Eighteen-year-old Nicholas Hammerstein is at the cusp of finishing high school in his hometown of Los Alamos, NM. He has a seemingly ideal life and is blessed with loving parents, a cute baby sister, and great friends. Nicholas is a gifted student and martial artist who has dreams of leaving for college at the end of his senior year. But, living in a world of Emergent humans, he will soon find his life turned upside down as his life and the fate of a kingdom hang in the balance. His future and theirs will be determined by how he navigates the drastic changes in his body and the magical and superpowered Mergent population he joins.

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The Legal Stuff: Emerald Princess © 2016-2023 By Sofia Hammerstein
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2016-2023 By Sofia Hammerstein. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
 
 
Chapter 11: Butterflies

‘ONE DAY ENDS, and a new one begins,’ I thought as I woke up in my castle nursery.

“There she is!” Caireen crooned over me and picked me up. “Who’s the prettiest princess in all the world?” She said, “Yes, it’s you!”

I let her baby talk to me for a few moments and finally said, “Okay, enough already; what’s going on?”

“Her little diapee must be messy! She’s a cranky little baby!” For the next thirty minutes, I swear I had the most embarrassing and surrealistic treatment of me, like I was younger than I even looked to be. Finally, when she changed my diaper, and I was dressed, she said, “Well, I’m having fun,” she paused, “why aren’t you?”

“Umm… it’s ridiculous and humiliating?” I suggested with my face flushed from embarrassment.

“No, it’s normal mommy behavior and definitely normal grandmother behavior.”

“Is that what this is about?” I asked, confused.

She sighed, “Remember also that I am the goddess of children?”

I nodded.

“Maybe I like to have fun every now and then?”

“Oh,” I said guiltily. “Have I ruined it completely for you?”

“Only a little. You can make it up to me, you know?”

I groaned, “I guess, given we’re stuck with each other, I need to let you get it out every now and then. Just don’t do it all the time; my brain already has enough trouble grasping being a teenager in a baby’s body.”

“Yay!” She said. “Let’s go play outside!”

I rarely saw the castle staff, but one of the maids came then. “Fiona, would you please pack a bag with a lunch, some changes for Sofia here, and bring it down to the East Garden?”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” she said.

“Let’s go see the butterflies!” She said with glee.

Mentally I groaned a little, but I kept a smile on my face. My thumb found its way to my mouth since pacifiers didn’t exist here. The bottles were a little anachronistic because they did. Still, they were old-fashioned with rubber teats that weren’t life-like or orthodontic. In the meantime, I noticed Caireen had either grown herself larger or shrank me down further. I decided she was taller because the doorways were closer to her head than I remembered. I had been shifted from holding onto me like a toddler on her hip to a more traditional infant cradle you might carry a newborn. All through the journey of stairs and corridors, she talked baby talk to me, and I did my best to try to not hate it.

We exited the castle through a door I hadn’t been through before, and I felt my breath catch as she held me up to see. Acres and acres of mowed grass were present, with a rose garden lining walkways. It was like a scene from one of the castles in France or England that took my breath away. “Beautiful,” I said around my thumb.

Caireen stroked my hair and continued walking down the path past roses that had no equal in the real world. Their colors were too vibrant, varied, and indescribably beautiful in appearance and smell. Caireen set me down when I squirmed to look at a green rose that looked like it had emeralds glittering in the petals.

“What is it?”

“A gift from a people that you base your dwarf legends off of. They dwell in caverns and mine for both money and joy. They designed this hybrid and gifted me with one of them many years ago.” She paused, “Those are real emeralds too.”

I gulped. That plant was worth a fortune!

I was picked back up, and she walked me past the pathways and the mowed grass to a field that stretched out far in the distance, with yellow, pink, purple, and blue wildflowers growing everywhere. The largest and most beautiful butterflies I’d ever seen were alighting from the flowers.

Many looked similar to the monarchs in our world. Still, there were so many other color combinations as they blended in with the many wildflowers around me. Finally, Caireen sat me down, and I snuck as close as possible to a big purple one. “Will you sit on my hand?” I asked it.

I was amazed as it looked at me skeptically and then moved to the finger that I held out. It tickled as it moved around. I brought it closer to my face and looked at it in wonder. When I was through, I said, “Thank you, you’re very beautiful.”

The butterfly seemed to bow before it flew away, and I spent a long time chasing others before Caireen said, “It’s time for lunch, my little butterfly!”

She laid me down on a blanket that Fiona had set out. I realized then that I had messed my diaper at some point and not noticed. “Well, you finally behaved like a normal baby and didn’t care about your poopy diaper.” She said with a smile, retaining that high-pitched baby cooing in her voice.

‘I really didn’t notice..’ I thought.

“How long have I been messy?” I asked, nervous about a rash forming.

“An hour or so?”

“An hour?!?”

“Relax, sweetie, you didn’t notice, and your skin won’t get a rash. You could sit in a messy diaper for a week, and your skin would keep healing.”

“It’s so disgusting, though,” I said with tears in my eyes.

“Not to a baby with no interest in getting out of diapers. You need to get yourself in that mindset. If you don’t, you’re going to go crazy in the next few months, let alone the rest of your life, honey,” The last bit she had answered sincerely and in her regular voice.

I nodded.

She continued wiping me with a cloth, and finally, I was put into a new diaper. “Okay, let’s have our lunch!”

I expected a regular lunch, but instead, I had a very finely chopped soup mixture that she fed me. At the same time, she ate what it must have usually looked like. “I’m thirsty,” I said after I finished.

“Okay, let’s get my little princess something to drink!” she said. I expected her to grab a bottle from the basket or something, but instead, she picked me up and pulled at her dress.

“What are you doing?!?” I freaked out.

“What are we doing today?”

“Treating me like a baby?”

“Exactly. You’re still young enough to nurse from the breast,” Caireen told me. “Normally, someone like me would not do this herself, you would have a wet nurse assigned to you, Princess, but given who I am, I love feeding babies!”

Before I could raise any more fuss, I was confronted with her breast and nipple. Knowing there would be no give here, I relented and at least tried it. I put my mouth around her nipple, latched on like a bottle, and sucked on it. Instantly my mouth was filled with a liquid that was sort of like milk… but so much better! I swallowed and repeated over and over again before I must have gone to sleep.

WHEN I WOKE in the real world, I felt different somehow.

‘Did that really happen?’ I asked, blushing.

‘Yes, my sweet princess, that wasn’t so bad, was it?’

I blushed, ‘No, I actually enjoyed it.’ There was no sense in hiding that from someone whose consciousness shares a body with you!

‘Good, I believe we will be doing that more often,’ she assured me.

‘Why?’

‘Well, for one, I enjoy it, and you enjoy it, right?’ she asked.

‘I guess.’

‘For another, you thought you felt different today, right?’

‘Uh-huh,’ I said.

‘When you nurse a baby, they get their nutrients and food from their mother, correct?’

‘That’s the idea...’ I said.

‘You gain magical power from me and additional strength when you nurse,’ she told me.

‘Seriously?’

‘Why do you ask that all the time? I don’t joke that much, do I?’

I sighed, ‘No, it’s just a figure of speech that I must say a lot for you to ask. I’ll try not to say it as much.’

I could feel her smile.

Mom came in right then as I was getting ready to stand up, and she said, “Oh, you just woke up?”

I nodded, “I was having a conversation with Caireen.”

“About?”

Oh boy… “Umm… What did we do last night?”

“Oh, her nursing you?”

“How do you…?”

“I came while you were asleep, still nursing,” Mom said wistfully. “I miss doing that,” she admitted.

‘Tell her I can help her lactate if she wishes...’

‘NO!’ I said.

“Mom, Caireen asked if you would like her to help you on that, but I said no; I’m hoping you’re okay with that?”

Mom smiled at me, “I know you wouldn’t be comfortable with me feeding you like that, so no worries.”

I sighed in relief. During this conversation, Mom stripped the blanket sleeper off my body and pulled the soaked diaper off. I was soon in a dry diaper, and Mom found a cute dress to wear without any tights. With that, my day began, and I alternated playing with Lily, eating, pooping, getting diaper changes, and getting on the computer. I found myself researching my new school as much as possible online. I also watched Tangled with my little sister. Much to her joy and amusement, I used magic to make her a dress identical to Rapunzels. She looked adorable in it and had to show Mom. Unfortunately, I forgot to create a diaper in my mind... She peed on the kitchen floor as she excitedly showed it off. Oops!

I really hated being Nicholas and had avoided looking at my reflection over the years because I didn’t like what I saw. Now though, Mom frequently discovered me looking at myself in the mirrors around the house, asking me each time if I was okay. Of course, I would assure her I was, but I couldn’t believe I was really a girl now! The baby part I could do without, but I felt like all of the dysphoric feelings I’d dealt with over the years had completely melted away!

Thursday and Friday passed similarly during the days, and my nights were filled with a second day in the other world where Caireen nursed me at least twice each night. During the days, I could feel more energy at my fingertips. So I was excited when Friday night, Caireen said, “Okay, it’s time to teach you some defensive magic.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I’m nervous about this trip tomorrow. I want you to be able to defend yourself and your family if needed.”

I nodded. “So what’s first?”

“I want to teach you to make a shield for yourself first. It should stop any physical hits and projectile weapons you might encounter.”

“Cool!”

“I want you to visualize the lines coming towards you right now.”

We had spent much time already teaching me to see them more clearly than when I first became aware of them last week. I noticed that there were always at least four or five lines that led to me at all times. This time though, there were more like twenty. I opened my eyes, “Why are there so many more lines?”

She laughed, “I told you that nursing was making you stronger?”

“Oh,” I said. “Will that keep increasing?”

“I believe it will go to a point, and then it’ll plateau.” She smiled, “Now, let’s get back to work. Visualize those lines again.”

I saw all twenty, “Okay?”

“I want you to visualize those lines to weave together around you and protect you.”

The first time I tried, it was like a fishing line that had gotten tangled in the trees, an unfixable knot! After five tries, I finally managed to get it around me like a grid defining a three-dimensional character on a computer screen. I looked up at Caireen, “Is that it?”
“It should be; let’s see how it holds up!”

I gasped a second later when she threw a dagger from her sleeve straight toward my shoulder. It hit the field and glanced off.

I jumped and felt my diaper grow warmer, “I think I need a change…?”

She laughed, “Why, you’re perfectly safe in there.”

“How long does it hold up?”

“Until the power in the lines, you are using runs out. Right now, I would say about twenty minutes.”

“A minute per line?” I asked.

“That’s a good way to guess it, I guess,” she agreed. “Now, drop it and try it again.”

We practiced my bringing the shield up for about another hour before she changed me and nursed me. I was still awake when she finished, and I asked, “What can I do to protect my family?”

She sighed, “I hope we have much more time to perfect this in the future. The same idea lets you do it around someone else. So you can visualize it around multiple people. Just know it won’t last as long!” We practiced that for a while before she said. “I have one last defensive spell I want to teach you tonight, though it’s really more of an attack. You must never use this purely for fun or games.”

I nodded.

“Take one of the lines out of your shield and visualize it going to your hand. From there, think of it sending all of its energy as a ball of energy at that wall.” She pointed at the far end of the stone room we had been working in.

A ball of purple lightning, that’s the best way to describe it, went shooting through the air at the brick wall and… right through it. I gasped as I saw a hole in the wall six inches in diameter. She picked me up and showed me that it went through three more walls before ending at the castle’s outer wall. “How come it didn’t go through that wall?”

“I have warded the walls; it’s impossible to use that spell to attack this castle.”

“Will it ever stop otherwise?” I paused, “I might accidentally hurt someone I didn’t intend to if it never stops…?”

“The way you just did it would send it flying until it met a barrier like this or shot into space from leaving the earth’s curvature at the angle you shot it.”

I felt my diaper get wetter. “That’s scary.”

“Now, let’s teach you to limit it!” She smiled, “I wanted you to know your full power first so that you’ll respect that power.”

We spent an hour practicing limiting it to a distance in my mind of the target plus a foot to five feet, depending on what she asked me to do. I could also limit it to hitting a human target and stopping them. Then, as she nursed me to sleep, she said, “Sofia, I would not teach you the blast spell if I did not know that you have a pure heart. I will teach you many less destructive spells in the future, but if something happens tomorrow, I want you to be prepared.”

I felt her stroke my hair and pat me lovingly before I fell asleep.

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