I am but a Person, Learning How to Person

I am but a cloud…wait, that doesn’t make sense anymore.

I am but a person, learning how to person.

…yeah, that doesn’t make much sense either.

After a bit of screaming and panic to calm myself down, I took stock of the current situation. Judging by the red hair attached to the head (I checked), I was in that maniacally laughing woman’s body. How? No idea.

There were a thousand questions I had about the situation. How was I puppeteering a corpse? Why was the body alive? Why did everything feel so familiar? Who designed such an annoyingly top-heavy body? And where in the world did my original form go?!?

Did you know the answer? I sure didn’t, and I was starting to go crazy. Again!

One minute–

~~~

–I’m the picture of tranquility.

Phew. Okay. Moving on…

The first thing I wanted to try was leaving the body, but how was I supposed to do that? There wasn’t some guide that could explain the process step by step. If there was, I would certainly like to read it. So, I ended up trying a hundred different methods to no avail. The most I gained was that something did seem to be holding me hostage, though it was more of a vague feeling. Maybe there was some sort of condition I had to meet? Who knew what that could be.

Next, I tried to use the mana within the environment. It ended up being a resounding success, meaning there wouldn’t be any major differences compared to my cloud-like form. I just had to compensate for this body, which was easier said than done, but possible nonetheless.

That left only one thing: figuring out how to be a person. From what I understood from my observations, that boiled down to moving and speaking.

With any kind of movement, while my thoughts did somehow translate into motions, everything was rough, as if I was dealing with a highly uncoordinated puppet. Sure, that’s what was technically happening; however, I was also acting on instinct to some degree. Whenever I tried to focus on that feeling though, I immediately tripped over nothing. It was an absolute pain.

There wasn’t much to do but keep training, but even that had limits. Although the body was subsisting on my mana, it still burned stamina. Only an hour had passed before it was too exhausted to move. I already said this, but once again, absolute pain.

So, while I rested, I practiced speaking. As you would expect…

“HAAAAOOOOOO.” It was…something. Look, mouths were complicated. To make a sound, you had to open it and tongue a specific way while expelling a certain amount of air. That was a ridiculous number of simultaneous actions! But it had to be done. Without speech, it would be almost impossible to get by.

Expelling air was easy – this body was already doing that. It might be slightly different than talking, but not by much. The hard part was figuring out which configurations made what sounds. That first sound was made by keeping the mouth wide open.

When I tried closing the mouth: “HAAAEELLLL.”

And with a bit of tongue action: “HELLLLL.”

But it was still missing that last ‘O’ sound. I couldn’t find a way without using another breath, so people probably did the same.

Then finally, as the sun sank beneath the horizon:

“HELL…LO.” Well… at least you could tell what I was saying. From there, it was more rehearsal to make both noises flow one after the other.

But seriously, saying this one greeting required moving the tongue upwards while closing the mouth, then making an ‘O’ shape and bringing the tongue down. And people chained multiple words fast to communicate! It was insane how many complicated actions people could do at once. And now, I have to learn them all myself!

…this is going to take a while.

~~~

Two days had passed since I was pulled into this body, and my entire existence was dedicated to this routine. I would move every part until the body’s stamina was exhausted. Then, I would speak aloud a bunch of different words and phrases until it recovered. Dreadfully boring, but very effective.

At the moment, I could move the body somewhat smoothly. There was still a bit of stiffness whenever I tried to do multiple motions consecutively, but it was a rounding error. It seemed like the training was paying off, and the body was gaining more strength. Was it a perk of being dead? Or did it have something to do with my mana? Who knew.

As for my pronunciations:

“Hello their. Hou ar u dooin tode?” …it was a working progress. You could tell what I was saying though. And that ‘hello’? Very nice. Much better than incoherent noises.

Once the body had regained enough strength, I exercised once again. I found out that starting with light stretches helped reduce fatigue to a degree, so I incorporated those movements into my regimen.

Swing the arms around in a circular motion.

Bendy down and touch the feet.

Spread the legs and stretch–

“Freeze! We have you surrounded! Put your hands in the air and… umm… have some decency!” All of a sudden, people appeared from the nearby brushes and rock in all directions. Apparently, I hadn’t been paying attention to my surroundings with all the work I’d been dealing with. By the looks of their clothes, they seemed to be guards from that town the golem was headed towards. While their weapons were leveled at me, their gazes shifted away suspiciously from the body.

Even so, there was only one thing to do.

“HAAOOO THHEEEERRR.”

…

…

…

Let’s try that again.