Being a baby, I quickly decided, is a catastrophic design flaw.
My consciousness was intact. Twenty-five years of memories, a working knowledge of calculus, and the advanced-level frustration of a man who couldn't lift his own head. My body, meanwhile, was three days old and apparently programmed for pure chaos.
I needed to sleep, just never at logical times. I needed to eat, and then immediately humiliate myself by expelling said food. I had opinions. My only output, however, was a series of involuntary shrieks that no one could possibly interpret.
*This is a critical system error,* I thought, as Lyra changed my diaper for what felt like the eighth time that day.
"There, there, little one," she murmured, making that cooing sound adults manufacture. "I know you're fussy. Just adjusting."
I wasn't "fussy." I was experiencing a full-blown existential crisis compounded by digestive distress, and the combination was making my new "power" twitch.
A glass on the nightstand abruptly slid two inches to the left.
"Oh," Lyra said, glancing at it. "That's odd. This table must be wobbly."
She pushed it back.
I filed that away. *Trigger: Frustration. Effect: Minor reality adjustment. Observation: Lyra's capacity for plausible deniability is encouragingly high.*
That first month was a blur of biological demands. Lyra was kind and cooed. Torvin, her husband, was a blacksmith who smelled like smoke and metal and mostly just grunted in my direction.
By month two, I had a working philosophy: I am trapped in a meat-suit I don't control, with a power I can't suppress. The only efficient path forward is to adapt and manage my emotional state.
This proved... difficult.
Part Two: The Pattern
Master Thistle, the baker, was still visiting.
He was a cheerful, sixty-ish man who seemed to believe "tone-deaf" was a compliment. He brought bread and explained his baking process. Again.
"The key to the dough," he was saying during my third month, "is the *yeast*. Too short, no flavor. Too long, and..."
"Thistle," Lyra interrupted gently, "you've told me this. Many times."
"Yes, but the *art* of it is—"
He began to sing. It wasn't music. It was like listening to someone try to describe a melody by hitting it with a small hammer.
I was in my bassinet. I was annoyed.
The dough on the table began to bubble.
Not a gentle rise. This was an aggressive, hostile fermentation. The yeast went into overdrive, accelerating at ten times the normal rate. The dough swelled, quivered, and then, with a soft *FWOOMP*, it detonated.
Flour. Everywhere.
Master Thistle looked like a powdered ghost. The kitchen looked like a bakery had sneezed.
"The yeast," he whispered, horrified. "It must have been defective."
"Mmm," Lyra replied, her face a perfect mask of neutrality.
From my bassinet, I let out the internal equivalent of a sigh. *This is going to require active management.*
This set the pattern. Things just... *happened* around me.
Books I wanted to read would "fall" off shelves and into someone's hands, who would then give them to me.
Puddles would "appear" just in time for someone annoying to step in them.
Insects would develop a sudden, laser-focused interest in people whose voices I found grating.
It was always, *just* barely, explainable as coincidence.
Part Three: The Observation
By month four, Lyra was noticing. Not understanding. Noticing.
"You know," she said to Torvin one night, while I was pretending to sleep. "Odd things happen around Haru."
"Hm?" Torvin was, as usual, half-listening.
"Books. And Thistle's dough... I can't explain that one."
"Babies are strange," Torvin offered. "Coincidence."
"I suppose," she said. But she was watching me.
The key, I realized, was to be so boring that the impossible became mundane. I was very good at being boring.
Part Four: The Growth Process
My first birthday (this body's, anyway) was quiet. A small cake. A metal toy Torvin had hammered out. Progress.
I could sit up. Walking was still a mess. Speaking? Impossible. My vocal cords were still in beta-testing. I figured I had another six months before my hardware caught up with my software.
At fourteen months, I was walking. This was a mixed blessing. I could now get myself into new situations that would, in turn, annoy me. It was exhausting, actively regulating my frustration just to cross the village square without, say, accidentally destabilizing the cobblestones.
At eighteen months, I spoke.
"Inefficient," I said, pointing at a squeaky wagon wheel.
Lyra laughed. It wasn't a joke.
By my second birthday, I had a vocabulary of about forty words, most of which were synonyms for "wasteful" or "pointless."
Part Five: The First Witness
Mira showed up in the village around the time I was sixteen months old. I didn't pay much attention until I noticed her *paying attention* to me.
She was eight. Old enough to see things, young enough to be dismissed. The perfect, inconvenient witness.
We were both at the healer's office. I was bored. I was sitting in a chair, trying very hard *not* to be bored, because boredom was a trigger.
A book on a high shelf wobbled. It fell.
It didn't just fall. It landed perfectly, spine-up, right in front of me.
The Glitch was getting subtle. Less exploding dough, more... helpful gravity.
Mira watched the book fall. She watched me look at it. She watched the healer pick it up and hand it to me without a second thought.
Her eyes went wide.
She didn't say anything. The moment passed. But she'd *seen*. She'd registered it as *wrong*.
This, I filed away, was going to be a problem.
Part Six: The Street Child
Mika appeared around my second birthday.
Not *my* Mika. A different one. A street kid, maybe five years old, filthy, and watching the market stalls with hungry, calculating eyes.
I was with Lyra, who was buying apples. The apples were stacked in a perfect, precarious pyramid. An inefficient, stupidly unstable pyramid that made my eye twitch.
While the vendor bagged Lyra's order, the kid—Mika—made her move. Quick hands. She snatched an apple from the bottom of the stack.
The pyramid didn't just collapse. It *un-stacked*.
The apples rolled everywhere. One, specifically, shot out and hit a stray dog, which yelped and spun around, knocking Mika flat on her back.
Into a puddle.
A puddle that hadn't been there five minutes ago. A puddle that was, I noted, perfectly placed.
Mika sat up, covered in mud, her stolen apple still clutched in her hand. She looked like she'd just been personally assaulted by the universe. She started to cry.
*Interesting,* I thought. *The Glitch apparently has opinions on theft. Or maybe it just really hated that pyramid.*
Lyra, being Lyra, bought the kid an apple and a pastry. Mika slunk off, muddy but fed.
I wouldn't see her again for years. But I'd remember. That precise, targeted, almost *petty* chain of misfortune.
Somewhere, Ætheria was probably dying of laughter.
Part Seven: The Accumulation
By my third birthday (my fifth year of *existence*), I had achieved a fragile peace.
The village was used to "odd coincidences" when I was around. I was the "quiet, serious" child. My power was so seamlessly integrated into the background noise of life that no one saw it.
It was, I had to admit, a fairly efficient solution.
"He's not quite normal," I heard Lyra tell Torvin one night. "But he's such a *quiet* abnormal. It's hard to worry."
"He'll grow out of it," Torvin mumbled.
He wouldn't.
It was an unstable peace. I was getting *bored*, and boredom was a trigger. Lyra was too smart; she'd figure it out eventually. And I still had puberty to look forward to.
I was, I acknowledged, almost certainly going to fail at this. Spectacularly.
But for now, I would just continue to be. And I would try very, very hard not to be annoyed.
(This, I was learning, was impossible.)
Epilogue: In the Void
"Look at him!" Ætheria was delighted, showing a cosmic projection of Haru trying to mentally will a squeaky door hinge into silence. "He's weaponized *plausible deniability*! He's created an entire ecosystem of minor, explainable chaos!"
"He's also miserable," Sylvara observed, adding a faint, unnecessary glitter effect to a book that was about to fall on someone's head.
"Miserable is *so* much better than boring," Ætheria corrected. "And did you see that street kid? The one he knocked into the mud puddle? Oh, that's just setup. His power is going to keep *accidentally* targeting her for years. It's going to be *hilarious*."
"That's also trauma," Sylvara pointed out.
"Same thing," Ætheria said happily.
Valthor just sighed and ordered another ledger. Puberty was going to be a nightmare.