Do I really need to put a disclaimer here still? Really? I don't own stuff. Duh.
Chapter 3: Birth
Arden continued to wait for what felt like an eternity, though she'd long since lost all concept of time. She'd forgotten what light looked like; what sounds sound like; what smells smell like. She'd forgotten how the breeze felt on warm, sweaty skin. How a cool scoop of ice cream tasted on a hot summer day.
As she completed that thought, she began to… feel. Passing waves of warmth and wetness made her aware of the edges of her body, along with an overwhelming tingly feeling. She still had that strange sense of weightlessness, and the total absence of light, but she.. existed again.
Time had passed, she was sure of it.
Soon, she was aware of lighter and darker shadows, and it was as if she was peering through a thick fog at a dark cave. Arden was, of course, confused by that. It was when she began to feel herself tumbling around, like she was constantly doing somersaults, that she thought she'd lost whatever sanity she might've had left.
She heard distant, muffled voices, as though sound was reaching her through water, and was naturally concerned.
More time passed, and she came to a rather troublesome conclusion.
She had recalled a particular lesson in 10th grade biology, about a fetus's awareness within the womb. It had been described.. pretty much exactly as her experience was, though now it had a much more personal feel.
She wasn't some detached, pimply 15 year old, waiting for lunchtime, no, now she was experiencing everything firsthand.
Arden adjusted to the fact that she was, for all intents and purposes, a fetus, living inside of a womb. She began to think of herself as a sort of parasite, in a way. Well, a sentient, highly intelligent, biologically advanced parasite -was that cocky to think of herself that way?- but a parasite, nonetheless.
It was like the walls were caving in on her.
She was aware she was likely being.. birthed, and with that awareness came a sort of disgusted feeling. She just tried to focus on the job at hand which was… getting out of… the womb.
A pinprick of light appeared in the dark, and as the pinprick grew larger, Arden grew even more uncomfortable. Not only was she feeling the discomfort of her situation in general, but there was this almost painful, suffocating compression. Suddenly, she was engulfed by the light, blinded by its brilliance, although her thin eyelids were tightly closed.
She coughed and spluttered, trying to clear what she now recognized as fluid from inside that woman's -her mother's- body.
Oh.
Oh God.
I'm a baby?
Of course, she had recognized that she was a baby before, but… the reality of the situation hadn't really hit her yet.
Are babies supposed to remember their previous lives?
She tried to speak, what she was going to say, she knew not, but she tried, nonetheless. Her voice came out as a wail, her vocal cords not yet the strongest.
Then she thought of something. How was her brain already developed? Developed enough to be self-aware, and able to have detailed memory of her previous life, at the very least.
Pushing that troublesome thought past her, she realized that she should probably be crying. She was an infant, after all.
So she did. she cried. At first, it was pretend, because that is what babies do, they cry, but it didn't take long for her to be crying for real.
She died. She fucking died.
She would never be able to go back. She'd never sleep in her bed again. She'd never go to the coffee shop on the corner of Poplar and Abbey Road. She'd never go to school again. She'd never doze off, curled up on her beanbag reading manga again. She'd never wear the fleecey pajamas her aunt gave her again.
A nurse, she thought, picked her up. The blanket they wrapped her in was scratchy and rough against her newborn, too-sensitive skin.
Arden began to observe her surroundings, and came to grasp that she wasn't in a hospital. It wasn't fluorescent, and it didn't smell of antiseptic and the undeniable stench of death. There weren't white tile floors and white walls, and white, sterile everything. She looked up at the nurse, but saw that they weren't one, not really. They didn't look like a nurse. More like… she tried to recall what nurses were referred to in the old days. A midwife?
So I'm not in a hospital.
Why am I not in the hospital? Am I somewhere in the past or something?
She concluded that they must be somewhere before the time of modern hospitals.
Arden was exhausted. Simply spent. She'd done too much thinking. Too much had happened.
With that, she shut her little infant eyes, and passed out.
I was gonna make this sequence longer, but I just kind of... didn't. Yeah. I don't know.
*Friendly reminder that reviewers get a slice of three layer chocolate cake, a too-long, uncomfortable hug with a weird back-pat, and my undying respect.