Arc 1: First Life (and First Death)

Chapter 2: Adjustment

I've heard before that the human mind will go crazy if left for 72 hours without any form of stimulus, I have no idea if it's true, but having to spend every day as an incapable, hardly mobile, baby, I can say that I damn well felt like I was slowly going insane. It's not like I was left alone for ungodly amounts of time or anything, no if anything I was doted on constantly. I was always surrounded by people, and cradled in either my mother or my father's arms. I could tell that I was immensely loved, in some ways it saved me and helped me to cope. However in other ways it crushed me with guilt and served to drive home that these were actual people, not illusions or puppets, which forced me to realize and accept that this was in fact reality. I couldn't help but think sometimes that it would be better if this was just a realistic coma dream, it would mean that I could eventually wake up and return to the life I'd left behind, and that I hadn't actually stolen some little girl's life and family. I had no way of knowing if I actually had stolen the life of someone who was supposed to exist (I was very deliberately pushing aside any and all thoughts related to me somehow being that Zelda, reincarnation with my memories could be possible, but reincarnating into a work of fiction only happened in stories.), but the mere possibility that I had stolen someone's life from them made me cringe with guilt, after all I was intimately acquainted with what it feels like to have your life stolen from you.

Over time, I eventually came to the conclusion that choosing to live this new life while weighed down with guilt for something that I didn't intend to do was unfair to me, unfair to the little girl I may or may not have replaced, and most of all it was unfair to my new parents. My new parents had no idea of any other Zelda, for better or for worse there was only me. They loved me, but they hardly got to enjoy having a baby because I was always feeling depressed and guilty so I was always crying, or solemn, or turning away from their touch. It worried them greatly, I could see the confusion and hurt on their faces every time I avoided them. I heard their whispered conversations about what they might be doing wrong, my father was especially desperate and heartbroken. He seemed convinced that my failure to open up to them was because he was a bad father, and while my mother would always calmly claim that he was a great father (rightly so, I might add.), I could still see the worry on her face, hear the sadness in her voice. My behaviour was deeply hurting two wonderful, kind, people. It'd been two and a half months since I was reborn, it was time I got over myself and started to invest myself in this new world. For my new parents who still love me unconditionally despite my sulking, and for all the people who loved me in my past life who would be sad to know that I wasn't moving on.

It was incredibly easy to allow myself to love them, even easier still to change my behaviour to show it. I will vividly remember their reaction to the first time I laughed for the rest of my life. I'd been cradled in my father's arms, he was animatedly telling me a story about when he was ten and he tried to get some flowers for mom but everything went wrong, and in the end he'd wound up covered in mud, chicken feathers, and had a single flower sticking out of the pile of mud on the top of his head, as he offered my mom some very wilted and crushed flowers. It had been so surreal to look at this proper, collected, and regal man while he talked about getting attacked by chickens as a child, and I laughed. My father's head snapped down to stare at me in shock before the largest grin that I'd ever seen on anybody spread across his face. He lifted me into the air and spun around, laughing in delight while exclaiming over the fact that I'd laughed. When he finished spinning he'd held me out to mom who'd been sitting nearby listening to his story, and said "she laughed! She actually laughed! Did you hear it?" Still with that big grin on his face.

Mom had a hand up to her mouth, she had a smile on her face just like dad, but she also had tears glistening in her eyes. Her voice trembled with emotion when she said, "yes dear, I heard. Our little darling has a beautiful laugh. Perhaps you should tell her more stories from when we were little?"

Dad crossed over to sit beside mom with a nod, "that's a brilliant idea! Which story should I tell this time?" and we spent the rest of the day curled on the couch together as my father told funny stories of his childhood and I giggled and smiled throughout all of them until I fell asleep.

While my relationship with my parents had improved and I was no longer depressed, it didn't change the fact that I was still a baby. I'd been a twenty year old woman when I'd died, I was used to being able to do what I wanted, when I wanted to. Now that I was a baby again there were far more things I simply couldn't do, and wasn't allowed to do, compared with what I was used to. To put it simply, it was completely maddening. I felt like a prisoner within my own body. Every time I tried to move, my limbs would fly through the air in wild, jerky, swings. I had absolutely no control or precision with my movements, not to mention the fact that I had next to no muscle tone so every movement took monumentally more effort to perform. Because I couldn't move I was subject to long periods of boredom, interspersed with naps and playing with my parents. Due to my age I spent a good portion of my time sleeping, but I was well aware that as I got older I would stay awake longer, which meant more time of just lying in my crib, bored out of my mind.

It should be no surprise then, that I decided that I needed to regain my mobility as quickly as physically possible. I was originally hesitant about doing this, because wouldn't I -as a baby with the determination of a supremely bored adult- very quickly surpass all the expected milestones? I didn't want to make my parents scared of me, or unsettle the staff, by maturing much too quickly. But I was so bored, so frustrated with my lack of mobility, that I snapped and decided that it was more important that I could move, than how my parents might react. A large part of what fueled this decision was my supreme discomfort at the fact that I wasn't potty trained. Diapers are super convenient when your baby is a normal baby that doesn't know how to hold their bladder, or that they need to go in the toilet. But they are the worst things ever when you have the mentality of an adult but the physicality of a baby. If I could physically drag myself to the bathroom I would never use a diaper ever again. So I began working out, well as much as a baby can work out anyway.

I opened and closed my fists repeatedly in order to strengthen the tendons and ligaments in my wrists. I would wiggle my fingers, trying to get the fingers to move independently and not just spread slightly. I would roll my wrists and ankles so that I could move my arms and legs more precisely. I also did larger movements like turning and lifting my head, raising and lowering my legs and arms, and tensing my abdominal muscles (because sitting up was far beyond me at this point in time). Each of these exercises were incredibly draining on my little body so I wound up sleeping a lot. My parents found my exercises adorable, and they would let me squeeze their fingers repeatedly, or as hard as I could for as long as I could. It made me incredibly grateful that my parents had obviously never spent any time around real babies or they would notice that all of my movements were far too deliberate for any normal child.

Emboldened by their oblivious approval of my exercises, I began to do more in their presence. I would no longer stop what I was doing as soon as they walked into the room, instead continuing to work out until they did something to gather my attention, like calling my name, talking to me, or picking me up. They even wound up inventing new exercises for me by coaching me through a movement a few times and expecting me to continue doing it after they stopped. It was certainly an unusual way of playing, but we enjoyed it.

Of course we also played more ordinary games, like peekaboo and tickle monster, they would read and sing to me, gently bounce me up and down, and chat with each other (and pretend to hold conversations with me) while curled up on the couch or in bed. As a result my days as a baby passed by in a blur of exercise, sleep, and playing with my parents.