Born again
Warm liquid covered my skin.
Before I could understand why, cold air struck me, and my body tightened on instinct. My chest burned as I drew a breath, then a sharp cry escaped my mouth.
I froze.
That sound had come from me, but it was not my voice.
I tried to open my eyes. Bright light filled my vision, broken by the blurred shapes of people moving above me. Someone held my head while another person wiped my body with a cloth.
I wanted to ask where I was but that came out was another cry.
A woman nearby said my lungs were strong.
My lungs?
The room slowly came into focus. White clothing. Masks. Gloves. Machines beside a bed. The clean smell of a hospital.
My thoughts were clear, but my body felt wrong. My arms barely moved, my fingers were impossibly small, and I could not hold up my own head.
Then I remembered.
I had died.
The memory came back in fragments. The locked room,the silence, my shaking hands and the certainty that no one would come until it was too late.
There should have been nothing after that, yet a nurse was carrying me across a hospital room.
I looked down at the tiny arms pressed against my chest and understood what my mind had been refusing to accept.
I was a baby.
The nurse placed me against the chest of a woman lying on the bed. Her face was tired and wet with tears, but the moment she looked at me, she smiled.
"My beautiful girl."
The words struck harder than the cold air had.
Beautiful.
No one had ever called me that without cruelty following soon after.
A man stood beside the bed, holding the woman's hand. He leaned closer and welcomed me in a voice thick with emotion.
They were strangers but I already realized that they were my parents.
My new parents.
The truth settled over me so completely that I forgot to struggle.
Reincarnation was real.
I had died, and somehow I had been born again.
A laugh rose inside me, but my new body turned it into another cry.
My mother adjusted her hold at once. A nurse suggested that I might be hungry.
No, I wanted to say. I have just discovered that death is not the end. Hunger can wait.
I opened my mouth, but another helpless sound came out.
Being a baby was going to be difficult.
My mind still belonged to the person I had been, but my body had reduced every thought to crying. Confusion became crying. Fear became crying. Protest also became crying.
At least I had not been reborn into my previous family.
The thought brought me more relief than it should have. If reincarnation had returned me to the same parents, I might have believed that death itself had a cruel sense of humour.
I imagined opening my eyes and seeing my mother from my first life looking down at me with disappointment.
No. Once had been enough.
The woman holding me continued speaking softly. She told me I was safe and that they had waited a long time for me. The man beside her touched my head with such care that I became still.
I wanted to believe them but that frightened me.
Trust had never ended well for me. Julian had made certain of that.
His face returned to me with painful clarity.
Before him, I had never known what it felt like to be chosen.
My family had money, status, and a name that opened every door in Auremont, but none of it had protected me from them.
My parents were ashamed of my appearance. They kept me away from balls, dinners, charity events, and almost every occasion where someone might ask why their third daughter looked so different from the other two.
My sisters stood beside them in photographs while I remained at home.
Sometimes people were told I was ill. Others were allowed to believe my parents had only two daughters.
I grew up in a house large enough to get lost in, yet there was nowhere inside it where I felt wanted.
My sisters never defended me. They had learned from our parents that I was the one person they could hurt without consequence.
They told me no one would ever love me but then Julian appeared and proved them wrong.
Or so I believed.
He listened when I spoke. He asked about the books I read and the places I wanted to visit. He looked at me without disgust and touched me without shame.
For the first time, I thought someone had seen me rather than the face everyone else hated.
I gave him my trust.
I gave him my heart.
In the end, I learned that he had approached me because of a bet.
His friends wanted to know whether he could make the ugly hidden daughter fall in love with him. I was a challenge, something they could laugh about when it was over.
By the time I discovered the truth, I had already given him more than I could take back.
I remembered hearing him speak to them.
He laughed about me as though I had been foolish for believing his lies. He made our relationship sound like a private joke that had gone on too long.
He knew what my family had done to me. He knew how difficult it had been for me to believe anyone could want me.
He used that knowledge against me, then he left me alone with the humiliation.
Julian had not created the pain that destroyed me. My family had spent years building it. He had simply delivered the final blow.
I had reached the end of a life in which everyone treated my existence like a burden, and I had been too broken to imagine anything changing.
So I ended it.
Now I was here. A nurse leaned closer and commented on my hair. My mother touched the damp strands against my head and smiled.
It was white.
That surprised me, though perhaps nothing should have surprised me anymore.
A new family. A new body. A new face.
I wondered what I would look like when I grew older, then stopped myself.
Beauty had controlled too much of my first life. It had decided which daughter was celebrated and which one was hidden. It had allowed people to treat cruelty as though it were reasonable.
I would not let it define me again.
If I grew into a beautiful woman, then I would accept it, but I would never believe it was the reason I deserved love.
My new mother drew me closer. Her heartbeat filled my ear, steady and warm, while exhaustion began to pull at me.
I did not know why I had been given another life. I did not know whether it was mercy, chance, or something I would never understand.
What I did know was that I remembered everything.
I remembered every insult I had accepted in silence. Every event I had been excluded from. Every time I had lowered my head because defending myself seemed pointless.
I remembered Julian and the way I had allowed his betrayal to confirm everything my family had taught me about myself.
The girl I had been was dead.
I could mourn her, but I would not become her again.
My fingers closed weakly against my mother's skin.
In this life, I would not wait for someone else to decide that I mattered.
I would not beg for affection.
I would not remain silent while others treated me as though I had no value.
Most of all, I would never again be the weak girl everyone believed they could step over.
