Third month
She could finally manage the simple facial expressions! Like laughing and frowning mostly, but she could! Her father regularly tried to make her laugh when he was home, and she would do him the favour. He might not be the best man on this world, but he was still the one who gave birth to the kid she was. She would need a father for the time being, right?
So she would try to handle a "conversation" with him or her mother whenever she could. Well it wasn't syllables at all, more like little coos and gurgles, but it was already something. She tried to make some vowels, but it was impossible!
Her hands remained mostly closed, but she had this gripping reflex under control. She could choose whenever she would take an object or not, but hadn't enough control on it yet. I could still try to reach them with my arms, though. She tried some old stretching exercises she used by the time she played the guitar and was quite confident she'll be able to wiggle her toes in no time. People sometimes eyed her strangely but she didn't care. After all she was just a baby, wasn't she?
She could also turn my head left and right without moving all her body: it was less tiring. Which allowed her to reach stuff with both arms or hitting them. Maybe she should try to use the mobile above her head like a punching ball when she gets bored. It should give interesting reactions from people around, or at least more interesting than clapping hands.
The better mobility she had with her arms allowed her to explore her body a bit more. She couldn't hold her head enough to look at her body parts, but she could feel them under her fingers. She hadn't remembered being able to suck on her toes when she had been an adult for example! Yeah, right, this kind of prowess wasn't really useful in society, but it was really impressive!
Boredom was really getting to her, wasn't it? She had even started to count the paint marks on the ceiling. One of the paint stroked almost made one of the defects forming France, missing a big chunk of Provence though.
She could hold her head better when sitting or when she was flat on her belly, so it was good. Now she should try to craws, or at least roll out of her park. Laying down with nothing to do… When will it stop? It wasn't purgatory anymore, it was a living hell!
Well at least she had started to appreciate the faces of the people caring for her. Apart from her mother and father she regularly saw, there was this trio of pre-teens looking after her with a brown haired woman sitting on the corner of the room from time to time. Two boys, and one girl composed this little team. She didn't think much of them, but they tried to do their best with her She wondered who could pay four people to babysit one baby, but somehow it was done. She had figured out her father and mother both had lots of work, and soon after she had rested enough, her mother had gone back to her work.
The most interesting of the three was a brown-haired boy with spikey hair. He was good with her, but also he tried to teach her things. It was like he understood her thirst of knowledge and fed it. It was just little songs and games when you had to clap your hands at a precise moment, something she hadn't the locomotion required for yet, but she could gurgle her approval at the times she was needed to. He had a lovely voice, that boy, and she wondered why he was always covered with scratches and bruises. His friends were as well, but she never got to see them close much. They preferred paying their violent games in the garden.
During one of their games, she had felt the itches again, which had made her really uncomfortable. Enough to made tears roll down her face, but not enough to make her bend in pain. She didn't know who gave the word, but after this incident, the kids had never done it anymore. The itches that is. They were glaring a lot at her by the way. As if it had been her fault!
Honoka still couldn't understand how it happened at all, these itches inside her body. She remembered being taken to several physicians, and most of the tests had involved shining green lights, violent itches and a great deal of prodding. No one seemed to had found the solution. Well, at least, since the frowning one had come this one time, they had decided to stop with all the burning green light and all. Which was a plus.
To her knowledge, green was supposed to be a good colour. Well except for the Green Goblin, that guy had given her nightmares when she had been a kid. Anyway, green was supposed to be good, but here it was bad. Not to say this light seemed to come from the doctor's hands! In video games, this sort of magic was the healer's magic (no no no, she hadn't fallen in a place where magic was possible, this was impossible!). So why was it hurting her so much?
She would smile to the boy as much as she would smile for her parents. And she had managed to understand all their names. Her mother was Akisa, and his father was Torifu, though she had yet to learn their family name, her family name! And the kind boy caring for her was called Nawaki.