The rhythm of the world (Part 1) - Hunger, coins, and the limit of healing.

After his first contact with the new world and with magic, the weeks of Lian, now in the body of Christian Raymond, began to pass at an irritatingly slow pace.

The days followed a monotonous cycle: waking to the noise of the house, nursing whatever there was, watching everyone, trying to decipher the language of that world.

At night, when the house sank into silence and only the embers in the hearth still insisted on glowing, the fun part came: practicing magic until his body said "enough."

On the outside, he was still just a calm baby.

On the inside, he was an impatient adult, with the feeling of being late in a race that only he knew existed.

It was in that routine that he truly began to understand the world he had fallen into.

Poverty was in everything.

In the way Lia scraped the very last drop of stew from the pot, tilting the copper cauldron until the final thick thread slid into the bowls.

In the care with which Tomy counted the strips of meat on the board, his calloused fingers touching them one by one, as if he were calculating the future in pieces.

In the way Lilia cut the bread, always silently measuring the thickness of each slice, the knife going back and forth slowly so that no one would go without.

Their father, together with Caliste, spent most of the day in the forest with a bow and simple knives, hunting whatever was possible.

Every now and then, Christian heard their heavy steps on the porch long before they came in.

Mud-stained boots, tired voices, the smell of sweat and dried blood.

At those times, the kitchen took on a tense silence.

First Lia checked what was in the bag.

Only then did the rest of the family come closer.

She opened the sack carefully, her hands steady even when her shoulders trembled.

The sound of wet meat thudding onto the board filled the space.

Sometimes it was a scrawny rabbit.

Sometimes two small birds.

Sometimes almost nothing.

"Fragile balance…", he thought one night.

The sound of the knife scraping bones of a skinny rabbit filled the silence as Lia separated meat from scraps.

"A good hunting day, everyone eats. A bad day…"

He let the sentence die on its own, his chest tightening half from empathy, half from experience.

Lia split her time between the house, the children, and the small garden beside the tired wood they called home.

Shriveled tomatoes, stubborn green leaves, a few roots smaller than they should have been.

She crouched with a sigh, dug her hands into the soil, pulled weeds gently, as if everything there were made of glass.

"It's little, but it's the only food that doesn't depend on the forest," Christian thought.

He watched through the window as she leaned down, sunlight hitting the brown hair tied in a messy bun.

"If this dies, we die with it…"

With time, being carried from side to side in the sling, Christian started mapping that slice of the world.

The main road that cut through the village and vanished toward the distant city people mentioned as threat or hope.

The smaller path leading down to the stream.

Yana's house, always smelling of strong herbs even from outside.

Since he didn't have books to read and still didn't know the words properly, he always paid attention to people's conversations.

Whenever a rare traveler stopped at the edge of the road, someone inevitably said something that always sounded the same, with the same weight of "here" and "us":

— …Estia… our village…

Lia sometimes murmured it while complaining about the drought or the lack of merchants.

Tomy said it when comparing that backwater to "a real city."

Yana spat the name with disgust when cursing the people's ignorance.

It was always the same sound repeating, with the same melancholy stuck to it.

When Lia went out with him tied to her back or chest, Christian could see the details better.

A house with a roof patched with pieces of leather.

Another with lines of clothes so worn they were almost transparent, swaying in a cold wind.

Barefoot children running after a piece of wood as if it were treasure.

A skinny dog sleeping in the shade of a broken barrel.

But what caught his attention most were the things that didn't exist on Earth.

A tree near the well had fruits with dark-blue skin that glowed faintly when the sun hit at a certain angle, as if they stored a spark inside.

At another house, someone had hung on the porch a bundle of thin roots that floated a few centimeters above the rope, attached to nothing, turning slowly as if air were water.

"Okay, that's new," Christian thought.

"A plant that glows, a plant that floats… at least people look normal."

Two legs, two arms, no tail, no horns, no extra eye.

A half-smile slipped out inside him.

"Aside from the fact that they can use magic, they're basically humans just like on Earth."

"Are there other races around here? Elves, dwarves, beast-folk… or is that just a privilege of fictional worlds and here it's only 'people'?"

That certainty, that at least people's faces weren't strange, helped hold back a small part of the panic.

The rest he shoved deep down.

♦

Trips to Yana's house became a routine of their own.

His mother sometimes took him and Lyra to have the old woman examine her.

Apparently his sister suffered from some kind of problem that kept her from using mana.

Yana was basically the village healer.

Or at least that was what he deduced.

Many people in the village went there to receive some kind of treatment.

Her house sat slightly higher up, near a dry tree covered in strips of cloth tied to its branches.

As if they were prayers or promises.

Inside, the place smelled like burnt herbs, old dust, and something metallic.

Bundles of dried roots hung from the ceiling.

Glass bottles with suspiciously colored liquids rested on a crooked shelf that looked like it was about to give up on life.

Yana didn't look like a sweet grandma.

Wrinkles, she had.

Many.

But none of them softened her face.

Her pale eyes were sharp and attentive, the kind that missed no detail.

Her gray hair, tied into a low bun, looked so tight it could hold a bad day in place.

She watched her patients with the same look someone used to evaluate a tool.

Measuring wear.

Guessing how long it would still last.

And at the end, the coins always came.

— Three copper coins now, and one more when she manages to conjure something — Yana said on one of those visits.

She ran a hand over Lyra's forehead as the girl sat in the chair with her legs swinging.

Christian was in Lia's arms.

Pressed to her chest.

His face half buried in the cloth, but his eyes wide and alert.

He didn't understand the whole sentence, but a few words were starting to stand out:

"Coins."

"Conjure."

"Too expensive."

Lia pressed her lips together.

The arm beneath him went tense, as if her whole body were shrinking in on itself.

— But… Yana, you know that we… — she began, her voice wavering.

Christian didn't follow the content, but he recognized the tone.

It was the sound of an adult trying to negotiate overdue bills.

Explanation, apology, embarrassed pleading, all blended together.

Yana raised an eyebrow slowly.

— I don't work for free, Lia — she cut in, dry. — If I don't charge, who pays for the ingredients of my potions? The air? The forest?

She huffed, straightening her back.

— Bring it little by little, but bring it. If I let you forget, you'll forget.

Lia lowered her gaze.

Her free hand went to the inner pocket of her apron.

She fumbled the fabric as if searching for courage along with the coins.

When she finally pulled out three small coins, Christian felt her chest sink with a trapped sigh.

The clink of the coins in Yana's hand sounded too loud in the small room.

A dry, simple jingle.

But heavy.

"I've already understood enough…", Christian thought.

Yana closed her hand around the coins without thanking.

Without smiling.

She just tucked them into a wooden pot in the corner of the shelf.

"Medieval capitalism, lovely," he thought.

"I don't even need to understand the words to know who's paying the bill."

The old woman took a small crystal.

About the size of a chicken egg.

Polished to shine.

The way her fingers held it showed respect.

That wasn't just a tool.

It was something rare.

Yana pressed the crystal to Lyra's forehead, right at the center, and murmured low words.

Christian recognized fragments repeated from other visits.

Technical chanting.

"Magical tissue-repair spells."

The crystal lit up.

For a second, a faint, washed-out glow spread inside the stone.

Nothing intense.

Just a timid flash that died too quickly.

Yana's face hardened.

She murmured another sequence.

Changed the crystal's position.

Repeated.

The result was nearly identical.

— Nothing — she said at last. — Her core doesn't react. It's… strange.

Christian didn't understand the whole line.

But the final tone was clear.

That wasn't praise.

Nor relief.

Lia clutched her apron again.

Her knuckles went white.

— Is there anything we can do? — she asked, her voice breaking halfway.

Yana shrugged.

— We strengthen the body, clean what we can, and wait to see if the core decides to wake up one day — she replied, turning away to rummage on a shelf. — I don't sell miracles.

She opened a jar.

Smelled it.

Discarded it.

Took another.

She separated a small cloth pouch with pale, thin leaves that released a light aroma when it moved.

— Bath with this once a week. And she can drink a little too — she explained. — It won't turn the girl into a mage, but it pushes the illness back a few steps.

"Illness?" Christian thought, locking the new word in.

— How much? — Lia asked, already knowing the answer.

— Two coins — Yana replied.

Lia closed her eyes for a second.

Then she reached into her pocket again.

She pulled out the coins with painful reluctance.

Christian felt her heart tighten.

"She charges even on top of other people's desperation," he thought.

"A bad-hearted old woman… or just someone who can't afford to be nice?"
Yana took the coins, ran her thumb over them, checked the amount, and pocketed them.

Her eyes returned to Lyra.

This time, they lingered longer.

They went slowly up and down the girl's body.

There was irritation, but also a concern that earned no profit.

She sighed softly, almost like she'd forgotten people were listening.

Then she placed a hand on Lia's shoulder.

Said something in a grave tone.

Christian didn't understand the words.

But he understood the weight.

It was the rhythm a doctor uses when they don't promise a cure.

Only promise to try to keep someone alive.