Asleep, yet awake. Thinking, but unable to grasp any thoughts. My life seemingly rushing by over and over again. The sound of a beating heart, changing its pace at random. Pitch black darkness, with indescribable shapes dashing through my sight. Distant voices spoke to me, but I couldn’t recall the words they said. That’s what I remembered death being like.

Although it felt like an eternity, I must have been gone for no longer than a minute. A beaming light blinded me as I opened my eyes.

In an attempt to relieve them, I called out for someone to turn off those damn lights, but I couldn’t even muster a single sound.

Did I forget how to speak? How long was I out? I asked myself.

Once my vision had adjusted, I noticed multiple people around me, speaking in a language I couldn't understand. Suddenly it wasn’t all that bright anymore but rather dark?

It seemed like I had awoken in some form of tent. Was I out of prison?

Holy hell, I made it out. Suck it, all of you.

Although, how exactly had I made it out? And where was this supposed to be anyway? Had the prison takeover succeeded?

No way. They must have taken me somewhere outside the prison for treatment as a reward for protecting that guard's life! I naively thought.

Good deeds apparently do pay off in the end! Yeah, right.

A young brunette woman looked at me with a slight smile on her face. She spoke softly but her words made no sense to me. It was far off from English. Maybe... Italian? Behind her, an old man entered my vision. He seemed less pleased with the situation than her, as he observed me carefully. Probably the head doctor or something like that. Even so, these people were wearing some oddly old-fashioned clothing. Was this really the best place for treatment they could find in such a hurry? Well, I shouldn’t complain, I suppose.

Moving felt next to impossible. I was probably partially paralyzed. After all, that was a pretty nasty fall I’d taken there at the end. As I tried to look around, I caught a glimpse of the rest of my body. It was small. Extremely small. Covered in a white, slimy goo I was tightly clinging onto something, but I could hardly make any sense of it. Odd. Is this... another person? And then it dawned on me.

Oh hell no.

I didn’t survive.

I had been... reborn?

Exchanging one form of prison for another.

It had been almost ten years and this was supposed to be my out? Out of the mess? I should've felt relief, joy even - but all I felt was... a kind of numbness, like the world had left me behind.

As a million different thoughts ran through my mind, I couldn’t help but notice something was off.

What am I holding onto? Was I reborn as a twin? It sure looks like it. Man, this can’t be happening! I don’t want to go through all this nonsense again! Okay. Okay. Get it together man. We’ll figure things out as we go.

Still stunned by my thoughts, we were suddenly lifted by my - or should I rather say our supposed mother. Woah there, lady? Shouldn’t you give it a rest? I thought as several men guided us outside. It was cold. Freezingly so. Rain poured down on us as the sound of lightning shocked my newborn ears. With my vision still blurry I couldn’t figure out my surroundings at all. All I could hear was the roar of a storm, accompanied by screams and the sound of metal clashing with metal.

Thinking straight became a chore. I'm... tired. Overwhelmed with the situation I slowly lost consciousness.

In my sleep a familiar voice echoed through the light. I couldn’t quite understand what was being said, but focusing on the voice only made it grow quieter and distant.

Is this a dream? Hello? It certainly doesn’t feel like one. Bloody hell. Are dreams supposed to be this bright?

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Let’s... skip ahead a month. Yes, I had been reborn. Not as a human, but rather some form of weird lizard. One closer look at my new self was enough to confirm that. Four legs and a tail. Eyes to the side, which explained my weird peripheral vision. Short end of the reincarnation stick and all, I guess.

Yet, I don’t think the term “born” really applied to me. It was more than odd. How would a lizard be born alongside another human? Involuntarily brought into this existence was probably more accurate. Wait. Isn’t that the same thing? Anyways, what didn’t apply to me, definitely applied to her. The little thing I was holding onto when we came to be, now lying next to me, slumbering without a worry in the world.

I suppose you could say we had started to settle into our new life. For what it was worth. At some point we’d been safely accommodated in the room of a house. Truth be told, this whole thing felt like one big everlasting dream that I’d hopefully one day wake up from. Although the awakening was taking its sweet time. For some reason I had kept all memories of my prior life, however, I wasn’t sure if the same thing applied to that brat.

Maybe you got to keep them when you were reborn and would lose them when you’d get somewhat self-sufficient, let’s say at like age five? Scary, but possible. That would explain that childhood amnesia everyone apparently goes through. I’d definitely heard of kids talking about experiences from their supposed past lives. Some spooky stories here and there. It might also have to do with me being reborn as a bloody reptile. Damn. So, the Lizard People really do secretly run our world then. I knew it!

Anyhow, for now, I’d keep my little theory in the back of my mind. The person I first saw when I came to be was presumably the girl’s mother. She always wore this weird wing-shaped almost laurel wreath-like thing in her hair. Not my first choice for headwear personally, but who was I to judge someone else’s sense of fashion - I was a naked lizard.

The other women that surrounded her could’ve been the midwives, aiding her. On the contrary her supposed father was still nowhere to be found. The displeased-looking old geezer was out of the question for that position, clearly. That guy was probably her Great-great-great-grandfather. Or at least that’s what he looked like. One of his reddish eyes had gone almost completely white, like it’d been rotting away. Who knows really how ancient that fellow already was. Still, I had no clue where exactly our “birth” had taken place. A tent in the middle of a storm seemed like an odd choice to deliver a baby... and a lizard in.

Early on, I’d realized that I wasn’t in my home country anymore; the language was far off from anything I’d heard in my previous life, and the people around me sported facial features I hadn’t ever seen before. That aside, everyone here appeared to be wearing some form of old-fashioned clothing. Like the things you’d wear at a medieval fair, but instead all the time. Fine by me, lizards don’t get to wear much clothing here apparently anyway.

The house I now lived in struck me as rather... primitive. Any sort of electrical home appliance was missing. Instead, the mother cleaned the house with a bucket of water and a rag. Damn, what year is it?

And cleaning the place she did a lot of, making the house smell more like aged wood every time she did. A pleasant scent I could get used to, to be honest. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have assumed she was the housemaid rather than the owner of this house. That woman was the very personification of a cleaning maniac. Well, calling it a house was probably a bit of an overstatement. It resembled more of a cozy summer cottage than your average family home.

Whatever place I had ended up in here, it was underdeveloped. Who needs a water supply or electric lighting when you have glorious technological inventions like buckets and candles, right? I had prayed for another shot at life, but I wasn’t hoping for these kinds of hardcore circumstances. If I were to catch a cold here it would be over for good.

For the first couple of months after my rebirth, one single thought kept crossing my mind: This is going to be a tough one.

Half a year went by in which I didn’t do much but assess my situation. Riveting, I know. But I had to play this slow. With no idea where I was and what to do, the last thing I wanted was trouble. It wasn’t like I wasn’t grateful for being out of that hellhole. I was free, right? No bars, no guards breathing down my neck. But it didn’t feel like freedom. It felt... empty. Like I’d left everything behind, only to find that I didn’t know what to do with what I had left. Well. There wasn't much to begin with. My life had practically ended after I'd been caught. Prisons... weren't exactly the most motivating of places.

Now the girl and I were happily crawling about the place. Her hair had this peculiar dark shade of red and a smaller version of those winglike laurel things in it. Same as her mother. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of that, but I didn’t bother to think about it any further either.

Up to this point I’d had little to no movement capabilities apart from that little wiggle I could pull off with any of my four limbs. My signature move. Unfortunately, I no longer had access to opposable thumbs, but could still sort of grab onto things with my claws. Which by the way, felt downright strange. Like a set of stone solid nails. Also – tail. I couldn’t even begin to describe what having a tail felt like. Imagine having a third hand with an incredible range of motion, that sometimes acted on its own. Something like that.

With all that, the world had once again opened itself up to me. Though what was I going to do with it? I should’ve been thinking of ways to get ahead, to figure out how I could turn this place to my advantage. But somehow... I couldn’t muster the energy. It was like I was waiting for something.

Waiting for the world to give me a reason to care again.