On the seventh morning, Gareth decided it was time for Alistair to see the world. No warning, no fanfare: just a shift in the rhythm of the day as the man swept him up with a bear-sized hand and bundled him against his chest in a scratchy wool sling.
The motion was practiced, careful; Gareth's palm anchored Alistair's back, broad and steady as a hearthstone.
"Let's show you what's worth the fuss," Gareth rumbled, voice reverberating through bone. The front door creaked, then banged, and Alistair was hit full in the face with sensation.
It was a full-on sensory ambush. Cold air sliced through the haze of sleep, sharper than caffeine ever had been. Light, real light, flooded every corner of his vision, the Veridian sun so high and clean it burned through his eyelids when he tried to blink it away.
The sky was a relentless, cinematic blue; clouds hung in slow-motion herds, their edges lined with gold. Breath steamed from Gareth's nose in comic puffs. The world didn't just exist, it insisted.
Alistair struggled to orient himself. The fields sprawled in every direction, a patchwork of muddy brown and neon green, rows of new shoots slicing the land into geometric perfection.
Beyond the far hedge, a creek ran silver with meltwater, cutting a line of motion through the stillness. Chickens clucked and scattered underfoot, their feathers glossy and idiotic in the sun. Somewhere, a dog barked once, then collapsed under the weight of its own boredom.
He'd seen environments like this before, pre-rendered, tiled, optimized for nostalgia. But out here, the land wasn't built for a player's gaze. It was too big, too loud, too alive. The air tasted of wet earth and sweet hay and some feral scent he couldn't place.
He felt the faint tickle of pollen on his cheeks, the way the morning wind curled around his ears and set the sling shivering against his skin.
Gareth walked the rows, his gait somewhere between a march and a cautious tiptoe. Every few feet, he'd kneel and poke at the soil, breaking chunks in his fist to check the damp. He talked the whole time, words aimed more at the land than the infant riding his torso.
"See this, lad?" he grunted, gesturing at the delicate fronds poking through the ground.
"That's saffron weed. Got to pull it before it chokes the barley. Bastards'll eat all the water they can get. Same as your uncle at the tavern," he added, with a conspiratorial snort.
Alistair made a noise somewhere between a gurgle and a sigh. Gareth didn't seem to need much in the way of response. He narrated the walk as though the field were an audience: which fence posts needed mending, which corner of the barn roof would give next, how the last frost had nearly killed the root crop but "the old girl" had nursed it back with a secret mulch.
Every now and then, the big hand would cup Alistair's head, adjusting the sling so he could see the next marvel: a half-rotted log teeming with blue beetles, a clutch of eggs hidden in the grass, the thin grave markers at the edge of the orchard, unadorned, but for the carved initials and a single pebble set on top.
Gareth's face, up close, was a map of hard-won lines and sun scars. His eyes were the same muddy hazel as the fields, his jaw always shadowed with a day's stubble.
He had the kind of bulk that looked permanent, but his movements were so gentle that Alistair, despite himself, relaxed into the crook of his arm.
They made it to the rise behind the house, where the fields fell away and the land stretched toward forever. Gareth sat on a pile of old fence rails, legs splayed, and just breathed in the morning. For a few minutes, he said nothing at all.
Alistair looked at the man, really looked, and tried to imagine a world in which he'd ever regarded his own father this closely. There was a peace here, a depth, that went beyond the game's flavor text.
Gareth wasn't a tutorial NPC, or a disposable backstory. He was the axis around which this whole patchwork world turned: the reason the house stayed warm, the reason there was always bread on the table, the reason Eira hummed in the mornings and slept sound at night.
The realization landed with an unexpected force. 'No wonder I was always losing in the last life,' he thought, the idea settling into place like a missing tooth. 'I never had anything to anchor me.'
Gareth exhaled, slow and content, and tapped Alistair's nose with a calloused finger. "You keep watch, eh? I'll fix the fence."
He propped Alistair upright against a post, wedged just enough so the view was unobstructed, then set about repairing the ragged wire a few paces away. The work was methodical, rhythmic: twist, pull, hammer. Alistair watched every movement, the ease with which the man handled stubborn metal, the quiet pride in a job done right.
For the first time, he felt something close to envy. Not for the strength, or the certainty, but for the simplicity of it. The way the world made sense in Gareth's hands. No system prompts, no meta-narrative, just a chain of cause and effect that built toward a life.
He lost track of time as Gareth worked, the sun climbing higher, the birds getting bolder. At some point, the old dog ambled over and flopped at Alistair's side, snuffling his hair before dozing off with a satisfied groan.
The whole tableau, the man, the dog, the fields, struck him as almost comedic in its wholesomeness. He would have rolled his eyes, if he'd had the muscle control.
Instead, he just watched, and learned.
By the time Gareth returned, hands smeared with earth and a fresh gash on his thumb, Alistair was blinking hard against the brightness in his eyes. Gareth wiped the blood away with his teeth, then scooped Alistair up and settled him back in the sling.
"Good help, that's what you are," he declared, and Alistair felt a dangerous, unfamiliar warmth uncurl in his chest.
They walked back as the sun tilted westward, the house a dark smudge against the glare. Eira was waiting on the porch, arms folded, a question in her eyebrow. Gareth only shrugged, as if to say, 'What else is there to do?' and carried his son inside.
That night, after bread and honey and the ritual of cleaning hands and faces, Alistair lay awake in his cot, staring at the ceiling beams. The day's light still lived in his bones, an afterimage he couldn't shake. The world, for all its flaws, felt like it wanted him here.
He let the feeling settle, didn't fight it. Even the brittle ache of envy softened into something almost like hope.
In the small hours, when the house was silent and the only light came from the sliver of moon through the window, Alistair felt the motes return.
They shimmered above his hand, brighter than before, as if they'd been waiting for him to notice. He reached, focused, and this time the warmth came not from effort, but from memory: a father's hands, the weight of the sky, the safe press of home.
The air bent above his palm, the motes clustering tighter, humming with energy. He willed them forward, the way Gareth had willed the fence wire to hold, the way Eira willed the bread to rise. The motes danced, then fused, and with a small, perfect pop, a sound as delicate as the pluck of a harp string, a single grain of blue-white light floated above his palm.
He stared at it, awestruck. The point of light hung there, stable, casting a faint glow on the back of his hand. He felt the energy thread through his nerves, tingling at the tips of his fingers.
Then, with an involuntary giggle, he let the motes scatter, watched them spiral into the darkness like fireflies.
The noise brought Eira to the door, her eyes owlish in the dark. She saw the last flicker of light fade above his hand and shook her head, half in disbelief and half in pride.
"Such a bright-eyed little one," she murmured, gathering him up and nuzzling his cheek. "You must've been born under lucky stars."
Alistair nestled into her arms, exhaustion sweeping over him like a tide. As he drifted toward sleep, he imagined what it would feel like to shape this world the way Gareth shaped the fence, or the way Eira shaped bread from flour and water.
He thought, just before the darkness took him, that maybe he wasn't here to play a part, or to grind toward some impossible endgame.
Maybe he was here to make something. To build.
The motes swirled one last time, bathing the room in a faint, impossible glow.
Alistair smiled, and for once, the world felt like it was smiling back.