Chapter 16

Baby's POV

I started out listening to the sounds in my room; focusing on the smallest sound. As I moved my hearing to outside my room, I mentally stretched my hearing as far as it would go.

I felt an odd sensation. A kind of tugging, but one that grew more intense, then painful. The pain did not originate in my head or my ears, but rather in the pit of my abdomen. I passed out, but not because of the intense pain.

I had forgotten to breathe. How embarrassing. Thankfully there was no one around to notice.

It was already time for the evening meal, which was now delivered to my bed and hand fed to me by one of the maids. It wasn't the original one. I noticed that this maid was inordinately careful while feeding me. Probably because it would be much more time consuming to clean both me and my bed should there be a mess. I decided to try again tomorrow, but next time I would take care to breathe.

The next morning as soon as I awoke, I tried again to push my hearing to its limits. I put my head down so that my chin was resting against my chest since that is the most efficient position for breathing and thought it couldn't hurt. In the process I made an astounding discovery!

There was a light in my abdomen! It was a light I could see. Keep in mind that up until that point, the last time I saw light was back in my previous life. After the first accident I didn't actually lose all of my sight right away. I lost everything except light and dark perception and then after a year, lost that as well.

This was an actual, literal light! I paid close attention to the tiny thing. It was so small that if it wasn't for the fact that it was glowing a bright white, I would have overlooked it entirely. I spent the rest of the day staring at the little light, fascinated and wondering how it got in me.

The next day I decided that I had wasted enough time staring at the light and that I should be productive and focus on my hearing. I did so well at ignoring the light, I really did, until several hours later when I just couldn't resist anymore. Imagine my shock when I looked at it and it had grown! My first thought was radioactive tumor! As I stared at it though, it shrank back down into it's originally tiny form. I was very puzzled.

Perhaps if I had my sight or at least wasn't 'stuck' in bed all the time, I might have never noticed it or if I did, wouldn't have been able to make such a quick connection. There was only one thing that I was doing and therefore, it must be the cause of the growth.

I took at deep breath before I tried to extend my hearing, but focused my attention on the little light. It was only moments of expanding my hearing that the small ball of light began to expand as well. As it got bigger, I noticed an increasing pain sensation and the beginning of cracks in the ball. Something told me that I didn't want the ball to break apart, so I released some of the tension, but not all. The ball shrunk slightly, but it seemed as though it wasn't under so much pressure that it might break. I was only able to hold it in place for perhaps 5 minutes before I had to stop. My body was drenched in sweat, out of breath, and absolutely exhausted!

Two maids came into my room, shortly after I had regulated my breathing, to bathe me and get me ready for the day. They moved quickly and efficiently and for once I didn't care about the lukewarm water or the less than gentle handling. I was too tired to care and fell asleep as soon as they gave me some food and water.

I woke up ravenous and by the time the afternoon meal arrived, my stomach was growling and the gnawing hunger was making me feel sick. I ate as much as I could before being laid back down in bed, then waited for the girls to leave before going back to practicing making the ball of light expand.

I pushed myself again, but this time I did not push the ball to the breaking point before releasing some of the tension. This time I tried to hold it until it was stretched double in size. I'm not really sure how long I was able to hold it, but it felt like a long time. I was again exhausted from this, but also felt excited. I was taken into the bathing room to have another bath before the evening meal where I again ate as much as I could before passing out. The next morning I awoke in bed wearing night clothes I didn't remember being changed into.

My days after that passed by in a cyclical pattern; practice, bathe, eat, sleep, practice, bathe, eat sleep. Day after day for several weeks I did nothing except for those three things. At first it didn't feel like my effort and pain was making any progress, but after a week, I noticed that the ball of light was in fact growing bigger. The cracks that originally were on the surface now appeared like stretch marks on a pregnant woman's stomach. I was very careful, slow and deliberate when increasing the size so as not to cause more stress than the ball could handle.

My hard work paid off. After three weeks, I was able to expand the ball to the sized of a bubble around the 14 month old me.