✅1️⃣ | Hypnosis Doesn't Work Like That!

90: A Delivery

"Nickera Spenser?" a man in a rumpled uniform read from the tablet in his hand.

"It's Nyxoriña," Nyx corrected without any malice. She was used to mangled combinations of syllables and pauses from anyone who'd only seen her name written down. And in this case the delivery driver wasn't at fault, because the name displayed on the tiny screen had replaced the ñ in her name with a tiny square containing a question mark.

"Sorry, Ma'am," the man seemed a little embarrassed by the mistake in any case. "Got a package for you?"

"Ah, good. I wasn't expecting anything so soon."

There turned out to be two packages in the back of the van, both labelled with the same computer-generated error in Nyx's name. One of them was thick cardboard, containing a couple of heavy items that moved around inside as she tilted it. The second was already shrink-wrapped, so the merchant had decided it would be either cheaper or more environmentally-friendly to slap an address label on the box.

"Stuff for Adelaide's birthday?" Garfield paused to snigger as he returned from whatever errand had made him so late back from school. "It's gonna be weird having a baby sister again."

"You'll get used to it," the delivery driver said with an easygoing shrug.

As soon as he was gone, Nyx turned around to address her son: "Garfield, do we need to have this conversation again?"

"What?" he responded, voice raised to a calculated point that was just short of yelling. "I didn't say anything. She's not here to overhear. No harm, no foul. Right?"

"It's not so much your actions as your attitude that needs attention, young man. Your sister actually cares about her studies, and she is struggling. She thinks this will help her, and after speaking to her friends I have to agree that she's found a solution that will work for her. Even the psychologists I spoke to at Moistville seem to agree. You are the only person who hasn't been entirely supportive, and I think I should make it clear that if you are having a detrimental effect on Adi's health, I shall have to look a little bit more closely at certain activities which seem to help you calm down."

"That's not fair! It helps me–"

"And that is exactly my point. You've found something, and you think it works for you. I don't entirely approve, but as you seem relaxed enough to act up less often, I put my reservations to one side and I simply don't know what you're getting up to with those friends. Now, Adi has found something that might help her in the same was. It's unorthodox, but it helps. And if you stop her getting the benefits of her little secret, then I will stop yours. You don't use her full name unnecessarily. You don't make fun of her, and you don't tease her about being a child when she isn't."

"But I didn–"

"Attitude, Garfield. If you get into good habits now, then I know you're not going to slip and say something stupid when Adi is around to hear you. Now, I want to make this very clear. If she is regressed and acting like a child, then you will treat her like a child. A baby sister you care about very much, do you understand? And when she's acting adult, you won't bring up her babyish side. She's embarrassed enough about all this stuff. So you don't mention it when she's not regressed, you don't tell your friends, and you don't laugh at her."

"But..." he just had to argue, and then he saw the look in Nyx's eyes. He had recently discovered that his mother already knew about a number of things he'd been getting away with right under her nose. She'd let him do what he wanted as long as it didn't make any trouble for her, but now she knew too many of his secrets. She had everything she needed to humiliate him in front of his friends, or get him in trouble with the law. She might even kick him out if he tested her patience. This was one of the times when arguing further led to any number of possible futures, and all of them bad.

"We don't even know if she's sure about all this. She might have been reading about the baby thing for a long time, but she only started doing it while you were away. She could still decide that it doesn't work for her after all. So you're not going to say anything about it, and you're certainly not going to say her name. When we know how much and how often she wants to be young again, then I'll decide how far it goes."

"I think that's a pretty big hint, Mom." Garfield pointed at the mobile, and the pictures on the side of the box depicting a happy baby in a crib, staring up at circling plastic animals. It was more high-tech than anything that had been around when Adi was a baby, or even when Garfield had been young. But that was one point Nyx had to agree with: there was no way Adi would have picked something like that out of her limited birthday allowance if she wasn't serious about being a baby.