Chapter 1: It's Only the Beginning
I've lived billions upon billions of lives. That is the curse of my kind. We don't just live our life. We live all the possibilities of one life until we choose the correct one. Not like reincarnations or some such. We literally live all the possibilities in one lifetime. All based upon a single phrase given to us at birth that we have to manipulate into the correct order. Sometimes there is a word that you must take out or add to make it correct. And sometimes it was just the phrase itself. Sometimes two words, sometimes almost a paragraph. And forget grammar, it means nothing to life phrases. But with us all having to live multiple lives, we didn't procreate with each other very often, because here's the thing. Us telling people of what we are? Is ALWAYS the wrong choice until after you've completed your life phrase. Even to another one of us. As such our people have slowly become a recessive trait that next to never showed. Only way to tell was to see the phrases across our wrist and know. But come on. How trendy is it to have random inspirational or emotional phrases tattooed on your wrist? Little difficult to tell the difference between trend, and specific type of demon.
The shittiest part of my life? I was the last of our kind that my family knew about. I know, I know. I said we couldn't tell each other so how do I know I'm the last? Because there used to be some communication network that once our phrases were completed, we would contact each other. But our bloodlines thinned out until they were nonexistent, because of the whole not telling anyone what we are thing a lot of times either dying, or already taking a life partner. Hell I wasn't even full blooded. My mom was half water demon while my dad was half wind demon. My dad's life phrase came just after I was born and for some reason it caused my parents to not have any more kids. Maybe one of the possible futures had more kids and it ended in all of our deaths and he didn't want that so one kid it was. "Children get only one childhood" was etched on his wrist and he refused to talk about the other possibilities. You know how many times Spirit world has had to send people to kill us because someone we loved died in every possibility we chose and we chose to make the world burn (sometimes literally) in any way we could because of that? There were reasons we were rare. That was another one of them.
Our first choices were usually simple ones of course. Do we choose to come out of the womb kicking and screaming, or quiet and neat? Do we choose the pacifier or our thumb? Every. Single. Damn. Choice. You don't realize how often you make a choice. Do I put on my left shoe first or my right? Do I choose to hit the snooze button, or get up? Stupid little choices that most don't think twice about. But we have to. The first few years of life are the most difficult as you can imagine. You aren't cognizant enough to really understand what is happening. When we hit around the age of 5 or 6 though we have lived enough lives that we are more than aware, and our parents (who at the same time have been living their own multiple universes if they haven't completed their life phrase, or even if they have the trait at all) can help us.
I remember I once tried an entire month of not choosing anything. But guess what? That in and of itself was a choice on my part. That month was a real bitch to relive. If I remember right I had to relive it something like 5,437 times. Give or take a few times of course. You know how monotonous it can get trying to be a rebelling teenager having to do the same homework 36 times in a row because you chose to doodle in the corner of the page and did the wrong doodle. It wasn't ALL bad though. I did get the choices correct some of the time. I knew when I picked the wrong choice because one of two things happened. One. I blink. The literal next time I blink I am back in the beginning of my choice (usually happens with the mundane choices). Like I choose to grab the apple from the fruit basket as my breakfast. I blink as I take a bite, and I'm walking into my kitchen again. Grab the banana, blink. Walking into my damn kitchen. Make a full breakfast, including pancakes, bacon, and eggs? Blink. Walking back into the kitchen. Choose nothing, simply put my shoes on and walk out the door, and my day continues. Other times it's much more annoying. I've had to live ENTIRE YEARS. Try living your sixteenth birth year over 10 times because you wanted a damn party. Oh and having to relive your most embarrassing moments time and time again because you are trying to prevent it after the first time it happened. Think about your favorite video game with that really hard boss. You know the one. You've died so many times but the dialog doesn't allow you to skip it and you start mocking it by repeating it as it's said. I just do it in my head.
I'm rambling. That won't do me any good. I'm was told that once we have lived through our life phrase that we no longer have to worry about the choices we make. That we won't have to relive any life. That we are on the last path of our lives, and we live it just like any other mortal. Sure demons live longer lives than humans but we are still mortal. I'm told we will get to live all of the possibilities of our life phrase and then we are given our first TRUE choice. The ultimate choice of which to have. It no longer mattered if it was correct or not, that's where life would lead.
I'd heard stories of people choosing a path and within seconds they died and never returned. I've died exactly 13,722 times. I have a little tally app. Other people die within a few hours or days. Like my aunt. Her phrase had been "Every mountain top is within reach if you just keep climbing." Very poetic and shit right? Well I'm told her life phrase caused her to climb every damn mountain in the world. Her last was some mountain in some country that I didn't care to remember. She had realized it was her life phrase at the beginning of her first mountain climb. And after she had climbed them all she was brought back to the moment she first chose to climb a mountain. She chose her favorite and climbed it. She got to the top. Looked around and when she was satisfied she started climbing back down. She froze to death the first night on the climb down. Mom was of course upset. But she had already completed her life phrase, and didn't have to relive her sister dying. Her phrase was some bullshit she completed when she was still a teenager. "Be" She had chosen to "be yourself" in some stupid teen social situation. The completed phrase was etched on her wrist like all our phrases became once completed. Not all of them were epic life journeys.
As I said before. You don't realize how often you make a choice (ha! You had to hear a phrase a second time and I bet you are slightly annoyed by it! Amateur). But our life phrase? Nothing before it mattered. That it was the one moment in our life that truly mattered because it was what fate wanted from us. I had always been told that when we come across the paths that has to do with our life phrase it would be obvious. I didn't think it would be this damn obvious.
Author's notes: Here's a new story! Our main girl curses...a lot...so if you don't like that type of thing this may not be your type of fic. BUT! I've been playing with this story in my head for quite a while. I've posted it on one other site, but thought it finally time to post it here as well, so I would love to hear your thoughts on it! Don't worry the yyh gang will come in soon! Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed it!