My mother

Apparently, Pelicans weren't fat?

All my life I imagined pelicans to be fat ducks with a big beak. And yeah, they were fatter than a duck but darn things weren't nearly as fat as I imagined them to be. 

Wet rice paddies and birds as far as I could see. And I could see for a good two hundred meters. Anything past that, I couldn't really see; blurry mess. Maybe I was a little myopic? In my previous life, I had pretty okay vision. I wasn't necessarily myopic but I did have a hard time seeing the blackboard from the second or third bench. Okay, maybe I was myopic… 

Anyway, birds!

Not just pelicans but all sorts of birds. Some swans, and some rather odd shaped ones too. Odd as in, two heads, three tails and five eyes and stuff like that. Odd… yeah, odd didn't really cover my emotions. 

I pointed at the multiheaded birds. 

"Those are Xen birds. Said to bring good harvest," mother said. Both of us seated on a mound of sorts just by the paddies. Still about two meters away from the wet ground though.

On our way here, I'd seen some houses. They were like our hut just bigger. One, two humans. They had pointy eared folks too. The people stared quite a lot at me. 

But mother pretty much never let me down, she didn't stop to talk to them either. She just carried on. There weren't any roads here, but since there weren't any hills, walking around was easy. And apparently the forest was safer than these farm lands?

We didn't come across any monsters. Yes, there were monsters in this world. Mother called them Fiends, animals who'd absorbed mana and transformed. Some of them were harmless and stayed out of our way, while others viewed us as their mortal enemy. For the most part though, they didn't take any unnecessary risks when dealing with people. Perhaps a great sign of their intelligence. 

"They're also pretty tasty," Mother said. "I'll fry one when you're older," she whispered. "Don't tell anyone though," her index finger pressed on her lips, while she smiled.

I did the same and she started cackling, almost falling over with the giggles. She let me down, and I just sat down on some grass. We watched the orange sky light up more and more. Just a meter away, there was some water though. 

For the first time, instead of crawling, I tried walking. And… I fell, I fell flat on my face. I haphazardly looked back, expecting my mother to panic and stuff but she didn't. She didn't even get up, almost as though, wanting me to get up on my own and keep going. 

Good, cause I never liked being pampered too much. Almost groaning, I somehow made it back on my feet, taking a step at a time. This body was pretty weird, and kind of fat. Just some months ago, I was so damn lean and tiny, and now I was fat. But- 'Move!' Another step, and then another. By the third, I was walking, almost tumbling over… almost.

With about seven steps I'd neared the end of the grassland, staring at the wet land and the paddies.

Mother started clapping, coming my way. But my focus was elsewhere. Namely on the water, or rather… my reflection.

I didn't have long ears like mother. Actually, was she even my mother? 

In a split second my heart crumbled, feet went cold, chest ached. What was this? Why? Was I afraid? Afraid of being different from her? Afraid that…

Lin picked me up in her embrace. "What's wrong? Did you pee in your pants?"

I shook my head. And… touched her ears. Then mine.

Her eyes opened a bit wide, then narrowed. "Sol," she stared. For the first time she didn't use any weird suffix on my name. "You're my son," she said. "Our ears a little different and maybe our races too." She didn't look away. She was speaking to a baby who was at best a year old. Yet, she didn't look away, she didn't try to baby talk; she didn't try to dodge the subject. "But I 'am' your mother."

Again, I didn't know if she was pretending. And again, I didn't care. I hugged her back, I hugged her tight. Though with my limited muscle mass, she probably didn't feel a difference. Or at least I thought she didn't, but then she hugged tighter and almost made me cough. She did ease up a second later though. 

'So she really is not my mother…' I did wonder who my real parents were but considering how shit my previous parents were, I didn't want to find out. Lin may not have been my birth mother, but she was every bit of 'mother' I could hope from a mother. 

And… that was good enough for me.

Lin 'was' my mother.