What villainess am I?

Chapter 5 - To suffer not

Three-month-olds are not known for their physical ability, language capacity, or intelligence. And for good reason. To fully develop a baby's body, it takes a lot of physical effort and energy to begin the basics of the average child's life. Sadly, this means I am, even if above average, constrained to my body's limits.

Right now, I am practicing lifting my body with 'push-ups,' I use that term loosely here. It is more like I am using my crib to pull myself up; the poles I grip and slowly lift my body, with my arms shaking. Standing is out of the question, but I won't stop any upper body and core exercises if I can. Forcing this body to move up

My body is too weak. The only thing I can think of as I work my minuscule muscles. It is way, way too frail. Plump and healthy but frail. Every push shoots a pain through my stomach, every release like a weight lifted. It hurts, but not in a suffering way; the kind of pain that means progress, the type that nothing but exercise can give. It is hard to describe, like so many things in my life. The tension of muscle underneath the fat: giving clear feedback with each motion.

Funny, when I wasn't so small, I was always bothered by how thin I was, how I never grew with any solid mass, and now I have a chance to fix that. It is sometimes alien to have the fullest lease on a new life: New body, new world, new family. To have no mistakes that haunt you, nothing to hold you down. As I pull, I smile, the wee beads of sweat rolling down my face. With a new life, you can do anything, change anything.

As I muse, one may wonder how I hide this from Janet, Maid Alice, or Mother. Simple, I acted like a baby. While it is hard to deny my intelligence compared to another of my age, my ability to speak is an indicator that does not mean it is hard to hide some of it under a veneer of babyish stupidity. I usually act like I am playing with the bars of my cell, pulling and pushing against it with a silly, childish smile. Janet doubts me; she chuckles as I do my workouts but never seems to fawn over me like Mother or Maid Alice.

I cannot be positive if she does since I can not see her face when exercising. Environmental and personal blindness is the worst, especially when trying to lie or hide something. Hiding that I am blind, along with the fact I am more intelligent than I let on. I shake my head at the thought. I have to do it. No one else will do it for me. I scoffed at the idea that I could have someone do whatever I wanted if I was old enough. The idea, compared to my past, seems so foreign. Even now, asking another for help is out of reach; why should I force my issues on another? No. My efforts and endeavors are my own, and to force that on another is selfish; how could I accept the gifts and not grow them, not use them?

I shake my head, taking a deep breath. I have to focus: get back to work. As I lay back down on the mattress in the crib, I heard Maid Alice squeal. She is with me today, and she and Janet swap each day to take care of me. Maid Alice acts like a child. To be more honest, she is just a teenager, but she is so noisy and obtuse that I have no other frame than a child without discipline. Maid Alice screams, squeals, or is otherwise obnoxious whenever I do something Maid Alice finds remotely amusing. I am somewhat afraid she will blow a blood vessel with how much she does shout or move. Her heart must be beating at speeds unimaginable to man.

"Young Lady is doing her little dance again! Hehe~" I roll my eyes as she says that: She assumes I am dancing because, as Maid Alice puts it, 'She is shaking her little bottom and moving all about!' while embarrassing to hear that about yourself, it is advantageous to hide what I am achieving here. As I continue my routine, some push-ups and planks (barely lifting myself off the bed and holding my cage for an extended time), Maid Alice strokes my head, sharing her vision of me here and again.

Maid Alice is rather cute, in a younger sibling sort of way. Sadly, my vision forces less than acceptable-terms for observing someone, which still bothers me, but I will find a way to work with it. As that is an aside, Maid Alice's appearance is quite good; she has blond hair that cascades down to her waist, sharp blue eyes that soften at the slightest movement from me, and, as I have noticed, an ample body. Strangely, her soul is minuscule, and it barely moves at all.