*(Where am I? Why is it so dark? What is this? Why do I feel so light?)*
I tried to move, but I did not feel having anything to move with. I had no body, No hands, no feet, no chest, no eyes too?. But yet I could see.
What I felt of my own form was just something... a presence, and I was shaking. Badly. Getting worse by the second.
Hck! Ugh!
Everything was dark. And in the darkness, tiny white dots drifted away in every direction. I watched them go. That was the only thing I could do.
From a distance, two blue lights appeared.
They moved toward me slowly. No hurry. They stopped a short distance away and sat there.
*(Who is there? Anyone? Please help me. I'm so terrified.)*
The voice came, and I could hear it.
"Rise and shine, my dear."
The voice came again through me.
"Rise and shine. Not that I wish to imply you have been sleeping too long."
I would have frowned if I had a face. Who is this? Why is he talking to me like we have met before?
"No one is more deserving of rest. And all that effort, every last bit of it, would have gone to waste until..."
"Well. Let us say your hour has come again."
*(What? What effort? What hour are you talking about?)*
Do my words even reach whoever this was?
The lights slowly changed. Pupils formed at their centers, glowing cyan. They were eyes. Then a second pair appeared beside the first, facing a different direction entirely. Then more pairs, opening one after another, each one turning somewhere new. They multiplied outward in every direction, at all angles, and vanished. The only thing that remained was that pair of eyes in front of me, glowing.
And behind them, slowly, bodies appeared. Floating. Dozens of them, maybe more, impossible to count. From what I saw: different ages, different sizes. Children. Toddlers. Infants. Young men. Elders. Every one of them floated limply.
I assumed they were dead, because many of them were mangled and gory and even missing body parts.
"I have kept my eyes on you longer than I should have allowed myself."
*(What the hell are you talking about?)*
A pause.
"Ah... I think that's more than enough."
When he said that My form began to tremble even worse.
hkkkkkk
"So wake up. And smell the ashes."
(h-Huh?)
I shook so badly I felt like I was going to pop.
Hckkkkk! Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
I felt myself coming apart, whiteness filled my whole surroundings
----------------------------------------------------------
What is this unbearable Heat. Why's it so HOT
*(Hot hot hot hot it's hottttttt—)*
Light — orange, moving, too close. Something in me screamed *move* before I'd processed why and I jerked backward and sat down hard on something cold and flat.
I blinked.
Fire. A hearth. Right in front of me.
I breathed hard through a nose that felt weird and funny.
*(What just — where — what.)*
I looked at my hands.
Tiny. Chubby. Round at the knuckles in a way that hands aren't supposed to be round. I turned them over. Turned them back. Five fingers each. But the size was completely, fundamentally wrong.
*(Wha.)*
I looked up. And around myself
It was a room. Stone walls. Wooden furniture worn smooth from use. A window showing grey morning light. Woodsmoke in the air and something cooking and the sound of birds outside. Everything looked like it had been built a long time ago and maintained just well enough to not fall over.
And it was — it was actually kind of beautiful? The way the morning light came through the window and hit the stone floor. The texture of everything. Real in a way that cheap things aren't real.
*(Where am I?.)*
A sound.
I turned my head.
A woman. Standing across the room, staring at me. Black hair, blue eyes, young — roughly my age maybe, pretty in a completely ordinary way. She was saying something. Words I didn't recognize. Sounds that had no anchor in my brain.
*"Xxxx xxxxx xxx?"*
I stared at her. *(Who's she?)*
She said something else. Shorter. Pressing a hand to her mouth as if worried
"Xxxx ,xxxx"
I kept staring.
*(Who is this woman.)*
She took a step toward me and I flinched back. my back hit the leg of a chair.
I sat there with my heart going absolutely insane in a chest that was also wrong — too small, too light — and I could feel the cold stone floor through what appeared to be a —
I looked down.
*(Is this a nappy....?)*
*(I'M WEARING A NAPPY.)*
*(My legs.... They are chubby and small too.)*
My feet had fat little creases on them
I tilted my head back to the woman
Somewhere in the back of my head a whole sentence was forming *excuse me, who are you, where exactly is this place, what country are we in*, and what actually came out was
"Awa — bwah—"
I clasped both hands over my mouth immediately.
Sat there with my fists pressed against my face staring at the woman with wide eyes.
The woman crossed the room fast and had me off the floor. Held me against her chest before I'd finished making it. "She took one of my hands and turned it over, checking it."
*"Xxx xxxx xxxx xxx—"*
Her voice was soft. Saying something over and over in that language I didn't know.
I sat in her arms completely rigid, staring at the wall over her shoulder.
*(Okay.)*
Deep breath. Think.
*(I was at home. In my room. Then the couch. I reached for my lighter and then— )*
*(Ow.... )*
I remembered screaming in pain and then everything went black but—why something that happened moments ago feels like a memory from a very long time ago?.
*(...does that mean?)*
*(No. No no no no.)*
The thought came very calmly.
*(Is this what this is?.)*
I buried my face in my hands and shook my head.
*(NO.)*
*(Dead people don't feel anything. This is a dream. Obviously a dream. this is just my brain doing something with that. Stress response. Vivid dreaming. The brain can generate completely convincing physical sensation during REM sleep. I read that somewhere. The pain was probably a dream as well)*
Even so.
This was an extremely convincing dream.
*(It's fine. I just have to wait it out.)*
She shifted me to her other side and pressed me against her shoulder, still talking softly.
*(Okay.... this is a bit awkward)*
But What caught my attention was that this woman smelled nice. familiar in a way that made absolutely no sense given I had never met this woman in my life.
She pulled back slightly and looked at my face. Said something that ended like a question. She was holding me like she knew me. Like this was completely normal. Like I was her —
*(oh.)*
My escapist ass watched too many Isekai animes. My brain has finally given up and generated one. I am dreaming that I have been reincarnated. As a baby. Into what appears to be a medieval setting. Because I am a twenty three year old man with no job prospects and dozens of unfinished assignments and apparently this is what my subconscious does with that.
I looked around the room again.
The morning light on the stone floor. The worn wood of the furniture. The way the fire moved in the hearth. The smell of whatever was cooking. so this is the kitchen of this house.
*(...my brain really went all out on this one.)*
I looked at my little hands.
I closed my eyes tight and slowly Opened them again.
Still there.
The door swung open.
I turned my head. There I saw A silhouette in the doorway. Dark against the grey morning light outside. tall, broad at the shoulders, completely backlit so I couldn't make out anything except the shape and —
Two eyes.
Blue. Faint. Catching the light from
somewhere I couldn't identify.
Something moved in the back of my head. A feeling with no name attached to it. Like when a word sits on the tip of your tongue and won't come. Like trying to remember a dream that keeps dissolving the moment you reach for it. I knew those eyes from somewhere. I was almost certain I knew those eyes.
From where.
From where.
The silhouette moved into the room.
The morning light hit him and the blue slowly changed to green, just ordinary green eyes catching the light wrong in the doorway and the rest of him came into focus. Young. Mid twenties maybe. Dark brown hair, a goatee, fit in the easy way of someone who does physical work rather than gym work. He looked completely unbothered by existence in the way that people look when they are in their own home on an ordinary morning.
He crossed to the woman without a word.
And kissed her.
On HER LIPS .
I stared wide eyed.
*(OoOoO this is a spectacular dream.)*
I mean------I wasn't scandalized exactly. But where I was from this was not standard morning behavior in front of company. Or in front of anyone. People kept that category of thing relatively private.
This man had opinions about that convention apparently.
He pulled back, said something to her, she replied, and then he turned and looked at me.
His face did something warm, immediate, the particular expression of someone looking at something they find genuinely funny and genuinely theirs at the same time.
He took me from her arm to his and Before I had processed that this was happening he had me against his chest and his face was coming toward mine and —
*(Ow ow ow stop it man)*
Spikey Beard. Everywhere. Against both my cheeks in alternating rapid kisses that felt like being scrubbed with a sandpaper.
I pushed both hands against his face with everything my arms had.
*(Goddamn it get off)*
He pulled back slightly, completely unbothered, and said something to the woman that from his tone was almost certainly self satisfied.
He held me against his chest and turned toward the wall and stopped Infront of a mirror.
I looked.
A baby looked back.
Green eyes. Dark brown hair. Round cheeks with the particular softness of something that had never experienced weather. Probably not even a year old.
*(...is that me?.)*
*(Ha...I look like a - like a European kid.)*
I raised one hand slowly. The baby raised one hand.
I opened my mouth. The baby opened its mouth.
I moved my head side to side. The baby moved its head side to side.
The man said something above me,
apparently finding this very amusing.
"Xxxx, xxxx"
The woman had set things on the table by the time he carried me over.
He sat with me propped against his arm and she sat across from him and it took moments of watching them exist near each other to understand the situation.
*(Ah.... So that's how it is)*
This guy is supposedly my father, These 2 are couples probably married.
The meal came and went. Whatever she'd cooked was delicious and I was hungrier than I'd expected and somewhere between the second and third spoonful I stopped thinking about anything.
By the end I was full.
Heavier than full. The warm weight of a meal sitting in a small body that apparently ran entirely on sleep and food with nothing in between.
*(I'll figure out where I am after a nap.)*
The man stood, said something, kissed the woman, then turned and pressed his lips into my cheek one more time before heading to the door. He went outside.
Then — from somewhere beyond the walls — a sound. Heavy. Rhythmic. Something large moving on the ground with serious weight behind each step. And underneath it another sound, lower, the kind of sound that comes from a throat of something predator
I went completely still.
While The woman didn't even look up. She cleared the table with the unbothered efficiency of someone who had heard that sound every morning of her adult life.
*(what was that....)*
She picked me up, settled me against her chest, and began to rock slowly. Which is very awkward for someone my age.....
The sounds faded.
The rocking didn't stop.
My eyes got heavy.
I'll figure it out, I thought. After the nap. I'll figure everything out after the—
---------------------
I opened my eyes slowly , it was dark and very familiar I was on the—
THE COUCH.
My couch. My living room, the sound of the street outside, the smell of my apartment.
The cigarette slipped from my mouth as I jolted awake and I caught it just before it hit my chest.
I sat there breathing.
"...heh So it was a dream."
I looked at the lighter in my hand. Put the cigarette back between my lips.
Something felt wrong.
Not a thought exactly. More like the air pressure had changed slightly. Like the specific silence before something.
But I clicked the lighter anyway.
*Tick*
And everything came apart.
heat, not the gentle warmth of a hearth and light in every direction at once and a sound that was also a feeling and I was screaming and the screaming had no end to it—
"MOM DAD SOMEONE HELP ME HELPPP—"
Screaming uselessly, I felt every muscle fiber of me melting. Fire entering my lung each Time I was breathing
One moment I was burning and the other Moment I wasn't, the transition happened in a blink of an eye.
I was in a complete dark place with no light except for—
Two blue lights. Still like they were staring at me.
A voice came that direction
"Rise and shine"
A pause then
"rise and smell the ashes"
I opened my eyes in an instant with a sharp panic scream. high pitched. laying on something soft I sat and looked around myself. It was the same middle age architecture.
I checked myself. My hands were small, touched my face, no facial hair.
*(I'M A BABY AGAIN)*
The door burst open revealing the same woman. Her face worried. She crossed the room and picked me up and began to rock me in her arms.
I looked up and around, and at my own hands, things were getting more realistic and more weird by time....
*(WHAT IS GOING IN HERE)*