prologue. how it ends and how it begins

A simple child,
That lightly drew its breath,
And feels life in every limb:
What should it know of death?

William Wordsworth

And for that one moment, all she knew was pain.

Pain—it filled her senses, invaded her thoughts, became her living, breathing world: the raw feeling of pure, unmarred agony dancing on her skin was unlike no other torture she could behold. She was burning, slowly staining the air the horrible odor of charred flesh.

Her body was alight with fire, vibrant reds and loud, screaming oranges and yellows all coming together in a dangerous harmony that begged for her attention. It was beautiful, she thought almost absentmindedly, as if she herself wasn't wasting away slowly in the night. She wouldn't have ever romanticized death in her life, but as it was her own death in question, she felt she could sin this one time.

And as the sirens of the too-late fire engines blared, as the blasting jets of cool water brought down the inferno, as the house crumbled down to ashes, even as the last of the pain faded away, and her vision slowly going black, her mouth contorted to a mockery of a smile—

Death was beautiful.

She died in a fire. Twenty-three, at the pinnacleof her youth, only nineteen days before her birthday. It was a fatal accident with the propane burner-evidently something had gone wrong in the middle of the night, and she died.

One life gone from the big, wide world; very somber, formal funeral that only her neighbors attended, if only to keep up appearances. Not a soul shed a tear for her loss. She didn't really interact with anyone in their small, well-to-do suburb community. All anyone knew about her was that she moved in from the city and that she was making a living for herself, away from an apparently well-off family. The rest were mere rumors, unreliable and flimsy.

It wasn't a burial. She had expressed her wishes to be cremated before in her will, a strange thing to have in your twenties. Ironic, given the circumstances of her death; they didn't have to burn much of her body. Half of it was ashes already. She had little to go with her name, only the mortgaged house and her few possessions.

They were all liquidated to gold and given to a mysterious friend from college that she had wanted to thank for "all the things she had done for her." The friend's name was not mentioned; she had wished to remain anonymous, only serving to further raise suspicions and incite whispers and murmurs behind closed doors.

How peculiar, the neighbors would say to each other. How problematic.

Her parents didn't attend her funeral.

Her last thought was concerning the beauty of death. Her first, however, was concerning the brightness of the lights and her eyesight: or rather, her hapless lack of said sight.

Her second thought was, what exactly was she doing here, living?

Here she was, a dead human being, all of a sudden as alive again as a newborn baby. She then belatedly came to the realization that she was, in fact, a newborn baby, straight from the womb, and apparently her blurry eyesight was actually miraculously developed; unheard of for a child that was just born. Well. That complicated things.

There were looming faces above her- one a stoic, relatively handsome male (handsome in the sense of strength and caring and compassion and gruffness that, combined, was admittedly really hot but she got the vague, innate feeling that it was wrong to think of him that way) and another a weary but still smiling attractive female, with all the love of a mother to her child.

She could only say that they were her parents, then. And as far as she remembered, her father was not hot and her mother never smiled.

There was talking, loud words and excited blathering, and then a hushed silence as her apparent DNA gifter spoke. She couldn't understand a word they were saying, however, as it seemed to be in a different language that she, for the life of her, could not place. It wasn't English. It wasn't even vaguely European. In fact, it seemed almost… Asian.

But it didn't have the harshness of Korean nor the fast-paced dialogue of Vietnamese. It definitely was not Chinese, as she had taken more than a few Mandarin classes back in high school to be able to recognize the language.

Japanese, then, because she was pretty sure Taiwanese wasn't a thing. It could be some other, minor language hidden away in the depths of the continent. Didn't sound like it, though, and it was evidently Japanese—she could define the lone word or two that even she knew from watching anime before her parents had banned it, saying it was a reprehensible, uncivilized and barbaric custom to watch "cartoons" when she was prepubescent. She had rather liked them.

But, in this life, she was apparently reincarnated into a Japanese family. Noticing that the doctors did not look very… doctorly, in the modern sense of white lab coats and stethoscopes and clipboards (well, they had the white coats down but not much else), there was a niggling notion that had started to uproot her mind.

Was she back in time, then? Not too far, though, as they had electricity and some rudimentary technology. Was that even possible, to die and then be reincarnated in a family before her time? And to ride the proverbial train of thought farther down its tracks, was it even possible to be reincarnated? Or was this what death was, an illusion meant to torment her senses with the falsity of having a life once more? She couldn't even tell right from wrong anymore, much less reality from fantasy.

So deeply engrossed her her thinking, she didn't factor in the silence that had settled in the room. It wasn't until someone's callused hand brushed her babyish face that she noticed something was wrong. They were all looking at her expectantly, she realized. Waiting for her reaction.

Hmm. She might as well please them and make a good first impression if they're going to be her family and all. (She absolutely forgot that this wasn't a job interview or interrogation or test—she was supposed to be a baby, and a newly born one at that. Not a fully cognizant adult testing to see if she was sane or not.)

So she smiled, her cheeks dimpling and eyes crinkling in joy. Her laughter (false) rang out through the room, filling the silence and spreading an almost palpable delight to the adults, and she could hear an audible sigh of relief, their worries of something not going right left unfounded. The talking and meaningless chatter started up once more, the doctors and medics going about doing their respective jobs and duties, cleaning up and generally looking busy.

Her parents, however, did not move away, instead choosing to stay where they were, apparently content in their peaceful watching of each and every one of her movements. Creepy. In her world her parents didn't even pay attention to her, deeming her a waste of space. This new, loving action more than vaguely bewildered her; she didn't understand what they were trying to do.

Was it another test? She stared solemnly back at them in a feeble attempt to analyze their every move, catalog them and cross-reference it with what she already knew (which she noted was not a very good example, as she hadn't really had a normal upbringing herself). They made the first move, her evident mother reaching out for her and before she can react, she is caught in this new mother's arms, and she cannot escape. Panicking slightly, she struggles in vain, trapped with this stranger smiling down at her, almost—cradling her?

Yes, she was being rocked to and fro, and with her weak hearing she could make out a faint lullaby in words she did not know nor recognize, but the tune soothing all the same. And even if it is strange and unknown and not familiar, she finds herself growing drowsy, her eyelids becoming heavier and heavier with each beat and her tiny chest rises and falls steadily, in beat with the song that is being sung for her exclusively.

And with a hush and with the end of the sweet, soft crooning of her new mother, she falls asleep.

so um this is really old. like, really old. but I figured it'd be a waste to let this just sit in my Drive forever to collect metaphorical dust I'm limiting the chapters to around 1500 words because I'd burn myself out if I wanted to routinely update this. maybe later I'll go back and republish this the way it should be published - if I ever finish it. haha I'm so funny. me, finish something? ? ? bye for now