When Adon found himself conscious again, most of what had happened in the white space, as well as his previous life, felt like distant memories, flimsy and unreal. This was how it happened in every life. The memories quickly faded, and he lived his new life out of the shadow of the old. But this time, he vowed to retain some of the information. It seemed important for his future happiness.

One of the things he remembered bothered him as soon as he awoke.

I wanted to be a social butterfly in my next life. I distinctly remember saying that to the Goddess that sent me to this new world. So why…? Why do I have this strange body?

Adon wasn’t even sure what sort of body he existed in right now, but he could see light through a translucent surface that separated him from the outside world. Right away, he knew that meant he hadn’t been reborn as a human this time. A pregnant woman’s stomach wasn’t translucent like this. He must be inside some sort of egg.

Maybe this is an extremely social species of animal? he thought hopefully. Perhaps he’d been reborn in a world in which dragons befriended each other instead of living in isolation. More likely, he was a frog or a snake or something. Frogs can be social, he thought he remembered. And there are a lot of eusocial insects. Please not a snake…

He had plenty of time to think about which kind of animal he might be.

There was very little to do inside of the egg where he found himself. Adon initially thought he might have awakened because he was ready to hatch, so he swam to the edge of the egg and tried to break through. But his effort was too feeble.

So he spent days inside the egg. At least it was comfortably warm and spacious. His only activities were trying hard to cling to his old memories, because he didn’t want them to fade; speculating about which animal he might be; and swimming back and forth inside the increasingly tight confines of the shell. When he got hungry, he ate the liquid that surrounded him; there seemed to be plenty of that, and it had a rich, buttery taste.

The swimming gave him his first real theory about what kind of animal he was. Adon couldn’t see very well to examine his body—his eyes didn’t seem to see very distinctly at all, unfortunately. But he could tell that the method he was using to swim wasn’t a dog paddle, backstroke, or any swimming technique that a creature with normal hands and feet would employ. He was doing some sort of serpentine swimming movement, moving side to side and pushing off surfaces.

So does that mean I’m a snake? Oh, please, Goddess, people from most worlds usually hate snakes…

He tried to comfort himself that it didn’t matter if humans hated snakes, because he would be a part of snake society, but snakes had always seemed like such weird loner animals! He ultimately fell into a fitful sleep still thinking about being a snake, and dreamed about people trying to skewer him with pitchforks.

But the next day, he tried swimming to the edge of the egg again. At the very edge of the egg, he realized he could see something now that he hadn’t noticed before: the shape of a plant stem. Maybe he hadn’t been on the right side of the egg to see it on the previous day, or maybe his vision was improving slightly. Now that he could make out the shape of a plant stem on the side of his little home, he had some context for the size of the egg.

I’m a lot smaller than I would expect a baby snake to be, he thought. Then he remembered snake eggs tended to be opaque anyway. And that was how his dragon egg had been once upon a time, too. So almost certainly not a reptile.

At first, he was relieved. Then he realized the truth could be worse.

Oh no… I could be a worm. Who would love a worm? Goddess, please don’t make me that…

There were further days of alternately sleeping, moving around in the eggshell—an increasingly tight space, which he hoped was a good sign—and constantly reinforcing the memories in his mind. This last, he accomplished by repeatedly going over the bits of himself he hoped to retain into his new life.

The years of social isolation… He ingrained the pain of them into his mind. Never again. Regardless of what type of animal he became, he would make friends.

The humiliation of people turning their heads sharply away when they saw me, like I was polluting their eyes. My parents’ disappointment. My younger siblings heading off to work while I lazed around at home, avoiding eye contact with any member of the family.

Most of the memories Adon tried hardest to save were painful, even shameful, ones. He had given his core self the hardest look of any of his lives, and at last, he was convinced that his fatal flaw was laziness. Across lifetimes, he just didn’t try hard enough. He could have overcome the challenges encountered in any one of his lives, if he’d just tried harder.

In one of his incarnations as a peasant, Adon had been a lazy farmer. Time and time again, he delayed going off to work in the fields. At first, his father would tan his hide for that. Once his father passed, his mother would yell at him to go and plant the crops, or till the fields, or finish putting up the little barn his father had started. After she died, wolves ate the pigs that were supposed to live in the barn that he’d never finished, and one winter, Adon didn’t plant enough food to live off of. Ultimately, he died of starvation.

In his last human life, Adon had once walked around all day with bird poop in his hair, because he couldn’t be bothered to wash it out, and he figured it would come out when he showered that night. In the end, of course, the droppings washed out, but before that happened, every girl in his class saw him sitting with bird poop in his hair. Later, when he tried asking around about possible dates to the school dance, that incident couldn’t have helped his popularity.

When he lived as a dragon, Adon had chosen to repeatedly eat the sheep that lived in a particular region of his territory. They were tasty, and he didn’t want to explore outside his comfort zone. The result of that, he realized in retrospect, was desperation from the people who lived in that region, until a so-called hero was found to slay him.

Fate isn’t against me. The Goddess said I’m loved. She wants me to be happy. The universe is benevolent, or at worst indifferent, not malevolent. That means it’s up to me. If I do absolutely everything that is possible for me to do, life will reward me. Don’t fall back into old habits!

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This was the foundation for his silent mantra. Do everything, and you’ll win. Do everything, and you’ll get what you want. Don’t fall back into old habits. Don’t live another shameful sham of a life.

As the shell grew tighter and tighter around Adon’s mysterious new body, he no longer had enough room to swim. There wasn’t much to look at in his environment besides the plant stem, and that got old quickly. So he devoted proportionately more time to his efforts to cling to old memories.

Not all of them were painful. He needed some positive motivation to remain energized and excited about his new life, after all. He remembered Linda, his crush in his last life. Memories of early childhood were good, too. Back then, he’d been the biggest and the smartest, the hero to his little brother and sister.

Mostly, though, he looked to his other past lives for positive energy. The memories of his friendship with Emma when he was Lady Felicia—that life had become clearer in memory as Adon tried to revisit it, while others faded. Another hopeful memory was the feeling of soaring as a dragon in the deep blue sky, ruler of all he surveyed. That was also brighter and shinier now than it had been when he’d been feeling sorry for himself in the Goddess’s realm.

Oh, if I’d only remembered how it was to have wings, I’d have asked to be a dragon again. Maybe if I make friends in this life, I’ll still have something left in my soul for another reincarnation. Maybe achieving your dreams can bolster the lifespan and quality of a soul. Realistically there’s probably nothing I can do about that. But perhaps there is. In which case there might be a next life for me. If so… I want wings.

Sometimes, when he was dreaming, he heard voices. They were definitely real; his sleep now felt very different from the way it had when he was a human. He shifted from dreams to full awareness much more easily. Sleeping was more like a reduction in activity than full unconsciousness.

The speakers sounded human, but they spoke a language he didn’t know. That mainly told Adon that this was probably a world or at least a country he’d never been incarnated into before. Still, the speakers made a strong impression. He could judge tones well enough even in foreign languages, and his hearing wasn’t so bad in this new body, even if his vision sometimes felt like near-blindness. The conversations felt weighty, important. He tried to cling to the memories of them, just like his previous lives’ memories. He thought they could be important someday soon, to help him understand the new place in which he found himself.

The voices only showed up once when Adon was actually awake. It seemed he might be sleeping quite a lot, both day and night, while his body built itself out, getting both larger and tougher. He discerned two figures, but his vision was still so poor, he couldn’t even tell if they were male or female. He only noticed their tones of voice. One of the figures became emotional and spoke very emphatically, maybe angrily. The other seemed to reply in an appeasing tone. Then they moved out of hearing, and Adon was alone again.

Finally, one day, he awoke and noticed a difference from how he’d felt the previous day. He was definitely stronger. And bigger. Tightly cramped inside the eggshell. He realized there was no more room for him to move at all. A little bit of a nuisance, actually. He hadn’t minded sitting still in his last life, but this one was supposed to be different.

He tried to stretch his body out, and he suddenly found himself bursting forth from the egg. Well, that was unexpectedly fragile after all! A surge of excitement shot through his body. Finally, I’m free!

Liquid still coated his body, but he could feel the cool air all around him now. Everything was bright and new. Fortunately, part of the egg remained intact underneath him so he didn’t tumble to the ground. He thought he felt rather high up. There was a brisk breeze blowing over his body.

Adon took in his first breath in the new world. Openings all over his body drew in air almost effortlessly, like the wind was just a part of him. So, I’m definitely not a snake. After a moment’s consideration, he decided he wasn’t a worm either. The holes in his body that opened and closed to draw in air weren’t one of the qualities he remembered about worm bodies. I’m pretty sure this is an insect thing. He’d gotten decent grades in biology in his last human life.

He stretched and shook himself out a bit and saw his lower body distinctly in decent lighting for the first time. His vision was still crap—he couldn’t see colors or very precise shapes, only dark and light and outlines. But he couldn’t help noticing that as his upper body stretched, his lower body had some mechanism for clinging to the plant stem.

So I have legs. With his imprecise eyesight—which he hoped would get better with time, because it was very inconvenient to have to guess what his own body looked like—it seemed as if he had several pairs of legs that clung to the plant.

Several things clicked into place. I’m a caterpillar, aren’t I?

He wanted to laugh and cry and whoop with excitement at the same time.

Goddess, did you really mishear me? It felt absurd. And it was also a bit upsetting, because he knew butterflies were not particularly social. They gathered for mating and sometimes migration, but otherwise, they were a more individualistic species than frogs or most insects.

But he was also excited. He could find ways to overcome all of that. And one day, after he went through metamorphosis, he would be able to fly!

Adon wiggled his forelimbs in excitement. He wanted to dance. He was dancing—as close as he could come to it in caterpillar form.

The next sensation he felt was almost as familiar from his previous life as breathing.

There was an internal rumbling, and he looked down at himself, his mood momentarily disrupted. His midsection seemed uncomfortably empty.

Adon was hungry.

And why shouldn’t he be? He was a literal newborn.

Don’t fall back into old habits, he reminded himself. Whatever you eat, do it in moderation!

What’s there to eat around here anyway?

He looked side to side, then up and down.

The first thing he noticed was his eggshell—what was left of it, after he wastefully smashed his way out. Well, that was reasonably sized enough. He leaned down to take a bite. He chomped a piece with his mandibles, pulled it in past his lips, and savored it with his tongue.

Thank the Goddess, I still have a tongue, he thought. The piece of shell tasted heavenly. He went into a trance-like state as soon as the first bit of shell was swallowed.

Munch munch, chomp chomp, gobble gobble. Gulp.

Suddenly his mental fog cleared, and he realized he’d eaten the whole shell and all the leftover nutritious juices inside.

The shell went so quickly, he thought. I’ll have to work hard to control this appet—

His stomach growled again and cut off the thought.

He looked beyond where his eggshell had been. The next bit of food in view was a bunch of other eggs, the same general shape as his, but slightly smaller. Perhaps less developed. And unhatched.

The other eggs looked delicious. But they were his own kind. Probably. His brothers and sisters?

Must control my appetite. Hunger is an instinct. You can master it—

His stomach let loose another, louder rumble.

Goddess, are you testing me?