2 years later.
Their language was weird, and it clashed with all the other languages he knew from before. Still, he was probably the first baby in this world who completely mastered the language by five. His old language kind of helped him learn this one faster. He just had to compare words and describe to his new family what word he was looking for, and they understood—telling him the word. He only needed to be told once, and his mind remembered it.
His new family was surprised and awed at his fluent language, so he sometimes had to make mistakes on purpose to not give them false hope of their kid being a genius or whatnot. He was no such foolish thing.
There was no proof, but another possible reason for his improved memory—along with above-average physical abilities—could be the white smoke-like energy inside his body. There wasn't much to do as a toddler. Along with learning the language, Auren kept playing with the white smoke-like energy he could feel in his core.
Manipulating it, pushing it, pulling it, letting it travel through all parts of his body—the more he played with it, the more white energy was produced, and he felt more energetic as a baby. It felt like a sugar rush. After two years of doing it constantly, the few wisps of smoke had turned into enough white energy that he could fill the whole upper half of his body—from brain to pelvis—with it if he kept it all together.
When it was near his hand, it felt like his hand had more power than it should have; when it was near his leg, he could run for hours; when it was in his brain, he felt like he could suddenly see the world more clearly, hear the details of sounds he had never paid any mind to before. But there were also issues with it—when he used it, the part he used it on started to feel numb afterwards. Then, for hours, and sometimes half a day, that part of his body was less responsive than it normally was. He often used it to run faster, and it always felt worse when it wore off and he had to deal with weak legs afterwards.
With language, he also learned many things about the world from his family. The crests on everyone's hands were summoning crests. The way they explained it to him: all people in this world had the summoning crests—everyone could summon something, with some exceptions. The majority of the people in the world could summon only objects. It was permanent, whatever one's summon was. The living-being summoners were more respected than the object summoners. The color indicated the rank of the summoner—black was the lowest, then came blue, and then orange.
The fox his father had was called Maru, and it was his father's summon. His mother could summon a clay lamp. And the grandma did not show him her thing. "She also has an object," his biological mother, Sable - her name was had answered when he asked insistently.
The old hag herself never answered him about her summon. After asking all kinds of questions, Auren understood that having an actual living, breathing animal as a summon was considered quite good—even better, however, was summoning a spirit beast. They were creatures that did not exist naturally in this world but were part of folklore, stories, and supernatural stuff.
They gave humans powers—almost all spirit beast summoners were part of an aristocratic circle. His father was a knight in charge of this village even though he only had an animal as a summon.
They even had a family name, unlike the common people of the village. Goatshield—weird name, but it was better than nothing.
Whenever he asked if he could summon something too—they just laughed him off and said one day he would be able to, never giving an exact time for when it would happen.
They did always mention that he was really lucky to have two summoning crests instead of one. He assumed that it wasn't unheard of to be born like this, then.
Good. He didn't want to be an odd guy. His family was not powerful enough to protect him from the aristocracy if he had turned out to be a rare thing.
He was still not allowed to go outside the fence of their house, but after that day, they let him go in the area outside the house and inside the fence whenever he wanted—as long as someone was around. On occasions, his father, mother, and even the granny took him inside the village when they went there for some chores.
He had seen many faces in the village. He had learned the basics of the language in just six months, but he did not reveal it to his family and only said limited words. Their faces whenever he said something clearly were really comical to look at. He was not allowed to walk on these trips to the village, though—they always carried him in their arms and only handed him over to a few individuals in the village.
This world had an emperor, and he was told a lot of weird knights and noble lord's stories by Sable and grandma. From that, he inferred they were in a feudal society. He did meet, in the village, some man who was referred to as the 'Lord's Man' in their language, but at the time he didn't want to reveal his full vocabulary by asking what lord they were talking about. The guy seemed to be highly respected by the villagers.
There was one place they let him explore, though, and that was the house in front of them—a couple lived there with their newborn child. The child was now five years old, the same as him. Auren's parents often took him there so he could play with the kid in their house, his name was Kenzo. Auren cared more about the shiny little things they had in their chests, though. The kid was kinda dumb. Well, he was a kid—what would one expect?
The father of the child was a simple man, but his mother could summon a brass pitcher. So, their financial situation was better than Auren's own house. He always found interesting things in their house, and sometimes they let him keep those things as toys to play with.