This is just the start of something I've had on my mind for a while. Review it if you can be bothered, if not fair enough. Hope you enjoy.
Can I not just get a peaceful afterlife?
[You have been chosen as the next traveller. Do you wish to be reborn? {Y} {N}]
No, I don't want to be reborn. I'm happy with what I've accomplished, however little it is in the grand scheme of things. {N}
[You have been chosen as the next traveller. Do you wish to be reborn? {Y} {N}]
I got a good job, I had a loving family, and I died with a will laid out clearly and equally. {N}
[You have been chosen as the next traveller. Do you wish to be reborn? {Y} {N}]
I would be mourned, I would be buried, and then my siblings would be financially secure for the rest of their lives. {N}
[You have been chosen as the next traveller. Do you wish to be reborn? {Y} {N}]
I had no regrets. {N}
[You have been chosen as the next traveller. Do you wish to be reborn? {Y} {N}]
SO WHY?!.. {N}
[You have been chosen as the next traveller. Do you wish to be reborn? {Y} {N}]
… This message… I had everything I wanted, and I lived a happy single lifestyle. Sure, there were things I wish I had done but even as I died it was never to the point of wanting to go back and do them. So why me? Surely someone more reliable, smarter, more desperate, more ruthless, more- anything would be a better suit for whatever this was right? {N} No, this wasn't my calling.
[You have been chosen as the next traveller. Do you wish to be reborn? {Y} {N}]
-and yet it refused to let me turn it away. Is this the fate of every person? Does your mind get wiped and your life reset when you [agree to all]? No. If that were the case there wouldn't be a need for a negative option, or in fact any choice at all. If the choice to decline appears to exist, then anyone who chooses to agree from the getgo simply believes that they went along with it of their own free choice which is… interesting. Some people agree, and some agree reluctantly huh? Sigh. What if I just waited? Would it acknowledge my denial if I waited long enough, like an incredibly slow potato machine? It was worth a shot if nothing else, I was merely a disembodied soul floating around in a space I'm not entirely sure actually exists after all. It wasn't like I had anything else to do.
"We can't keep supporting you in this much longer." they said. I really was an ungrateful child. My art didn't pay for a good portion of my early career despite my best efforts, and yet I still refused to get a part-time job to cover my costs. Despite that, my parents kept a roof over my head and food in my stomach.
It was the showmanship that did it. I know that now. I started marketing myself by drawing live, bringing to life sweeping pieces in front of an online audience. It was slow to start with, but even from the very first day I knew it was my calling. Art was never the center of my life. The thrill of making these grand gestures in front of what I knew to be expectant faces, to create masterpieces born from the common everyday occurrences that made up my life and to have people laugh with me. That was what I lived for. If I had a bad day, my drawings were melancholic and my pace slow and calculated, a careful teaching process to calm and relax. If I was happy I would draft explosions of colour, overact and play more… and no matter what, I would never stop laughing. Quietly or loudly, a chuckle or a guffaw, I laughed.
People would ask me "why do you laugh so much?" and to that I only had one real answer. It stumped me the first time and I answered that I didn't know of course, but that question stayed with me, and when the time came that a second and a third and a fourth and a fifth asked? I had my answer. "I laugh because I can."
[You have been chosen as the next traveller. Do you wish to be reborn? {Y} {N}]
… It wasn't going to go away was it. Ugh, what a shame.
…
I didn't want to do it. It felt too much like betrayal. I'd spent my life, I'd told my story, I'd left a legacy.
{Y}
But I chose this anyway.
My posture was off. That was the first thing I noticed when I woke up. My posture was off, and I was standing up. My eyes flicked open, clearly picking apart each and every blade of grass within my line of sight. I was surrounded by rolling hills, and as I turned to get a look at the rest of my surroundings I stopped, glancing at my shoe before catching my eye on my own hand.
I moved too smoothly, and now my hand was pale. Two thoughts that had no relation to each other, but occurred in practically the same moment.
How does a person come to grips with the fact that they are quite blatantly no longer human? I couldn't know how anyone else would react, but due to my lack of a heartbeat I failed to hyperventilate, which is a shame because I really needed too. Instead I just sort of… shuddered, and collapsed in on myself. I just sat there for however long, trying to reason this out in my head by some means and only ever returning a dull blank. Eventually I did get to the point of moving again, but it wasn't because I had any more idea about what I was doing, where I was going or even who I was. I started moving because I had to.
To stand still is to fall behind, and to fall behind is to die. Or something.
"Oi, did you hear the newest 'royal proclamation'?!"
"Hmm... No. Not as far as I'm aware."
"She's turning back the old grain tax!"
"Oh?! Bah, come on now, don't mess with your old grandfather like that."
"Huha! If I were joking you'd know it. 'S not what we expected, sure, but daemons if I'll complain."
Old Jose chuckled as he looked off into the distance. Farm work had never been particularly profitable, but it was enough to live on and- by the grace of her majesty- just a bit more than that. The last seasonal tax had hit hard, but hearsay from the wall always told it was being spent in the right places, so no-one really begrudged it. Oh, what with all the tales from Re-Estize and the other countries, all of them would never see taxes drop back down. Safe from the demis, war (real war, not the farce that 'empire' waged) nowhere in sight and all for a few mandatory years of service from the youth that ended up building them stronger… Truly, to be born and buried in Roble was a blessing.
He turned his gaze toward the younger man standing just outside the cow pen. "Say, Jorge… Pavel's little girl got conscripted just last year didn't she? Do you know how she's getting on?"
"Fairly well by all accounts." Came the response as the man scratched his head with a wry grin. "She's standing head and shoulders above all the recruits in her company and working her way towards being a squire, but… she's still insisting on being a paladin. "
"Tch, what a waste. what. a. waste. She has all that talent but- hahhh, she still insists on chasing that foolish dream? Sometimes I wonder what went wrong." Jose shook his head as he went back to milking the cow. Both of the men stood in a brooding silence for a scant few seconds before he asked one last question. "Tell me, was Pavel truly that bad a role model?"
Jorge paused. Running his thick hand along the smooth wooden fencing he settled into a pensive expression before beginning to walk away. Sea green eyes turned to look back at their father as a particularly large scar tried to pull him back into the motion.
"Never. That was the problem."
Shaking his head of morose thoughts, he started off into the village fields to relax and check on his pet project. The last of the unharvested wheat was just tall enough to be enjoyable in simply running his hand over. It reminded him of simpler times, when he and his brother would run through these same fields jumping and poking our heads out looking for each other. Not once did he win one of those.
A grin broke out over his stubbled face as he reached the last plot. Row upon row of vines all congregated on a specific position, and the result of months of tending sat fat and proud as the result.
A pumpkin.
A strange foreign vegetable imported all the way from the Dragon Kingdom, he had been bolstering the last few years of the plant's growth through the little druidic cantrips he learnt to see how far he could push something already so large… But he never expected that it could get this big. The orange behemoth at rest had grown to sit at stomach height in the end, and apart from seeming to squash itself, it didn't look like it was suffering any major problems, so next year could be even bigger!
Ah, he couldn't take it any more. This magnificent beast was going to be harvested to-
*Crack*
-day? That was a rather loud crack. Beastmen wouldn't be that clumsy. Fox and wolf ruled out straight away, not clean enough to be a deer, too quick to be a goblin and with it ever so slightly dulled there was only one real answer…
"Who's there?!"