It happened while he was sleeping. It always did.
Sleeping that long sleep, outside of time. The dream that might not have an end. Until the new beginning came, the small beginning of that end.
Each time it was the same, and very different. Flesh in the womb. DNA knit into him, he into it. He was changed, reborn. The same and different—and different in the same way, now, as this new flesh. New body. Familiar soul.
It could have been momentous. A milestone moment in his too-long life, each time it marked the break between his lives, his bodies. It must have been important.
But he was sleeping, and he would recall, on waking, only a half-remembered dream, recurring, to be pushed aside and then forgotten. A thought he was too busy to examine. He saw them die, but never saw them born.