Lords

In a few years, I grew to be a strong little boy, and got used to the country life. It's actually not as bad, as I thought it would be. The family is big, I have three brothers and two sisters, my father, Fraser, and my mother, Moira, living in a house that clearly wasn't built for this many people, but remodeled properly to fit us all. My sisters and brothers share two medium-sized rooms amongst themselves, while I got a small room for myself. It was my mother's idea, but my father also sees something special in me, so he agreed without much fuss. My brothers and sisters were a bit dismayed, but they're allowed to come and play with me in my room at anytime, so they were easily pacified. Fraser's brother, Owen, also visits as often as he can, and he stays in a guest room, whenever he's home. He's an army medic, and the doctor that helped Moira with the birth of all her children, and even some others in the village, when they were lucky enough to give birth right when he was home. He gets a week's time of leave every two months, and he mostly spends it in our house, drinking with his brother and telling stories about the army life and the worlds' state. He brings in more news from the outside than Radio Caora, so I like to listen to him whenever he visits. He lived in the neighboring house before he joined the army, and gave it to Fraser when he left, and later they remodeled it to a barn house. Fraser works hard at growing the crops and tending to the animals, so we always have enough food and even enough supplies for winter. Luckily we don't live completely off the land, since Fraser sells leather, wool and excess food in the farmer's market and buys proper clothing and hygiene accessories for the whole family. I couldn't imagine myself wearing furs and leather, and I also remember how much I hated it in most of my past lives.

One day, not much after my 6th birthday, we got a letter, notifying us that Owen died. There was a war going on for more than a year, with most of the army deployed in France, or whatever was left of it. Owen came to visit only once during this time, and he was visibly exhausted. As an army medic, I was sure he has seen enough death and injury to haunt him for the rest of his life, as short as that turned out to be. He went back to the frontline, and lost his life to a nuke hitting their forward base. Well, I always liked quick and painless. I wonder if he's in the reincarnation cycle too? If I'm not mistaken, Ark's dimension is low on power now, so he probably entered and exited the Purgatory dimension quickly. Well, no use thinking about this then.

We held a memorial service for him, but it was very depressing. Many people showed up, and lots were crying over the photograph of him that we buried – there was no body after all. Owen was well liked, and helped many sick folk in the vicinity. The closest doctor was 10 miles away, and he was an old veterinarian, that studied human anatomy only as a hobby, so the neighbors were quite happy to be able to consult with a trained field medic instead. Owen's loss hit Fraser real hard, and his drinking got worse. Luckily he was a happy drunk, never doing anything violent in his drunken stupor. This changed now, and he mostly cried by the table when he got completely smashed, still peaceful, but really sad to look at. Moira couldn't help but frown whenever she saw her in this state, but she just helped him get in to bed, and quietly b.a.r.e with it. The drinking didn't affect his work, if anything, he worked twice as hard to make up for the sore sight he is at evenings when he hits up the whiskey bottle. He knew it wasn't right, but being a simple man, this was the only way he could cope with the loss. Moira told me, that he had this phase after losing his parents too, and they actually met at their funeral. Fraser was a mess for months after that, but Moira came into his life, and his sorrow soon vanished, with love and joy replacing it. But this time it was his only brother, and his best friend, so it is probably harder on him. I thought of what I could do to help him, but all my knowledge of psychology just told me to let him get it out of his system, and he'll be fine after a few weeks.

Well, fate had different plans, apparently. After about one week of Owen's death, the war reached the British Isles. The combined Brit Army couldn't hold the territories of France, the Benelux and Denmark against the German Coalition, and now they've invaded the islands. They were smart about it too, with most of the defenses surrounding England, they decided to land in Ireland and Scotland. The surrounding small islands fell quickly and they started building forward outposts on them, and then invaded the mainland. With most of our forces concentrated in the south, Scotland never even got a chance to fight back. The cities were quickly overwhelmed and after two weeks of hopeless fighting, the government capitulated.

Most of the countryside was fine even during the Coalition's offense, but the occasional bombing alarms went off, and we were rather anxious about the invasion. It was during this time, that I got a package by mail. It was addressed to me personally, James MacLeod. It was weird and the whole family was shocked. My mother was looking frightened, but I assured her, that it's nothing to worry about. I already knew, that this was 'her' doing, thanks to a nice message I got from her, that took me more than a year to decipher even with all my knowledge. Besides, nobody else outside of these villages even knows I exist, so it wasn't anything harmful. She probably also connected this with 'Eve', even though I told her not to ever mention her, and forget she ever saw that name. She probably figured out at least part of the truth, but promised me that she'll do as she's told – my secrets, after all, could be dangerous, and she didn't know what to make of them.