✅ Over Protected

64. Looking Forwards

This chapter is dedicated to liljennie. Thank you for all your support! And thank you also to Jen-Jen for spotting so many of my mistakes before I hit publish; and for helping to keep the wiki up to date. Thank you!

I opened my eyes and mumbled something that might have had words in, but was probably just a meaningless combination of sounds. As I rose up from the depths of sleep, it took a little while for my thoughts to come back. And then I realised that I wasn't in my own bed, and confusion threatened to overtake me for a moment. But as I felt the jolt of movement stopping, I realised that I'd fallen asleep in the car. We must have been going somewhere.

"Awake now, baby?" Mummy asked, and after a little time to think I nodded. I wasn't quite sure where I was; I was still a little foggy. But a simple glance out of the window showed a giant house, and there was nothing else to wonder about. Of course; we were going to visit Lyra and her family. I should have known that, but it was still a little harder than it should have been to bring back all the complicated, responsible thoughts. By the time I was awake enough to fumble with my seatbelt, Mummy was already there beside me, helping me to get out. And behind her, I could see Lyra and Jinniver coming out of the house to say hi.

"Hey!" I called with a grin, and ducked under Mummy's arm as soon as my feet touched the ground. "We all having fun?"

Jinny laughed, and ruffled my hair before coming closer for a hug.

"Still so enthusiastic!" she said. "You're adorable. Don't think you're going to grow up any time soon?"

I shook my head at that as well, but I knew I would have to before long. It was still weird to see Jinny acting like a big girl; I'd gotten so used to her being a baby who needed caring for in the first few months months of her lysentripase detox. But she was finally thinking for herself again, and had decided that she wanted to dress like a big girl as much as she could.

"Not long before we're back at school now," Lyra said. "Alice needs to get a move on with potty training if she doesn't want everybody to think she's still a baby."

"It's okay," I said. "I can do it. It's just all the muscles don't work so good now. I can learn again." But I was blushing that time; I had really expected that when Mummy switched me to 'safe' diapers for big girls, I would quickly get all my control back. But I'd been trying for a week now, and I still kept forgetting that I was supposed to be holding it. Diapers were apparently a hard habit to break.

"I bet I'll be out of them before you," Jinniver said, quickly lifting my skirt to check the state of my diaper while I wasn't paying too much attention. "Such a little baby."

"Yeah," I answered, and I couldn't keep the smile off my face. "You're all grown up already. Nobody would even know you're wearing them. How's it going?"

"Ohh... you know," she said with a shrug. "Can't complain. I think some of my muscles still need some time to recover. But what can you expect after like... six years as a baby? But I'm already getting ready for school again. Rab's been teaching me trigonometry. Some of the stuff I missed. But they think I'll still have to go through school, to work out what I know and what I don't. I'll be in my twenties before I can go to college or anything."

"Good luck," I said. I hadn't really thought about how old those girls would be when they could actually be adults. I guessed that was something I'd have to think about as well; I'd had a year of going to school sometimes, depending how well my brain was working, and a year of staying home entirely, so there would be a lot of catching up to do before I finished high school. But I could at least remember the things I'd learned before, so I might be able to catch up and skip a couple of years before graduation. But for Jinniver and Alanis, it would be a completely different issue. Their mum really hadn't cared about the safety issues with using the Babij diapers for too long, so they were fighting against a much bigger handicap.