, and I would be waiting around on his lap as he slaved away at paperwork of some sort for hours at a time. I slept on the couch in his office and established a place there, gaining the ability to crawl to it and go up and down however I wanted.

He gradually became a very outgoing man as he probably used to be, not so timid or silent anymore.

I forgot to describe how he looked when I first met him, so I'll say it now. Well, he looks different anyway, so this is better.

He has this shortish brown hair with curls kicking up, keeping his head from looking tamed. His features were sharp, with a glint in his beautiful green eyes when he focused on something. He gave off that "bachelor" feel with how he wore gloves and always looked tidy, reminding me of Sebastian from Kuroshitsuji for some reason...just not as cool...yet still cool at the same time for a twenty-four year old man. I had the mental age of a fifteen year old if you added all of my years together, and even I sometimes blushed when I looked at him.

     Don't you dare say I'm daddy's little girl. Hera took that position two years before me.

But still, he was a handsome and pleasant man even if he didn't acknowledge it. You could tell that he had a tiny aloof part to him whenever it came to loving his children. He was extremely awkward in that aspect, but he got used to it after my teachings.

Oh! And the twins! Their third birthday was coming up in about seven months, so I would have to fake learning some words by then so I could wish them a happy birthday. I was planning to say my first word of their language soon, because I knew they would get worried if I remained mute or only saying "au" for so long. I tested it out when I was alone in a barrier and I could say the English alphabet as I remembered it, Japanese hiragana and kanji, and the language of this world to see if I could form things right.

I had a skill that allowed me to translate what they were saying directly so there was no problem from the start, but I knew I shouldn't rely on that too much if I wanted to speak proficiently soon on my own.

I was going to start tossing out words other than "au" during the mean time, but it would just be baby babble. Nothing serious.

But also about the twins, they were growing up nicely with lots of energy and they were plenty smart. The energy part wasn't so good for me, but...at least I got a good workout from it. They were so bouncy because their stamina had gone up from their training with Mother. She practically worked them to death with serious mana manipulation, and they were unintentionally tiny geniuses now.

Mother had positively flipped after we returned from Lilly's place a long time ago, not letting me out of her sight for three weeks straight. Thérèse profusely apologized every day at least twice, until Mother let up with her overprotectiveness because she wanted her best friend to stop with her sorries. She was forgiven quite easily, and after that she went on a small vacation on the pretense of training. It seemed that only Mother, Father, Lilly, and I knew she was a combat maid, bodyguard in disguise.