Darkness again. The only difference between the underworld and now was that the black felt natural, warm, and welcoming. Though the instinctive forces that permeated around the lady from the gondola had disappeared, the energies of life were still here. Somehow, I knew what had happened. I had been born.

“Flushia, flushia!” I heard a feminine voice. Not as good sounding as the lady, yet it felt right. Careful as the god-like figure of the river, but warmer, nonetheless. “Ar imashta!”

“Flushia!” A strong, powerful male voice accompanied the euphoria of the woman.

I had problems opening my eyes. Not only my eyelids felt heavy, but the light blinded me. Ah, the feeling that every person forgets. Being born. A task as simple as opening one’s eyelids felt like a monumental endeavor. My body kept protesting as if my consciousness was going to fade at any moment. In all honesty, it was a horrendous feeling. I now know why the body would decide to erase the memory of birth. This could possibly lead to trauma for an inexperienced newborn.

“Af’fir, del’anar!” The woman shouted, unable to control herself, and started crying. Not tears of sadness, but joy. Though I couldn’t understand the words, the ambient soothed my heart.

“Tul’ini, del’anar.” The male responded and embraced the woman. His voice exuberated tranquility, with the intent of soothing the woman, yet also transmitting his warmth.

Everything was blurry, and I could only make the silhouettes and colors. My vision was pretty limited. I thought if I was colorblind or alike as the main colors I could distinguish between were white, blue, and purple. Not the most common, or so I… remembered? Not only my eyes were fussy, but also my knowledge.

Before I noticed, my vision became clouded with more intensity. My eyes were wet and a cold touch swept my cheeks. I was crying, and it was weird. I felt no pain, it was something automatic, outside of my control. My body refused to obey me.

In fact, my senses were numb overall. Tears continued to trail down, even if they weren’t accompanied by a baby’s cry. I tried to cry myself, and it seems I opened the floodgates as I wasn’t able to stop. As if my body was on autopilot.

“Fulien it al’ar tel del, fir oh te’ni.” Whoa, lady. Slow down. Short phrases were already unintelligible, and you now speak a full-blown oration. I could distinguish some repeated syllables, though I doubted they meant the same as the ones before.

If it wasn’t clear, the language my new parents talked was one that I didn’t understand. I think I had never heard a language like this before. Actually, did I know any language? Well, I’m thinking in a language, that much is a fact, but I do not know which one is it. Could I even write it? Huh, writing is a thing then. I wasn’t able to remember before as the only contact with language I had in the river was with the lady of the gondola. And that was short-lived. Wait, how could I understand her, but not them?

“Kelu ten, del’tori.” The man, who I supposed was my father, said as he picked me in a tight, soothing embrace.

I for once could understand a remote idea of this language. The last word, del’tori, was similar to the del’anar one that they said before. Maybe a pronoun? An onomatopoeia? Who knows? My knowledge and clarity reached only to understand the similarities in pronunciation of both words.

Strange. I had knowledge of linguistics. I had forgotten everything I stood for, my whole being. Yet I remembered the intrinsicality of language. By the way, that was a mouthful of a word to remember for someone with soul amnesia.

“Mori o tan-es sha? Fil en ti?” Yep, totally out of my league. The only thing I could catch was that my father was asking a question. Was at my mother or me, that I didn’t know.

I started blinking rapidly, trying to adapt to my new body as well as the blinding light that was the world. More and more stains of color joined, forming a mass. My sight became clearer and clearer by the moment. I lifted my arms trying to reach the silhouette that was my father.

“Oh, del’anar. Ito mirash!” He was clearly excited by the actions of his baby. Once again, del’anar made an appearance.

That raised a question. Was I a male or a female? I didn’t remember my previous gender, for all I knew I could be a hermaphrodite being. Yeah sure. Either way, I had no way of identifying what I had between my legs as my whole body felt numb, and I was covered from head to toe with a blanket. Pretty comfortable, mind you.

Then after countless blinks, my vision finally settled. What I saw there was disconcerting. My father’s skin color was BLUE. It didn’t feel right. But why? What skin type did I have before? The lady of the river felt natural, so maybe I was some type of beige.

Just to corroborate if my father was an exception or not, I turned my head to look at my mother. Purple. She was purple. This made no sense. What I saw later convoluted more my idea. Staring at the graceful face of my mother I saw two obscenely long pointy ears. Obscene seemed like the perfect word to describe them. Uncharacteristically fitting.

I twisted my head once again to look at my paternal figure. Sure enough, he also had pointy ears. Except his were more acceptable, only a tad bit longer than was normal. But once again, what was normal? I was sure everything was normal except myself.

I didn’t know why, but I started crying. Baby things probably. I couldn’t control my body, just like the river. Though this reaction felt more natural than forced upon. My vision was fading, but before darkness claimed me, I saw my own colors. Violet. A strong violet hue was my skin.

Whatever I reincarnated into, it was surely not my previous race, whatever it was.

“He fell asleep.” The man told to the lying woman. He stood up perfectly straight whilst rocking the child in his embrace.

“He fell asleep? Oh, darling, I heard him cry. Your first day as father and you already scare our child with your face.” Her words were harsh, yet her tone was amicable. “Well put him in the baby crib, I’m too exhausted.” She lay in a pile of pillows, her hair soaked in sweat.

“Right away, darling.” He may talk like a subordinate directing at the boss, but he had a great smile plastered on his face.

My lightheadedness stopped as I awoke from my slumber. I found myself trapped inside a strange jail. I was a prisoner in a cylindrical room. That wasn’t the weird part, though. The walls of the cylinder were translucent, and they emitted a vibrant violet light. Kinda soothing, I guess. The top and the bottom of the cylinder were made from stone. Both were symmetrical, with strange circles and glyphs around a blue gem in the center.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I rested on a pillow alongside my blanket. This was the most unique baby crib I had seen. If I ever had seen one. Wait, I must have seen one if I know what a crib is. I hate being filled with uncertain knowledge.

Upon a closer look, the walls weren’t emitting light, but instead, they were the light. Sort of. It was as if the light itself bent and created a violet wall. I also noticed the crib was rocking up and down. I just noticed as it was a really light effect, probably to soothe a child in their sleep.

Even if I was interested in the room around me, my attention was redirected to my legs. Time to unravel the mystery.

My tiny violet hands grabbed the cloth that tied me up. Slowly but surely, I undid my bindings. Then, after what felt like minutes of work, I reached the end of the case… Yep, that’s a boy for you.

My eyelids felt heavy once again. The stamina of a newborn is truly abysmal. Before sleep claimed me once more, I moved my tiny fat hands to the sides of my head.

There I felt two little pointy ears.

Greater and greater was the weight on my eyelids, the slumber called for me. Resisting with minimal force, I clothe myself with the blanket. I would not like to reincarnate to promptly die of hypothermia.

It seems my new life was that of an elf.

My body ached from such slumber. I must have dreamt for a whole day. Except I didn’t experience anything in my sleep. Ignoring the thoughts of a sleepy head, I looked around the room, to find no one. Where were my parents? Probably working. No, that’s not right. Didn’t these people have maternity leave?

Well, saying ‘these people’ is kind of rude as I was one of them. What is the race terminology? That escapes my knowledge, I’m afraid. I’ll call them elves for the time being. Those ears are recognizable everywhere. And yet I have more knowledge which inception is unknown.

I want to talk about my home. Not only the jail that is my baby crib but the room itself. Elven architecture —at least the type of elf I was— was interesting, to say the least.

The most striking part of the room was the colossal window (respective to both babies and adult elves) that revealed to me the outside world. Whichever city I was in, the views were gorgeous. Incredibly tall white towers, floating purple lights, and a complex skyline made by the buildings.

But for now, let’s stay inside. The window wasn’t otherworldly, just a nice-looking circle of glass that served as a wall and a door to a balcony. Yep, that was it. A circular window was striking me. I mean, how many people had cool-looking windows in their houses? The answer was probably ‘a lot’, but I had no way of knowing.

My memory recollection was all over the place, but circular windows weren’t familiar to me. The glass also seemed off. Why it was so? Can’t tell. Maybe the refraction of the light, or the color not being exactly transparent, but there was something off-putting.

Ignoring my melodramatic description of glass panels, I understand the need for such windows. I said it once, yet I will repeat myself. The views were gorgeous. It was dead clear this wasn’t your average mythical wood elf village, but a full-blown elven metropolis.

Aside from my crib and the glorified glass door, the room was kind of generic. There was a desk with a pair of shelves mounted one above the other. Both the shelves and the desk were filled with books, writing materials, and miscellaneous items I could not identify. They appeared to be tools of some sort, but that was as far as I could distinguish.

I couldn’t tell what a lot of things were, truth be told. I mean, I was resting on a damned magical baby crib. Didn’t I say that it was levitating? Because it was. The thing didn’t rock by some complex mechanical contraption, but by magical means. Once again, it was unbeknownst to me. Curiously, I wasn’t surprised by the presence of magic. Even though I knew for a fact —don’t ask me where this information came from— that magic wasn’t native to me. Maybe spending an eternity in the underworld has made me tolerant of these weird things that keep happening. Or maybe I just subconsciously accepted the presence of magic once I saw elves.

I noticed some pillows scattered around the floor along with a rug that made something akin to a makeshift bed. Were pillows the norm here? I remember the Lady of the River also had her gondola full of pillows. Is it related or just a coincidence?

Either way, if we ignore the crib and the metropolis outside, I would say that this was ‘normal’. I say ‘normal’ as I don’t actually know what normal is, not by elven standards, but my own. It wasn’t a familiar feeling, but one of rightness. Something that nudged me and said, “yes, this is normal”. It was somewhat scary not knowing what normality was anymore. Common sense was but an anchor dragging me down, especially when the common sense I refer to is a fleeting memory fading in and out.

But as in the River of the Damned —cool name, from my own invention— I didn’t let the voices affect me. Back then they were the voices of other people, now they were mine. Not that it mattered to me. I had been stuck in my mind for a long time without a glint of hope, now… it was going to certainly be more open.

I gave a nudge to the crib’s magical barrier with my knuckles. Well, not open right now, but certainly in the future. I really hope.

I pushed those dark thoughts to the back of my head and continued my description. As an observer of the outside world, the window gave me the few bits of information that I had. Right now, it was midnight (either I slept for a few hours or days). The stars shone in the sky and a blue-glowing natural satellite accompanied them. I didn’t have a full view of the spatial rock, so I couldn’t make which size it was. But I would say, ‘big’ in general.

Something in my mind told me I should call the blue rock ‘Moon’, but it was wrong. What does even moon mean? I could tell the blue object beyond the sky was a natural satellite, but why I felt a pang of pain when I gave it the name Moon? I stopped this train of thought as my mind was beginning to unnaturally hurt.

Those cosmological bodies in the sky were pretty, of course, but my attention was centered on the city below. Towers of white stone which I didn’t recognize were the foundation of the metropolis. Maybe marble, perhaps limestone. Too white, too clean. Not your typical coarse sedimentary rock.

The favorite colors of this civilization were blue and purple —by the looks of it—, exactly like the skin tones of my parents. A roof or façade of a home that wasn’t blue or purple didn’t exist in this city. There were some huge towers resembling needles, puncturing the skies. But the consensus on buildings was two-story houses.

Silk was also a decorative item of elves. Plenty of canopies (or awnings?) filled the streets, to block the light from above. The wide streets seemed a lot narrower as the urban canopy tried to resemble that of a forest. Fauna intertwined itself with manmade edifications. My eyesight wasn’t what one would call ‘good’, therefore I couldn’t determine what I was looking at, but vines also were part of the decoration.

Wait, are those canals?

I got distracted by the artificial rivers going alongside the streets in the city. Canals mean water, canals also mean boats, a gondola was a boat. Is everything connected or is paranoia talking to me? Maybe the Lady of the River was some revered figure by the elves, who knows?

As I lost myself in the culturally plentiful city, a thought came to me. Wasn’t I a newborn? I haven’t eaten since I was born, which was like a few hours ago, and yet I wasn’t hungry. That doesn’t seem healthy. Perhaps a quirk of the elven species.

Some part of me wanted to cry for my parents to get fed, and another told me not to as I wasn’t hungry. Maybe I should cry, I’m a baby at the end of the day, babies do cry when they are hungry. Hmm, it also felt a bit of degradation in the notion that I would have to cry for food. I was a baby just in body, my mind was that of a… Was I even an adult before my death?

I sure was overthinking this, wasn’t I? I should stop this. I wouldn’t want to die from stress on day one. Not that I feared death, the River of the Damned did make that clear. I felt like a would disappoint the Lady of the River if I went back so quickly.

Maybe she was death incarnated or something like that, but that smile, that smile was something you couldn’t betray. She wanted me to live, I couldn’t just die the day after she gave me a second chance. Even then, I did want to live. The endless cacophony of torment and misery made me bore death rather than fear it. I wanted to live the moment. Hmm, that phrase feels… familiar. That needle of pain attacking my head struck back, and once again, I stopped thinking in order to cease the headache.

I looked at the midnight sky with my drowsy eyes. I wasn’t going back to the river any time soon, that I can say confidently. With a cutesy yawn, I made myself comfortable in my blanket.

So, with my mind made up, I decided to have a hands-off approach for the moment, and I went to sleep. It was incredibly easy thanks to my baby constitution. A blink was all that it took.