Stepping into the building was like stepping into a living museum, except everything showed signs of actual use rather than preservation. This wasn't a display of how people used to live - this was how someone actually lived, right now, in whatever time he had found himself transported to.
As Ryan was carried deeper into the building in the woman's gentle arms, his suspicions about being sent back in time only grew stronger with each detail he observed. Every surface, every object, every architectural element spoke of a world that existed long before the modern conveniences he'd taken for granted. There wasn't a shred of anything that could be considered "modern day" anywhere within the structure - no electric outlets, no plastic materials, no mass-produced items that would have marked his familiar twenty-first century existence.
The walls were adorned with hand-forged iron sconces holding flickering candles, their warm light casting dancing shadows across surfaces worn smooth by countless hands over what must have been many years. Tapestries depicting pastoral scenes hung from wooden pegs, their colors muted but still beautiful, speaking of skilled craftsmanship rather than machine production.
But besides the overwhelming evidence of pre-industrial life, there was one thing Ryan noticed rather quickly upon entering the building - something that cut through his historical observations like a knife through parchment. The noise. It was very, very loud inside, filled with sounds that were both foreign and strangely comforting after the confusing silence of his awakening.
The building was absolutely flush with the yells of children playing, their voices creating a symphony of joy and energy that echoed through what appeared to be rather spacious halls. Laughter rang out from multiple directions, punctuated by the sound of small feet running across wooden floors and the occasional collision.
Ryan did his best to wiggle his tiny head around in the woman's arms, desperate to catch glimpses of the children whose voices filled the air around him. The movement was frustratingly limited - his infant neck muscles seemed barely capable of supporting the weight of his head, and his range of motion was severely restricted by his new physical limitations.
Still, he managed to catch sight of them - many children of varying ages filling the interior of the building with their boundless energy and infectious happiness. Some appeared to be as young as three or four, toddling around with the unsteady gait of those still mastering the art of walking. Others looked to be approaching adolescence, their movements more coordinated but no less enthusiastic. They wore simple clothes similar in style to those of the woman carrying him - practical garments that looked handmade and well-maintained despite obvious signs of active use.
'Ah, I see. This place must be some sort of orphanage or something,' he concluded, the realization settling over him. The evidence was certainly compelling - a large building filled with children of various ages, overseen by a caring adult, everyone dressed in similar simple clothing that spoke of communal living rather than individual family units.
The thought led him to another, more personal realization. He must have been left at the doorstep by his parents in this new life, abandoned to be taken care of by this woman and whatever institution she represented. It was a sobering thought, even for someone who had felt disconnected from his previous family. At least in his old life, he'd had a mother who cared about him, even if he'd been too lost in his own grief and guilt to properly appreciate her efforts.
While his mind filled with these new possibilities and implications, something startling shattered his contemplation. A sharp, shrieking scream cut through the cheerful din of children's voices like a blade, followed immediately by cries of pain that were definitely not coming from his own infant throat.
"Mary! Joseph got hurt!" The voice belonged to one of the older children, urgent and concerned.
The woman carrying him - Mary, whose name Ryan had just learned through this crisis - immediately shifted into action. Her gentle, nurturing demeanor transformed into something more focused and purposeful as she quickly walked toward the source of the distressed calls. Ryan felt himself being bounced slightly with each of her hurried steps, his limited view making it impossible to see exactly what was happening ahead of them.
Within moments, he found himself being transferred to someone else entirely. Mary's warm, secure embrace was replaced by smaller, less confident arms as she handed him off to what appeared to be one of the older children.
"Hold him for me please, dear," Mary instructed, her voice maintaining its gentle tone even in the midst of the emergency.
"Yes, ma'am," came the response from his new caretaker - a girl whose voice suggested she might be in her early teens.
From this new, lower perspective, Ryan finally had a clearer view of the unfolding scene. A boy who couldn't have been older than twelve sat on the wooden floor, cradling his knee with both hands. The limb was battered and bloody, the skin scraped raw in a way that spoke of a significant collision - most likely the result of running full speed into something considerably more solid than himself.
Mary quickly knelt down beside the injured boy. Her face showed concern but not panic, the expression of someone accustomed to the inevitable injuries that came with caring for active children.
"Oh sweetie, this is why I say no running inside," she said in a gently lecturing tone, though her words carried more sympathy than reproach.
What happened next, however, was unlike anything Ryan could have imagined, even in his wildest fantasies about medieval life or historical reenactments.
Mary positioned her hands over the boy's injured knee, holding them about two inches away from the bloody wound. She closed her eyes and allowed her face to settle into an expression of deep, intense concentration. Ryan watched with his strained view, his infant eyes straining to understand what he was witnessing.
'What is she doing?' The question formed in his mind as he observed Mary take a slow, deliberate breath and somehow deepen her concentration even further. Her entire posture suggested she was drawing upon some internal resource, accessing something that required significant mental effort and focus.
And then, for yet another time since awakening in this impossible world, Ryan's understanding of reality was completely shattered.
A soft, ethereal green aura began to emanate from Mary's hands, starting as barely visible wisps of light but gradually growing stronger and more defined. The glow was unlike anything he'd ever seen - not the harsh fluorescence of electric lighting or the warm flicker of candlelight, but something that seemed to pulse with its own organic rhythm, as if it were alive.
As the green light intensified, Mary began to whisper something under her breath - a string of words Ryan couldn't clearly hear, spoken with the cadence and intonation of an incantation or prayer.
What followed defied every law of physics, every principle of biology, every assumption about how the world worked that Ryan had carried with him from his previous life. The bloody and bruised wound on the boy's knee - the raw, torn skin and damaged tissue that should have required weeks to heal properly - began to knit itself back together before his very eyes.
The process was gradual but unmistakable. The torn edges of skin slowly pulled toward each other, the raw redness fading to pink and then to healthy flesh tone. The swelling subsided, the bruising disappeared, and within what couldn't have been more than thirty seconds, the boy's knee looked as if it had never been injured at all.
When Mary finally opened her eyes and lowered her hands, the green aura faded away like morning mist, leaving behind only a perfectly healed limb and a boy who was staring at his knee in wonder, flexing it experimentally to confirm that the pain was completely gone.
Ryan stared through his blank and empty infant mind, his consciousness struggling to process what he had just witnessed. The implications were so vast, so fundamentally challenging to his understanding of reality, that his thoughts seemed to shut down entirely, unable to cope with the magnitude of what he'd seen.
Many moments passed in this state of mental paralysis. He was eventually handed back to Mary, who carried him to another room while speaking soothingly to him in that universal tone adults used with babies. But Ryan heard none of it, saw none of his new surroundings, registered nothing beyond the endless loop of that impossible healing playing over and over in his mind.
It was only later, after being settled in what appeared to be a nursery of sorts, that a single, piercing thought finally managed to cut through the haze of his mental shutdown:
'I didn't go back in time at all... I was sent to a whole other world…'
A/N: damn who would have seen that one coming! this kids one smart cookie!!