Where...where am I? What...happened to me? Did I...die?

A cluster of thoughts rang through my mind as an impulsive and sharp pain pierced my head. I tried to grasp my head in reaction to the pain, but to no avail. My body. I didn't have it.

What in the world?

It seemed that my conscience remained and so had my sight, but my physical body had seamlessly been torn away from me.

As I drifted through the empty space, or what I imagined to feel like drifting as my mind recreated a similar experience, my sight struggled to focus on any specific detail of the entirely white space surrounding me. My sight was simply bleary, fogged like a heated window on a cold winter night. There was nothing of particular design that I could focus on nor inspect, and so I naturally returned to my thoughts.

Have I really died? If so, how? I recall not being in the best shape after my last failed subjugation of that dragon. Maybe I died from exhaustion? Maybe shock? Maybe from the severity of my injuries?

My thoughts slowly came to a halt as a deeply sad memory filled my mind.

Oh well. I don't think I had much left in that life anyway. Maybe it was my time to go? Hopefully I lived a life deserving of being accepted into eternal paradise. Hopefully the oh great lord up above with his army of comically dressed babies in diapers with sprawling feather wings, will be merciful on my sinful soul.

As I continued to "float", though I was still unsure if I could say I was floating, time, I assume, passed and what felt like an eternity slowly began bringing me to the end of this journey in this completely white abyss.

The glaring light at the end gradually intensified as the space around me narrowed with harsh lines of graphite and black, folding into a tight and compact corridor. The light became so intense I could still see its permeating luminous staring deeply into my eyes even as I closed them. And though my eyes were assaulted by the bombardment of strafing rays of sunny glow, my eyes gently eased and fell into comforting darkness as I left the corridor.

Eventually, a cold stroke of wind traced its sickly finger along my skin causing me to shiver and grow Goosebumps. An amiable and repetitive muffled tweeting passed the barrier clogging my ears that at the same time reverberated my deep and full breaths for me to hear clearly.

What's going on now? Is this heaven? Have I made it? I can feel the wind and though I can't say I've ever been to heaven nor met someone who has, but I wouldn't expect physical feeling in such a place. So discrediting heaven, that only leaves me with only one reasonable idea to where I am.

Ohhhh~ fu-!

Sharply, like a cork firing off a champagne bottle, my ears painfully unclogged and a passage of the cold wind dashed inwards cooling my heated body. Further shivers then rang down my skin and with my hearing now restored, a clear voice began to speak.

"Congratulations, Madam Zorath! You've given birth to a healthy baby boy!" A cheerful, high-pitched and congratulating voice reached my ear.

Nice, I at least seem to understand the language wherever I may be, I mused.

I now desperately tried to pry my eyes open, my curiosity and the mystery of where I am consuming me entirely. Painstakingly, I heaved my eye lids apart as a flashbang of colours swarmed my vision. Warm hues of reds, browns, blues, greens, whites and many others soon collected in a definitive shape manifested.

I could feel my heartbeat quicken as colour solidified as objects right before me. I didn't know what to expect, and that alone made my head spin and my stomach cramp up. Then a rugged and coarse towel wrapped itself around my small body and patted me down as finally, my eyes focused on the first character looming over me with star-struck eyes.

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What a relief, I thought, breathing an extended sigh of relief. For whatever reason, I had expected to be met by a daunting nightmare as I realise this is all a dream and wake up startled in the middle of the night holding my wounds. I really have died. But at the same time, it seems I've been reincarnated.

Extended brown locks fell past my head as a charming woman held me in her dear embrace, her hands turning me over and cleaning the filth and grime as well as any urine and other bodily fluids covering me. Her charming white smile shone as her green eyes continued to sparkle at me like emeralds.

"Here Madam, he's all yours! I will have to leave now, but before I do, remember to rest a lot and take it easy. Motherhood is often challenging. I also hope your husband fancies arriving at some point, he's shockingly late, which is to be expected from him but quite worrying that it has come to be expected by now." The doctor, or who I presumed she was since her clothes didn't exactly embody the role, mocked my "mothers" husband as she passed me over and turned away to the door. But before opening it however and stepping out, she gave a charming smile once more to me and my mother and gave a small and cutesy wave.

Her departure then followed with the shuttering clang of the door in her wake.

Hmmm. Well isn't this a stroke of nature if I've ever seen it. What are the odds of reincarnating? In the first place, this isn't a thing even widely believed from where I came from. I wonder if this is a different world.

As my thoughts continued to ramble, my gaze slowly lifted to the person holding me. Their body exuded a great warmth, but not an uncomfortable one as I seemed to snuggle closer even without my discretion.

I suppose this would be my so called mother. Well then it should only be appropriate I call her that.

My mother then, incidentally, noticed my inspecting gaze as her tired eyelids lifted.

Wow. That was the only thing I could think as I gazed at her. My mother was a true beauty. A face filled with ravishing features that enticed my eyes and stunned me into agape silence.

A light-hearted chuckle escaped her mouth as she smiled at me.

"How are you feeling, little Lu?" She whispered to me but then looked a little confused. "I wonder if this is normal. Babies are supposed to cry, right?" Her eyes pierced me as she focused deeply, her actions coming of as cute as she hummed childishly.

"Oh well, I'm sure he's fine." She rolled her eyes and dismissed her worries.

I would have cried to make my mother feel a little more comfort, but my infant body only conjured a happy groan in this moment as I was captivated by her beauty and charm.

But really, I couldn't tear my eyes away from her. Full of colour, like sun-kissed cherries her cheeks flushed. Her beautiful sharp onyx eyes radiated a great complexity and intelligence from them and her long lashes flapped like wings as she blinked. The bridge of her nose was slim, and lengthily stretched as her nose rounded at the tip, falling just above her rosy lips. Her gold hair rested on her shoulders as it shone in the glow entering through the window.

She was truly a mature beauty. One I had never seen in my two lives of living.

I wonder if my first mother was just as beautiful, a weird thought crossed my mind but I dismissed it quickly.

Right then, as I returned to focus on my mother and her large and controlled breaths, the door unexpectedly shot open.

"I'm here, dear!" A panicked proclamation came from the sweating man as tired breaths slipped from his mouth. With his chest rising frantically and falling like a deflated cushion, he slowly pushed off of his knees and stood straight before us. His gold eyes welled with joy as he embraced the sight of his wife and his new-born child cosily wrapped in fondness around each other.

Tears welled in the corners of his eyes as he fell to his knees before the bed and wept, holding mine and my mothers hands tenderly.

"I'm so sorry I couldn't make it here on time, Ellaine." He apologised as his head lifted from the blanket and his snotty nose oozed mucus.

His brown sharp brows that pointed downward like swords softened as his angular face glossed over to my presence. He had large gold eyes that swelled with colour and vibrancy, an enigmatic shimmer gloating in his endless sea of molten gold. His face was harsh and probably hardened by his naturally sharper eye shape as his face also similarly slimmed sharply, like a sculptor had his chiselled stone jaw chipped into what it was today. His short cut chestnut chair spiked as he combed it to the side with his hand and smiled at me.

"Hey there, little Lucian. How you feeling, buddy? Happy to be with your moma and dada?" My father whispered to me almost as if he expected a response.

Rugged hands then gently lifted me into the air by my arms as he pressed me to his chest and began rocking back and forth endearingly. "Welcome to this world, my son."

As the warm feeling of his arms strangled consciousness from my body, my eye lids grew heavy and his face began to become a dazed blur.

I smiled to myself acknowledging one fact as my infant body succumbed to exhaustion.

I've been given a second life!