Darkness was the only word to describe what I was experiencing. The dark void completely enveloped my consciousness as I float aimlessly within this space. It was like drowning as sounds of moving water shifted in my ears, yet I wasn't suffocating.

What was this?

Where am I?

Why can't I see anything?

These thoughts eventually came to mind as I tried to reach towards into the darkness. A hard surface was felt against my skin. It was strangely warm to the touch. Naturally, I pressed my whole body against it.

So warm…

Then suddenly the surface shifted, or rather my entire body did. It felt like falling over as the warm exterior became the floor.

Did gravity shift under me?

There was no way I could tell. I started to pull myself up from the ground before hitting something above me. Reaching my arms I felt yet another hard exterior, with similar warmth of the lower one. Slowly I realized that I was fully surrounded, causing me to feel unusually cramped. In an attempt to stretch my arms and legs, the enclosed space prevented me from reaching anywhere.

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I knew I had to get out of this confined space. I started to push against the surface with all my strength. The exterior held an amount of resistance before budging. I heard a muffled cracking as edges appeared along the smooth surface and floor. With a final push, my arms struck through, revealing a blinding light and unfamiliar voices muffling within my ears. Instinctively I gagged and coughed as if something was stuck in my throat the entire time. Then I breathed for the first time.

What appeared outside the darkness was a bizarre flood of blinding colors, disorientating sounds, and a familiar warmth. My eyes took time to adjust to my new environment before slowly focusing on a large figure above me, ruffling me and my skin. Muffled sounds slowly registered as a foreign voice. The figure above me was a woman, with other equally bizarre features as the rest of these last moments.

She had white ruffled hair and yellow eyes, her chest was laid completely bare. What was more eye-catching was the fact that she had no normal limbs of any sort. Her two forearms were replaced with snow-white wings with claws embedded at the tip of their ends, extending out completely around me. Her lower torso was human, also laid bare, but her legs were patterned in a yellow scale-like surface as she crouched. The two legs were bird legs equipped with talons that look like they could pierce most things that come to mind. A long feathery tuft extended from her behind.

A large nest made out of soft knitted brambles and cloth surrounded us both. Leftover fragments of what appears to be a shell were left scattered across the ground as I turn my view downwards to see that I was in a recently hatched egg. Confusion turned into clarity as things slowly became clear to me. I was just born and this creature above me granting me warmth was my mother. 'Why do I know this?', was a question that prioritized itself above all else. The best answer I could come up for this was:

I have been reincarnated as a harpy.