I Built a Divine Zoo in Another World

A month had passed since the day Lukas Dmond came into the world for the second time.

Thirty days.

For an ordinary baby, that period meant almost nothing.

Just a monotonous succession of feedings, naps, dirty diapers, and random crying, a vegetative existence where time was measured by the hours between meals and the duration of nighttime crying fits.

The consciousness of a normal newborn is a diffuse fog, a blur of sensations without names, without context, without memory.

For Lukas, however, that month had been a strange mixture of profound boredom and quiet discoveries.

He still could not properly control his own body. His arms and legs moved in an uncoordinated manner, as if they belonged to someone else, as if some drunken puppeteer were pulling the strings without any rhythm or purpose.

When he wanted to reach for something, his arm moved in the wrong direction. When he tried to kick, his leg produced only a weak and useless spasm.

The most he could do was turn his head from side to side, weakly grasp the finger of someone who came close, and, of course, nurse and sleep.

Sleep a lot.

Sleep came like an uncontrollable tide, dragging him into darkness at the most inconvenient moments.

He could be in the middle of an important thought, trying to decipher a new word, or analyzing the pattern of light on the ceiling, and suddenly his eyes would grow heavy. His mind would dissolve, and he would wake up hours later without knowing how much time had passed.

Hunger was a tyrant as well. When his tiny stomach growled, or rather, emitted a pathetic little rumble, no thought was possible until Aurora placed him at her breast and the warm milk began to flow down his throat.

It was humiliating, in a way. He, who had once been an independent young adult who cooked his own meals and paid his own bills, now depended entirely on someone else for the most basic nourishment.

But little by little, he got used to it.

The body was a prison, but the mind remained his own. And his eighteen-year-old mind never stopped working, even trapped inside that fragile and powerless shell.

...

He had already learned the names of everyone around him.

Aurora was his mother. The pale-skinned woman with violet eyes who carried him with an almost suffocating tenderness, as if she feared the world might take him away from her at any moment.

She spent most of the day by his side, seated in the rocking chair near the window, softly singing gentle songs while nursing him or changing his diapers. Her voice was melodic, sometimes sad, as though the songs spoke of lost things or distant places.

Her touch was always warm and gentle, and her smile came easily, especially when Lukas looked directly into her eyes.

At those moments, she melted, making high-pitched sounds of delight that Judite would imitate just to tease her. Lukas felt that she loved him in an absolute way, without conditions, without demands.

That was new to him. In his previous life, love had always come with strings attached. With Aurora, love simply was. Like gravity, like sunlight.

Clavor was his father. A tall man with a scar on his left cheek and an imposing presence. He spoke little, but when he did, his deep voice filled the room like distant thunder. He was not the type to show affection through words or hugs, but Lukas had learned to read his gestures.

Every night, when the sun set and the shadows stretched along the stone corridors, Clavor visited the room. He sat on the edge of the bed beside Aurora and placed his large, calloused hand on Lukas’s head.

He said nothing. He simply remained there in silence for a few minutes. His dark brown eyes seemed to convey something, strength? Protection? A silent promise? And Lukas felt that the moment was sacred to the man.

He respected him deeply, yet still felt a certain distance. It was as if Clavor were a mountain, imposing, solid, but difficult to climb.

Asmon, the older brother, was loud and full of energy. He looked about fifteen years old and acted as though he were ten, or perhaps twenty, depending on the day.

He always entered the room with long, heavy strides, smiling confidently and speaking in a loud tone that made Aurora roll her eyes and Judite cover her ears.

He often poked Lukas’s cheek with his index finger, not hard, but with a familiarity that bordered on intrusion, and said something that ended with the word ”swordsman.”

Lukas had heard it dozens of times already but still did not know exactly what it meant.

Asmon used the word with such pride that Lukas imagined it was something important.

Judite, the little sister, was the most entertaining of them all. She spent hours sitting beside the crib on a small stool Clavor had made for her, showing him cloth dolls that Aurora had sewn, and drawing with charcoal on pieces of recycled parchment. Or simply talking to him as if Lukas could answer.

”You know, Lukas, today I saw a bluebird at the window. Bright blue, just like the flowers in Grandma’s garden. Do you like birds? I do. They sing in the morning and wake everyone up. Dad says waking up early is good, but I think it sucks.”

Sometimes she sang incorrectly, mixing up the lyrics of the songs Aurora had taught her. Other times she tried to make him laugh by pulling exaggerated faces, sticking her tongue out, crossing her eyes, and puffing up her cheeks like a frog’s.

Lukas found it absurdly adorable, and more than once his lips curled into an awkward smile that Judite celebrated as though she had won a war.

”Mom! Mom! He smiled! Lukas smiled at me!”

Aurora would come running, Clavor would appear at the doorway, and Asmon would shout something from the hallway.

Everyone celebrated the smile as though it were a miraculous event.

Then he would simply smile even more and let them believe it was a milestone of infant development.