A Week

'I have to find out what those soldiers thought happened. If someone asks about it and my story doesn't hold up I am going to be messed up.'

Thinking about how embarrassing this had all been James rode the bus back to school.

Strangely enough when he arrived at the school there was almost no one there. On autopilot he walked to the testing center and became astonished. The auditorium was practically empty. Just the cheer team doing some practices and that was all that was happening.

'What?'

Looking around James saw another student hurrying by and called out,

"Hey, isn't there supposed to be a test here? Was it moved?"

"Test? Are you sick? All the tests ended last week. Stay off the drugs! You'll be smarter!!"

The kid laughed and then put his hand on the colt walking by his side. It snorted to him and they went of like that thick as thieves down the hall.

'A week ago?'

It took a second for James to realize what happened. Panic set in and he felt like his world was falling through.

'I must have been asleep for a lot longer than I thought!'

A roiling acid in his stomach turned.

'Ah, why! I really am going to have to work for SPAM.'

Swallowing back his bile James had the sudden thought that he was human again. Since waking up, walking around naked, and then in these weird clothes he hadn't been able to really connect with himself as a human. But definitely receiving this shock cleared up his brain. Human wants and needs suddenly became front and center.

'I need to go be around my family for at least a little while. I am worried I am going to turn into a mouse! Or at least start thinking I am a mouse...'

As soon as he thought this thought he was actually able to logically realize the danger he was in. Going too deep and becoming more mouse like than human like was a reality that he had to deal with. He could no longer rely on instinct and common knowledge. James didn't even know how many pets he had right now.

'Has this ever happened before? I have to find a discrete way to figure all this out. I don't want to get locked up in a home for the disabled."

This possibility of going insane had never crossed his mind before. But it did now and in a big way.

'Calm down, that is the mouse mentality again. Anxiety and anxiousness are their traits. Being paranoid works for them, it keeps them alive, but it doesn't work for humans!. Slow down and think.'

Taking the bus back to his parent's place helped. There was a lot of routine in doing so.

Confronted with the door, James was struck by the feeling of needing to knock on his own door. It felt like forever since he was here last.

Just as he was about to reach out for the door knob one of his uncles came out.

"Hey."

"Hey."

The exchange was too fast and too normal for James. Before he knew it his uncle was already out to the street and walking on the sidewalk away. He didn't even think to talk more.

'Why do I want to talk more? For him this was probably so normal it was boring.'

Going inside and then to his family's section of the house, James saw his sister first. She had a sling over her shoulder holding a bundle to her breast.

"Hey! Good to see you, bro. Are you back for dinner tonight? You are a little early."

James couldn't do more than stare at her. So many associations where flooding his mind.

"Bro, James, are you there?"

She waved her hand in front of his face and it took him a moment to realize she had done it.

"Yeah, yeah, I am here, where's Mom and Dad?"

Impatient and not understanding why James tried to cover for himself by changing the subject.

"At work, dum dum. James you are really starting to weird me out. Are you okay?"

Disappointment flooded his thoughts and then frustration.

"No, no, I am not okay."

"Hey, …"

But James couldn't deal with her feelings right then, so brushing past her he ignored his little sister for the moment and went up to his room. The strangeness of his own home was giving him freakiest feeling. It was common knowledge that contracting a beast with foreign attributes can destabilize or alienate the beast master. The cure for this malady is time. It just takes time for the beast master to reacclimatized after a contracts was initialized.

In James' case it was a little different, a mouse was not considered a strange beast in any sense of the world. Normally there shouldn't be any rejection at all. However, due to the number of contracts James felt that there might be a possibility he was suffering from this type of foreign body sickness.

Besides time, just being in a familiar environment was important. That was why James came back to his family. It was already helping a lot. Just being in this environment which should have been so familiar he was remembering and reconnecting with himself.

Things that should have been extremely normal, so normal that he hadn't really seen them in years kept bringing back memories. There was a picture of his family at some cabin in the woods on the wall just outside the kitchen. A nick in the wood where he and Jane had had a fight a long time ago. The trophy on his dresser from winning a soccer competition when he was seven. And in his room a desk that was covered in alchemy instruments and resources.

The picture and the trophy were both reminders of terrible summers. The vacation at that cabin had been plagued by insects. The soccer team he had been on had been amazing, but his soccer talent was subpar often holding the team back.

The nick in the wood brought quite a bit of shame. But at the same time he remembered how much he loved his sister. They had been in a lot of trouble together over the years. Sometimes they fought, but most of the time were conspiratorial. The whole reason Jane had been able to contract a queen bee was because they had goofed off one year trying to transplant some wild bees to their back yard.

It had been hilarious. Anyone would have told them that bringing a hive full of bees to their home was a stupid idea. But no one was there to give a helpful hint. Instead James had ended up being stung so many times he little red bee stings where ever the bee could find their way through his clothes.

Fortunately he hadn't been allergic. Still they had been successful by wearing lots of layers plus gloves and a hat with netting tied round. Jane said they looked like they were on a safari, but really they probably looked more like fuzz balls.

Just before school started Jane's mana started flowing and she had tamed the queen on accident. Their parents had been livid. Bees were not the best contract for a first timer. And this was a wild bee on top of that. In the end, though, despite being three times the work of a normal contract Jane had made it all work.

Pride in his sister overwhelmed his heart. It was strange, he wouldn't have thought he could be so touched just by thinking of Jane. Wiping a few tears from his eyes he sat down at his desk.

'Got to think about something else.'

It had been a month since he last did any alchemy and now just sitting here was bringing back so many memories. Mostly memories of failure, but probably the most important memories were the memories where he had defied his that failure and persisted. Eventually he had cooked a few pills every once in a while. Most of his friends had dabbled in alchemy, too Everyone was encouraged to try. Trying everything was important for developing minds.

Easily those few successes had defined his character. It was time to try and try again once more till he succeeded in regaining some type of normality.

'I love alchemy.'

It was a simple statement, and didn't say anything about his talent. Which was abysmal. Yet the simple repetitive process of brewing and cooking had the ability to bring him back to himself.

Slowly, as always, he began to set up his alchemy equipment for brewing a stamina ball. His ingredients were still out on the table. Dry now and wilted there was no way this attempt would be successful. But he wasn't going for success. He was going for memory.