Counting the days as they went by, Moira slowly realized just how quickly she was growing.
The downside of possessing self-awareness as a newborn was that the world moved far faster than she could. She could think, observe, and remember, yet she was helpless to do anything with any of it. She couldn't move where she wanted, couldn't speak when she wanted, and couldn't even communicate the simplest thought.
The desire to communicate grew stronger with every passing day.
Yet being a newborn wasn't entirely unpleasant.
Everything was interesting.
Her senses were sharper than she remembered them being in her previous life. Sunlight streaming through the windows seemed almost painfully bright, and colors that would have normally blended into the background demanded her attention. She could spend hours staring at the walls, only to notice some tiny detail she had somehow missed the day before.
The world was strangely vivid when there was nothing else to occupy her mind.
Her parents had also found her a temporary nanny.
Moira had been expecting someone older, but her nanny seemed to be barely into her thirties. She was kind, attentive, and most importantly, always there.
With so little else to do, Moira spent most of her waking hours contemplating the knowledge that had been imparted to her before her birth.
Some of it was still there.
Other things weren't.
She had long since realized that her memories of her previous lives were somehow sealed away. She knew they existed. She could feel that knowledge sitting somewhere beyond her reach, like a word she had forgotten but could almost remember.
No matter how hard she tried, however, nothing could be grasped.
It was frustrating.
Had the mechanical voice deliberately restricted her memories?
Or was there simply a limit to what her newborn mind could access?
She had no way of knowing.
Eventually, Moira stopped trying.
She had already made one other decision.
If everyone had been or would eventually become her, then perhaps it was better to keep her distance from people. The less influence she had on them, the less chance there was of unknowingly changing something that shouldn't be changed.
So she watched, she listened, and she waited.
Time passed this way.
Days became weeks.
Weeks became months.
The nursery changed with the seasons, though Moira barely noticed at first. The sunlight shifted across the floor. The clothes she wore became too small and were replaced with larger ones. Her nanny stopped carrying her quite so often because she was becoming heavier.
Then came the milestones.
First, she learned to roll over.
Then she learned to sit.
Then came crawling.
Each achievement was celebrated as though she had accomplished something extraordinary.
Moira found the enthusiasm somewhat amusing.
If only they knew.
For her, the difficult part wasn't learning to do these things.
It was pretending to learn, and not to already know how.
As the months passed, maintaining the facade of an innocent, unknowing infant became increasingly mentally exhausting.
Relying on the medical knowledge from her previous life, Moira knew that most babies began walking somewhere around nine to twelve months and speaking their first words around the same period.
She had already spent more than eight months in this life.
That was long enough.
If she was going to be a baby, she decided, then she might as well be an exceptional one.
Her first word would come at eight months.
She would walk at nine.
Because, she reasoned with herself, there was little point in pretending to be completely ordinary.
Besides, she was getting tired of staring at the same four walls.
The house itself was another thing she had slowly begun to understand.
Her family was wealthy, that much was obvious. Yet the mansion lacked the extravagance she had expected. The walls were mostly bare, the furniture elegant but restrained, and the decorations carefully chosen.
There was very little color.
Her parents were quite different.
They treated her like the brightest star in the night sky, always watching her, always making sure she was safe. At times, their attention was almost suffocating.
Moira still didn't know how to feel about them.
They were strangers who loved her.
And somehow, that was more difficult to understand.
She gradually noticed something else, too.
Her parents were worried. They attempted to discuss it privately and always at times when they thought she was occupied with other things. But after all, they weren't expecting a newborn to pay much attention in the first place.
Whenever she appeared to be asleep, her mother would sometimes lower her voice to a whisper. Her father would answer in a troubled tone, and the two of them would speak in carefully chosen words.
At first, she ignored them.
Then she began listening.
And eventually, she realized that whatever trouble her parents were facing had something to do with her.