Chapter Text

🟆 Chapter 1 🟆

Life can be cruel, my child.

Shed your tears, you’re safe now.

Great deeds await in your future,

but for now, live and grow without fear.

I will be watching over you.

“NO!!”

My arms get caught as they flail, helpless to do anything about the headlights bearing down on me.

But then the afterimage clears from my vision and I see that I’m in a bed in a rustic wooden room, my limbs caught up in a tousled blanket.

The morning light streams in through open windows with billowing curtains, bringing the scent of dirt and smoke and the outdoors on the breeze. A silver pitcher of water sits on the table next to my bed, with a small matching cup accompanying it. An empty lamp sits next to it, along with a washcloth.

A part of my brain is telling me that I’d just been hearing a woman’s voice, but I’m alone in the room.

Looking around, there are more beds in the room, all unoccupied, with sidetables of their own. An unlit candle chandelier hangs from the center of the room, a full-length mirror stands between the windows, and there’s a door on the opposite wall which is ajar. I turn an ear towards it and hear faint voices.

Where am I?

There’s no sign of anything electrical or modern. In fact, it looks like I stepped straight onto a medieval European reenactment set. Except everything is kind of weirdly… big?

I throw off the blanket with the intent to get up, but stop when I see myself.

I’m slightly stubbier than I should be, my legs only reach halfway down the bed, and I’m dressed in a shirt with half-undone laces at the front of the neck and breeches secured by a drawstring, both made of simple undyed fabric with almost no elasticity. Under my clothes I can feel bandages wrapped around my torso and my left thigh. I can also see one on my right forearm. It’s stained by blood. When I hold my hands in front of my face, my fingers definitely look shorter than I remember. I touch my face and feel my features.

My head is a touch too large, my cheeks are soft and round, my jaw is undefined. It’s not what it should be, but it’s not an entirely unfamiliar feeling.

I jump out of bed and rush over to the mirror. In it, I see my new reflection.

I see a young boy who can’t be much more than ten, with fair skin, ruffled reddish-brown hair, and blue eyes.

I’m a kid again!? Come on, I’m fifteen! I’m in high-school!

It’s not even what I looked like when I was that age. There’s enough rough similarities that my brain doesn’t refuse to acknowledge it as me, but nobody I know would recognize me.

I lower my collar a little to get a look at the base of my neck.

I’ve still got that mole though.

I look down to my foot, expecting to see the scar I got when I was young.

It’s not there.

Having now assessed my bodily changes, though not with an entirely satisfying answer, I return to my initial confusion.

What happened? Where am I?

I climb onto one of the beds near a window to get a look outside.

“Shocking” doesn’t even come close to describing it. There’s a whole medieval city outside my window! Stone-paved streets and timber-framed buildings, smoke rising from chimneys, carts drawn by horses or pulled by hand.

On one side beyond a couple buildings, a wall borders the city, encircling down and around my vision, a vast forest beyond with mountains rising from it. And on the other side in the distance, another wall, fully within the city, protecting a grand castle and grounds.

Someone in an armored uniform with a sheathed sword at his side and an emblazoned shield on his back watches from a corner of the road. Is he a guard?

A troop of eye-catching misfits march down the street. At the head is a man in armor. A slim individual in a dark cloak hides behind him, and a beautiful woman in green with a bow follows to his right. Her blonde ponytail blows in the breeze showing off her… long pointy ears???

Is that an elf!?!?

I lean out of the window nearly far enough to risk falling, trying to get a better look at the enchanting fantasy beauty below.

That’s 100% an elf!!

I tumble back inside and slip down onto the floor, pressing my back against the wall as my heart begins racing at the implications of all I’ve seen.

Either I walked onto the most elaborate fantasy movie set of all time, involving a fully-populated city stretching out at life-size, or…

“Oh who am I kidding.”

The voiced words emphasize that my current body hasn’t hit puberty yet.

It’s clear I’m not on Earth any longer…

I clutch my knees close to myself and I begin to shiver as I try to come to terms with what’s really happened to me.

My last memories before waking up here. A dark stormy day. A slip. Blinding headlights.

I shuffle sideways and turn to face my unfamiliar reflection.

“Did I… die?”

This is absolutely the setup for a reincarnation story. But… those are just stories!

If I really am dead, one thing’s for certain: my parents are going to be devastated. Even just thinking about it makes tears start to stream down my cheeks.

I huddle back up against the wall again as the sobbing starts.

I can imagine their voices even now, begging and wailing. I can feel the heat as the fire licks around their immobile forms, a shadowy figure looming over the three of us.

“Wait, what?”

The tears keep coming, almost on their own, but I’ve stopped sobbing as confusion overtakes my sadness.

That wasn’t my parents… was it?

The faces of my parents waver in my memory, flickering between two different sets.

I remember my dad, dark hair, cleanshaven, a suit. And then I see my dad, but someone else. With the same reddish-brown hair I now have, a clean beard, in a fine buttoned shirt and breeches, a richly embroidered cape over one shoulder.

My mom is similarly shimmering in my memory. She was a part-time worker, usually wearing pants. And then… she always wore wonderful dresses, even her nightgown was elegant.

“Finley?”

A large woman with grey hair pulled into a bun wearing an old-fashioned nurse uniform stands in the doorway, looking toward the messy bed I woke up in.

She turns and sees me, huddled with tears streaked down my face.

“Oh, dear…”

She rushes toward me with arms out and picks me up, huffing in exertion as she does so.

It’s been so long since an adult has carried me and my mind is still reeling from everything about my newfound situation that I don’t react at all as the nurse carries me back to bed.

She speaks softly as she lays me down and strokes my hair.

“I’m sorry Finley, it’s alright, it’s okay.”

Finley? Is that this body’s name? It’s not my name. My name is… is… Oh god…

I can’t remember my name.

I remain just as unresponsive as before with my mind recoiling from this new impossibility, and the nurse begins inspecting my bandages.

She undoes the one on my arm. The dried blood on the inside sticks slightly to my skin as it’s pulled off, but underneath I’m completely fine. In fact, now that my attention is drawn to my seemingly injured state, I realize I don’t actually hurt anywhere at all.

“What’s this?” She seems as confused as I am. “You’re healed?”

“I’m… healed?” I repeat dumbly.

She pulls my shirt up and undoes the bandage around my chest.

“It seems so. You’ve been unconscious since you were found, so you probably don’t remember, but you were burned quite badly. Since you weren’t waking up, we brought a priest to pray for your recovery. It seemed like it wasn’t working but now you’re healed! The Goddess must’ve healed you.”

“Burned?”

I look down at my arms. The memory of fire, and my “parents” lying at the feet of a shadowy figure, comes unbidden to my mind.

“My… parents… are they…?”

It feels weird to ask about them when they’re not my real parents, but I can’t help myself. Some part of me needs to know.

All joy the nurse found in my miraculous recovery immediately drains from her face at my question. And when she hesitates to answer I already know what she’s going to say.

She fails a few more times to form words before finally getting something out.

“I’m sorry, Finley. It’s a miracle you survived, and another you healed so quickly. But your parents… They’re in the arms of the Goddess now.”

It’s weird. They’re strangers, or they should be, but I’m helpless as my tears start to flow again.

The nurse offers an embrace and I fall right into her arms, shaking as sobs begin to wrack my body.

I remember them. Their faces, their smiles, their reprimands when I misbehaved, the toys they got for me, meals we shared.

Everything swirls around in my head. What’s happened since I woke up, my new memories from this life, the ones from my old one. It’s too much. I’m lost in my emotions.

I’ve stopped caring about figuring things out as I let myself go in the nurse’s arms. My throat feels raw as I scream and bawl, grieving both this life and the last.