*Cadence Lee (as Hewka) POV*

We made our way back to the city and my nerves were frayed before we were even halfway back. There was a part of me, a large part, that wanted to pretend that I had nothing to say. Rei would obviously know that I was lying, but I could still back out… This was more nerve wracking than getting into battle was, which said a lot about me, I think. Death was something that didn’t scare me, even violent death, because I knew what came afterwards.

What would happen after I told Rei about who I am?

What if she didn’t accept me? Feeling her rejection through the bond would… terrible. I would have to leave into the wild again as well, although that wasn’t too much of a problem. I might even return to my old territory outside of Evergold. It was scary how much that thought appealed to me, it would be so easy to run away from this.

But in the end, I had volunteered to explain myself, I wanted to be understood, and above all, I trusted Rei.

I suppose most people don’t think of stables at an inn as the best place for a serious conversation and out of this world revelations, but it wasn’t like people were spying on us. A little bit of Air Magic was all it would take to keep the sound from traveling too far, and after Rei and Tamlin had helped to take my barding off, I settled in. Where to even begin…?

“Do you believe there are other worlds?” I asked Rei, still trying to formulate my thoughts.

“Chaurl would know better than either of us,” Rei hedged. “But according to the [Priests] the being who created the first gods, The First One, came from ‘Beyond.’ It wouldn’t be strange to imagine worlds outside of our own.”

“I am from another world.”

In the end I just came out and said it. I wished I could have been more eloquent, but my thoughts were already difficult to keep focused and the longer I dragged this out the more anxious I became. So I just blurted it out, bluntly and without being circumscribed, and braced myself…

Only for Rei to raise and eyebrow and for mild confusion and amusement to filter through our bond.

“Okay… I can feel that you believe that and I can also feel how scared you are right now,” Rei spoke like she was trying to soothe a small animal, which I suppose I almost was. “But I don’t know why you are so afraid. No one is going to hurt you, Hewka.”

“You are from a different world?” Tamlin sounded confused as well, and a little chagrined, “I am not entirely certain what that means, but it sounds impressive. Honestly, it sounds like the kind of thing that would be far more impressive if I understood it more, but most of my religious education has come from Chaurl…”

That was somewhat… anticlimactic.

“I thought you would be more shocked, or bothered…” I mumbled, or I did the equivalent of mumbling, seeing as most of my ‘speech’ was done through a combination of Singing and Air Magic, mostly that just involved letting my grip on my Air Magic fade as I ‘spoke.’

“I probably will be shocked later,” Rei admitted, as she petted my neck. “Right now I just want to understand why you are so afraid. Why would where you come from matter? Hewka, you saved Tamlin’s life, I wouldn’t mind if Void had crafted you itself and sent you here, it wouldn’t make you any less than yourself.”

Podi damn it, Rei, wyverns can’t cry and now you’ve made me want to cry. How can you be this understanding?

“I agree with that,” Tamlin chimed in. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but you aren’t exactly a terrifyingly scary Monster, Hewka. I have seen you dance to entertain some little kids, I am hardly going to push you away because you came from somewhere else.”

Tamlin… Keep this up and I might even start to approve of you. Rei is still clearly too good for you, but the more I know about you the more I think you aren’t that bad of a choice.

That was the first hurdle cleared, and the response they gave me helped to make it easier for me to launch into the next part - my lives, and my deaths. Deep breath, here we go.

“I wasn’t a wyvern before, no I should say that I wasn’t a Monster before,” I had to specify that I wasn’t talking about Evolution. “I lived other lives on other worlds and when I died I would leave one world and be reborn in another.”

More confusion. How did I begin to explain this? I didn’t know, so I just started to speak, talking about my first life and the part of me I still think of as the core of who I am: Cadence Lee.

“The first time I lived, I was normal,” I let my mind wander back to those memories. “I was human and the thought of my own death never really occurred to me. I was young and where I lived was so safe, the chance of anything happening to me was small - but small isn’t nothing.”

“I had a partner, a boyfriend, and we had gone to see a movie - imagine a play, but captured in light so that it can be replayed whenever you want to see it - and when we left a thief approached us. My boyfriend, his name was Daniel, was brave and stood up to the thief. We weren’t fighters or warriors of any kind, I doubt either of us had ever been in a truly serious fight before that night.”

Earth, the United States, I never really appreciated how safe they were. Every life since had been shadowed by violence, it was normal, and I had to learn how to survive in those environments. In my first life I was so safe I had never even learned how to deal with a conflict if it happened, or how to foresee and avoid conflicts. The me who I am now, I would have known the risk where we had been walking that night, and I could have disarmed the mugger easily. But that night…

“You could say I was unlucky for such an unlikely series of events to end up with me shot - imagine something like a crossbow. Healers were there quickly, but it wasn’t quick enough and I died. I bled out as they tried to save me and I had thought that would be the end, I didn’t believe in any god or gods - if they were around, they weren’t very active in that world - and I didn’t believe there would be an afterlife. I suppose that there probably is one, but I wouldn’t go there either.”

“Something else took me instead.”

Rei and Tamlin were listening quietly, but intently. I could still feel Rei’s reassurance through our bond and I felt deeply appreciative of it. These memories were harder than I had thought they would be, but in hindsight I should have known better. I had avoided thinking about them, I had leaned on Podi’s dampening of my emotions, and that meant I had never dealt with these emotions and thoughts before. Violence and death and loss… I was lucky I was even somewhat functional.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“It sent me to a new world,” I thought back to my second life, my second family, and my friend, Catherine. “I was born again as a baby, but I retained my awareness. I grew up a second time, that world wasn’t as safe, but I was also far more prepared. I killed someone for the first time, and even so long afterwards I am not entirely sure how to think about it. In the end, I devoted myself to my work and a dear friend that I had made, but I was distant to everyone else.”

“I fought for my friend and one fight I didn’t walk away from. I remember falling to the snowy ground and just feeling tired and cold and closing my eyes, and again I was taken by the same entity and sent to another world and another life.”

Ra’Sharon wasn’t dangerous in the same sense. I didn’t have to worry about being attacked or hurt in daylight, but it was poison and knives in the dark that I had to be afraid of.

“I was born a real princess, royalty of a great power. That world was… Young, primitive in some ways, but so grand in others. Anything that I wanted was but a word away, but I had never been so alone when I grew up. Only one person can sit on a throne and the competition was fierce - I wanted nothing to do with it, but my siblings were suspicious, and there was no one I could trust. No, worse than that, it went beyond being unable to trust, in truth I had to suspect everyone.”

Rei hugged me, as much as she could given the difference in our size, and I sent my thankfulness through our bond. Tamlin just seemed fascinated, focusing on me as I told my story.

“A project of mine was to create peace between my country and a neighboring one,” I continued, silently acknowledging to myself that when I said it out loud, it was really quite a ‘project’ to pick up. “I succeeded, and in that success my father gave me what I had wanted in a way I had never thought of. I separated myself from the intrigue and distrust of my family by marrying the prince of the neighboring empire.”

Ah, Sut… I miss you and our son more than I want to think about. The memories are so sharp, and Rei noticed my emotional pain almost immediately, tightening her hold on me.

“I died in childbirth, it really isn’t something I want to talk about or think about any more. Afterwards I was born here as a Boreal Toad and I worked my way from that to what I am now. Of all my lives, this was the most danger I have ever been in. A young Monster, among Monsters, it was eat or be eaten - hunt or be hunted. I didn’t immediately notice what the Evolutions did to me, what they are doing to me. The nature and instincts of each Evolution overwhelmed my low Willpower, and every time I Evolved into a new Species I only made it worse - but I had to if I wanted to survive.”

If it wasn’t for the strong emotions attached to all of these memories, I doubt I would be able to keep my focus this long. How did I even begin to explain what it was like to have your own mind fight you? To know what you should do, what you should focus on, and then simply to lose focus and not do it? How do I explain how much I appreciate Rei for bonding with me, for helping me keep my focus and not let my mind scatter too far.

“I was so happy to meet people again, and I wasn’t thinking straight at all,” I talked about our first meeting. “Saving you, Tamlin, was something I didn’t think much about. I am glad I helped you, but I hadn’t considered what would happen afterwards very well.”

I was lucky I wasn’t killed immediately. Hell, even now killing me would just be a property crime, I don’t count as a person here. Of course, the thing about that was…

“But to a certain degree, I didn’t care. I don’t fear death, I know what comes after for me. No, what I fear is what I will lose with death, the connections with the people I grow to care for and I had yet to really make any of those connections. Why should I care if I died?”

I suppose, after this life, it would matter and I would have to care, because I would no longer have protection from earning strikes - although I could imagine a future where I did just let it all stop. How many chances at life did one girl need? Most people only ever got one and here I was worrying about what would happen after my fourth.

“I felt bad letting you think of me as just some yearling wyvern,” I admitted to Rei. “I am much older than that, and even if it is sometimes hard for me to fight through my own mind, there are things I know that are more than just the whims of a newborn Monster.”

I got another spike of amusement through the bond from Rei as she stepped back and I turned to see her smiling face.

“Hewka, that is an amazing story, and it will take a while for me to fully comprehend it,” even her voice had an undertone of amusement. “But when you speak of being ‘old…’ Hewka, I’m an elf. A young elf, but an elf nonetheless. You never gave numbers, but unless your second life was quite long, it sounds like you are less than half my age.”

“I think life is a lot less about years than about experiences,” Tamlin added. “You have a lot of different experiences, so you have a lot to draw from, but one of the things I have learned in a relationship with Rei is that she has a different perspective - one given by her single, long, experience in this world. She let me know before we talked, this is about that asshole Grav, isn’t it?”

“You don’t understand how damaging racism - speciesism? - is,” I argued, thinking over all the histories I have known. “It cannot be accepted or allowed, ever. You live in a world with Monsters and yet I know for a fact that what you call Sapients can be far worse and more dangerous than any Monster would be.”

“Oh trust me, if we meet again, Grav is looking to get a beating,” Tamlin nodded, as Rei shot him a disapproving look. “He won’t be able to talk shit when my fist shoves his teeth down his throat.”

“Which isn’t the same as killing and eating him,” Rei interjected. “And honestly, even that isn’t really worth doing. But before that, would it be ok to kill him in any of your previous lives?”

…No.

Unfortunately for me, Rei didn’t need to hear me speak to know what I was thinking and she nodded, saying, “exactly, and everything you have told me tonight just makes this more important, because that feeling isn’t you. It is just those same instincts you have been fighting against since you were born into this world.”

“Even if you are right about that part,” I somewhat admitted that she might be right, but on the other claw… “Even if you are right, he shouldn’t be left alone to talk that way about you!”

Rei sighed, especially when she saw Tamlin nodding slightly and asked, “Hewka, Tamlin, do you think you can beat speciesism out of the world? Do you think you can stop people from hating each other?”

Well, fundamentally, I feel that I have to believe that a world without hate and anger is possible, although I have to admit that even if I live ten thousand different lives I probably will never come across such a world. As for the ‘how,’ well that is a far more complicated question.

“There will always be another,” Rei continued. “There is nothing special about Grav. I will meet thousands of him over my life, maybe tens of thousands, before I enter my reverie. He is less a person than a feature of my day, no different than noting that a day is cloudy or cold or that a certain spot has biting insects.”

That seemed rather fatalistic to me, and it wasn’t the way I wanted to think. Besides, even if you could never fully eradicate certain problems, you could still make things better on the whole.

“More to the point, do you think this is something you can solve with violence?” She added. “All that will happen is that rumors will spread that elves feed people to their pets and there will be another dozen ‘Gravs’ to deal with. All you will be doing is making yourselves feel better.”

Well, I would also be saving on food costs, but I understand what Rei means. I didn’t like it, but I understood it, and she was right. If I wanted to eat Grav I would have to do it when there weren’t any witnesses…

“And now you are plotting something…” Rei put her head in her hands, “Why has it become my responsibility to keep that little shit alive…?”

I gave a chuffing laugh. All my worry seemed to be for nothing, Rei had accepted me for who I was no matter how strange I might be. It felt like an invisible weight had been lifted from my chest. There would be more discussions in the future, but it seemed at an end tonight. Even our disagreements hadn’t driven a wedge between us, I am pretty sure she noticed I hadn’t promised not to eat Grav…