Chương 165: 78 - THE THINKING CHILD

Despite being half drunk, T'balt ran home, leaving the other two Redeemers behind as Acelin followed. They would've followed if the two hadn't snatched the only two speed loots and zipped out the door. T'balt's home was about a mile away from the tower in an area of synthetic grass and distant neighbors. A modest one-story house with three bedrooms. He and Acelin appeared at the front door.

"Listen, I'll take full responsibility for this. You can punish me however you want."

"Acelin, just tell me what happened." T'balt opened their quaint little home, expecting to find some disaster waiting for him. But the place looked exactly how he left it. It was furnished similarly to his grandparents' place, with some modern Asian-style decor. A couch in the living room, bookshelves in the corner, and a fireplace for the rough winters. He saw T'tania sitting, with her stubby little legs crossed on the living room rug. It didn't look like anything was wrong.

She was just sitting there, holding her feet as five-year-olds did sometimes. The only difference was that she was surprisingly still. He looked to Acelin for answers. The blonde-headed boy paused with his mouth open, waiting for the words to come to him. But T'balt's stern glare forced them out of him.

"So I may have found your bag of loot while I was watching her. I was just checking to see what was inside and… I guess… one of them got away from me. Haha." He nervously laughed. Needless to say, T'balt wasn't in a laughing mood.

"You know how the things start crawling around like spiders when they get loose and all." T'balt let his stare drop. The young girl getting into some loot was far from the worst thing that had happened. He would've been lying if he said it was the first time. Those creepy crawlers are pesky around children.

"It's fine," he said.

"I can go back to the tower and borrow the Loot Thief. Don't freak out over something so small." Acelin hesitated.

"What is it?"

"I wouldn't usually. It's just that," Acelin put his hands to his mouth as if covering the words would soften the blow.

"She hasn't moved… in a few hours." T'balt panicked, kneeling down in front of his daughter and checking her face. It was the same beautiful face he remembered. Round dimply cheeks, almond-shaped eyes, and pink puffy lips contrasting her pale ivory skin. But instead of Ellie's blue moon eyes, they were shining red. And though he was right in front of her face, she didn't seem to respond. She didn't move. She didn't make a noise. It was like she was still staring at the wall through him.

He checked the back of her neck under her long, pigtailed black hair. Then he sighed.

"It's the thinker's loot. I guess she's just lost in thought. Don't worry. Daddy's here." He scooped her up and held her.

"So she's good?" Acelin asked, worried.

"Yeah. Thinking never hurt anyone. But you wanted me to give you more responsibility. This isn't how you earn it. What if this was a fire loot and she burned herself?"

"I know. I'm sorry. It won't happen again." T'balt bounced her around in his arms, hoping that might get her to snap out of whatever trance she was in. When that didn't work, he told Acelin, "Go back to the tower and ask Tyene for the Thief. We'll just take it out of her."

"Please don't." T'balt looked around. The voice belonged to his daughter, but it was much too composed, too straight without the usual lisp of a child still trying to figure out their teeth. He stared at her. She stared back, eyes back to the normal blues.

"Excuse me?" T'balt said.

"Ummm… I'd prefer to keep the thinker's loot if you don't mind… now if you'd please put me down for a moment, papa. I've been sitting still for ages, and I think my legs have fallen asleep without me."

"Yeah. Sure." He did as she asked and allowed his mouth to drift open when he watched her start doing jumping jacks and high knees to put the feeling back in her legs. He would've thought she was the shortest Olympic sprinter in the world.

"Hey, Titi, are you feeling okay?"

"Perfectly fine, never better, why?" she said quickly, still stretching. She started wiggling her fingers and toes, her eyes glowing red as she watched them.

"So that's how you turn it off. I just had to stop thinking."

"Umm… T'Tania?"

"What? Why are you both staring at me like that?" Acelin and T'balt were indeed staring at her.

"Oh, you must be wondering what happened? I was stuck in my head for what felt like years. And I've had a lot of time to process things. Like words and feelings… for example, I think I know what you and momma get up to when you lock your door at night. You're making brothers and sisters. Though what mechanisms you use to do that, I'm still unsure… okay, now you two are making me anxious. Keep staring at me like that, and I might cry." This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road.

If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. T'balt slowly nodded his head, eyes watering from his lack of blinking.

"Acelin?"

"Yeah?"

"Where's Ellie?"

"Picking up dinner."

"Go get her, please. Now." Without another word, the front door opened and closed with one less person in the room.

"Papa, you're not gonna put me in timeout again, are you?"

"Just… wait for your mother." T'balt and Ellie stood opposite little T'tania as she bobbed her head on the couch, reobserving everything in the house with her 'advanced' mind. Her parents were stiff, like they were deciding who would be the good and the bad cop in the following interrogation. But likely it was gonna be the confused and the confused cop. Ellie chewed on her own finger, staring at her.

"So what do we do?" she whispered.

"I was hoping you'd have a better idea."

"I was thinking we'd just tell everyone she's a genius and not reveal that we're terrible parents."

"Not terrible. It was an honest mistake."

"Because we left her in care of another child."

"Acelin's nearly a grown man."

"If CPS still existed, do you think they'd care?"

"I mean, she still looks normal. I'm sure once we get it out of her, she'll turn into a 5-year-old again."

"You know, talking quieter when I can still see you doesn't really work anymore," T'tania was suddenly standing up on the couch, puffing out her cheeks and doing her best to match their height.

"I'm not stupid anymore. And I don't want to be stupid again, like those other 5-year-olds. Now stop arguing so I can sit on daddy's lap. And can I have a cookie while we're at it?"

"Yes, anything for our little genius." Ellie took off to the kitchen as quickly as she could.

"But I thought we agreed, no sweets until she's had her dinner?" T'balt called after her, but no response. He awkwardly glanced back at his daughter.

"She's just… in denial." But the little girl was holding her arms up in the childish sign for uppies. She was definitely too old for it, but T'balt was always sweet on her. He was always a sucker for that soft-boiled face and those big blue eyes. He sat down and put her in his lap like he often did when he got home from work and just let her lean on him like a vertical pillow.

"So what do you want to do?"

"Ooh ooh. Read…" T'tania cleared her throat, correcting those old habits.

"I mean, can you read to me?" T'balt took a gander at his bookshelf, cataloging through the books he'd borrowed from Uriel's library.

"Sure. What are we thinking? Goldilocks? Little Red Riding Hood?"

"No, I know those stories. I want something new."

"Like?"

"Umm. That one at the top over there," she pointed.

"The one Daddy reads all the time." She was talking to Ellie, who had returned with cookies, 1 for T'tania and about 5 for herself. She plucked the book off the top shelf and lazily handed it to T'balt with a face that said, 'This is life now. Deal with it.'

"But this is a book of old poems," T'balt said.

"I don't think it's for kids." T'tania made a pouting face and started shaking in a way that brought a bunch of unnecessary heat to his leg. She was never the type of kid who threw tantrums. Instead, she poked and prodded and lurked until she found a way to get what she wanted. When T'balt felt the skin chaffing off of his thigh, he relented.

"Alright, I guess."

"Yay! Story time!" She said gleefully.

"Now what's a poem?"

"It's an expression of thoughts. Like a story but usually shorter and sometimes it rhymes."

"Like a song?" T'tania started biting into her cookie, as Ellie propped herself on the couch nearby, just watching.

"Yeah." he opened the book, revealing pages and pages of iconic writings from historic figures, writers, and poets.

"My mom used to teach this stuff in school, so she made me read these things often."

"You have a momma, too? How come I didn't know that?" T'tania innocently asked. Ellie raised an eyebrow at him.

"I haven't seen in a long time." T'balt rushed the story along.

"But I read this book a lot because there's a particular poem in here that I like. I used to read it to my Grandfather after he got sick, hoping it would convince him to get better." He turned then to a specific page as T'tania ogled over all the words, mouth open in awe.

"Did he get better?"

"On second thought maybe we should…"

"Daddy, please. I wanna know."

"No, he didn't. He couldn't fight death. He wasn't lucky enough to be a Redeemer." He scoffed at his own words.

"Who knows how things would've been different if he were. But I wanted him to live. He and my grandma are effectively the ones who raised me since I got along with them better and Mom couldn't take the stress of being a single parent." He wondered why he was sharing all this with a girl he wasn't sure could understand. Maybe it was all that wine that was still in him.

"So did your grandpa put you in his lap and teach you things too?"

"When I was a baby, sure," he laughed.

"But mostly taught me things when I was older. Without the sitting in his lap part."

"Like what?"

"Like that the world keeps moving. Whether you want to or not, you can either get moving with it or let it pass you by. I didn't always listen, though… but I loved him. And I was afraid to lose him. Both of them. So I read him this. I said, Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, Rage against the dying of the light." T'tania's eyes glowed as she gloured over the poem on the page far faster and more in depth than he could ever read it.

"I don't understand it."

"It means fight death. Live life for every single drop of what it's worth. Or you'll die, remembering all your regrets. If you ever learn anything from me, I hope it's that. So that maybe you won't waste as much time as I did when you're older." She cocked her head to the side, noticing the slow way he spoke and how the slow beating of his heart rocked her gently. She saw the sadness in his eyes and snuggled up to his neck to make it feel better, like that always did.

"Okay, daddy." Across from them, Ellie looked as content as a human could be watching two people she loved hold each other tightly. She was almost jealous but decided that this was their moment.

"Just one thing though," T'tania said.

"I've been meaning to ask, what does die mean?"

"Ok, that's where I think I'm drawing the line for now. Don't wanna risk giving my 5-year-old an existential crisis." She smirked at him.

"I'm just kidding. I've figured it out on my own. It means going beddie bye," she looked confidently at the text on the page.

"We'll go with that for now."

"Does that mean I can read this poem and not have to go goodnight?" He leaned closer to her.

"If you don't get sleep when we tell you, then I'm going to have to rage rage all over you." His hands morphed into the tickle beast, going to town on her exposed feet into she was surrendering in laughter.

"Ok, stop, or I'm gonna pee," she cried.

"If that's how it's going to be, then I'll go goodnight like your grandparents." The poor girl. She didn't know what she was saying, struck by intelligence but too innocent to use it properly. So when she looked up and saw her father crying, she didn't know what had happened. But he held her tight, pulling her hard into his chest.

"Please don't." After a moment, Ellie tapped him on the shoulder, signaling him to let the girl free. And she petted his hair as T'tania looked wide-eyed at both of them.

"It's alright. No one's going anywhere," Ellie smiled. When he smiled back, she took possession of their daughter and flew her over to the kitchen.

"Now, how about we finally get some dinner in you, eh, TiTi, and we get your older brother to come back downstairs too?"

"Yes, please." T'balt took a deep breath and sat on the couch for a while.