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I opened my eyes to a bright light that enveloped my body. A woman carried me in her arms, her rough hands wiped my face and body with a white towel to rid of me a liquid that bothered me ever since I first regained consciousness. My mouth was dry and the light was awfully bright in the room. I would tell them to turn it off but I could not; my voice would not come out no matter how hard I tried. Than it hit me: how did she carry me? I searched to look around but my head would not budge and my muscles were limp. Than a source of warmth showered through my being, a hand much more elegant and gentle held me closely. I looked up and saw the angelic face of a woman with light blond hair. A deep male voice said, ‘##### ### ####’ The woman holding me looked up to the source of the voice and replied, ‘### ###### #####...’ She seemed to be crying and drooped her head, looking down to her chest to hide the impending tears. The tears that never came did not ruin the holiness of her face and despite her sad expression, she rose her head and stared deeply into my eyes. In the blue irises that were digging into my soul, I saw the reflection of a beautiful child with the same ocean blue eyes. Those eyes put me deeply into hypnosis. I found them so captivating that for a moment I forgot that the reflection I saw in those blue mirrors was mine. She murmured something in my ear; her voice, light and sweet, carried melodies of love and graciousness. I never understood what they meant but I unconsciously smiled and though she was surprised at first, she smiled back to me. I reached out my hand to touch her curly blond hair that went down to her hips but the lacking strength in my arms and the terrible heaviness on my eyelids was slowly drifting me into deep slumber. I struggled to stay awake to see one last time her smile before falling into my dreams.

Rocking movements woke me up from my sleep. With my eyes half-opened, I saw a large woman looking out the window. Albeit her chubby face and the plain clothing of a housemaid which she donned, she wore a majestic aura around her, seemingly plain but royal. I noticed her arms, her strong arms that would not fit the image of a housemaid. They were the arms of a warrior and I knew that from the way she was holding my body, my newborn body. I understood the moment I raised my hand. What I saw then was a baby’s hand, small, frail and as agile as a drunk man looking for a fight. My sudden gesture did not go unnoticed; the housemaid turned her head to me and grab my tiny hand with two fingers, she then proceeded by making funny faces and just to mess with her, I cried to see a reaction. She panicked and picked up a grimace that sincerely made me want to die in laughter but I still did not stop my fit when I saw the sheer sadness in her eyes. I stopped the incessant cries and she happily clapped her hands in joy. I thought how simple she was and laughed.

‘#### ### ##### ########’, she said, looking intensely at my face as she cracked a smile on hers, ‘######## ## #### ###!’

She picked me up by my waist and turned me towards the window of which I presumed to be a carriage’s. My vision was immediately filled with giant plains that stretched to where eyes could not see. The sun was rising and the warm breeze entered my lungs as it refreshed my body and senses. I saw a scrawny man laying on the grass nearby, watching some cows filling their stomach. Taking off his worn out straw hat and placing it onto his chest, he waved at the carriage and the housemaid waved back. I watched as the sun slowly rose up from the horizon illuminating the grass field with sparks of red light and as it rose further and further up approaching the carriage. The light gradually took away the darkness of the plains until it showered my face in a moment of splendor and I suddenly had the thought that such beauty could not exist anywhere on earth. How many times have I watched the rising sun and yet failed to see it in this new light? Was it the sun that had changed or me? I fully ignored it because all I knew right now was the mesmerizing and peaceful scene that was unfolding before my very eyes. I wished to continue watching it but my time was up; my pupils were heavy and I once again needed my sleep. This time, however, in order to keep the memory of the magnificence of the universe, fresh and clear in my mind. The housemaid held me in her arms close to her chest and hummed me a sweet lullaby.

I woke up in a crib in the middle of the night. My first instinct was that I desperately needed something. My mouth was all dried up and the need to satisfy my thirst was excruciating. I cried and soon enough, heavy but agile footsteps approached, it was the housemaid’s. Her chubby face glanced into the crib as her eyes perplexedly looked at my face. She wondered her eyes in confusion searching for help. Clearly, she did not know what to do. To satisfy her curiosity, she seemed to asked me what I needed as she held me up in her arms when the idea finally crossed her mind: I was hungry. With a happy expression, she showed her plump breast by partially pulling down her night gown and moved my lips to her nipple. I avidly chunked down the warm milk down my throat and felt warmth inside my stomach filling me with mild happiness and confusion of how I could enjoy being breastfed. When I stopped nibbing on her nipple, she pulled her gown back on and decided to show me around the house. It was night so I imagined that it was not long after my last sleep or so I thought.

As a baby, I had no sense of time and there were no indications of clocks around the house. About the house, it was made entirely of wood and straw put in together by harden earth and it made me wonder if I was in the countryside. Nonetheless, my home was cozy and bright. There was only one floor where the only source of light came from the moon through five windows. The house was kept warm by a fireplace in the living room. There was not much inside, just a few chairs here and there and some tables on which the owner decorated with vases of flowers. More interesting, there was a small bookshelf situated next to the fireplace. I would like to skim through those books to learn furthermore of my whereabouts. Then there was the kitchen, small room and rather clean despite some old wooden utensils and outmoded tools of cooking – there were some that I could not even recognize. Otherwise, It was clean with no excessive furnitures to my liking.

One turn around the house and it was enough. I noticed the tiredness in the housemaid’s eyes; she desperately needed some sleep. The tour was not without a speaking guide of course; during the entire look around the home, she spoke, sometimes gently then her tone would change to angry then gentle again, but when she took a saddened look on her face I could not help but feel pity on this tired woman that always seemed to carry a heavy burden. As I took a closer look at her, I took note that she was chubby but clearly young, at the very least in her twenties, and her body, a bit round, but from the way she usually walked in straight line with her head up high and with the toughness of her arms and her iron grip, she was agile, delicate and well-composed like a trained soldier. To make her feel better, I stretched out my tiny hands to her. She tenderly grabbed it and placed it to her face. I tried to comfort her by moving my hand around caressing her plump cheeks to wipe off a tear from her eye. She smiled and, in a quick movement, she placed her face on my chest and made farting noises with her lips. I unconsciously laughed and she did so too.

The housemaid put me back in my crib. She kissed me goodnight and went back to her respective room.

Lying there, I contemplated my own situation and, no matter how much I wrapped my head around it, one thing was for sure: I was born again with a new identity into a new life with the memories of my previous one. What of my past life? But most of all was Buddhism right all along? Reincarnation was real? God is a lie? And many other trivial questions were asked. So much was going on and insane ideas were dancing in my head at quickening speed but I saw no point as of that moment. I enjoyed having an empty mind for once, living as a baby, without thoughts and consideration for anything. There was no life or death, no drama or tragedy, no capitalism and overconsumption, no religion and war, no nothing. I slept till morning.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

My name was Arcturus Nogard. At two years old, I walked for the first time and at three I learned about the world where I lived through books and conversations. Though these informations were limited and scarce, I managed to get a small picture, without certain exactitude I note, of the world where I was living in. The language was not easy to grasp, the housemaid called it Anglo-Saxon, I preferred to call it Old English. It was the writing and the dialect that was especially difficult to learn: the writing was complicated and overly stylistic, “over the whale’s road” for example meant in modern English “sea”, and there were two dialects, Mercian and Northumbrian, to adapt my ears to. To clarify, I was born in what was called back in my world The United Kingdom.

‘Arc! Wake up!’, Lyn called me from the kitchen, ‘It’s breakfast!’

I jumped off my small bed in a small bounce and put on a brown t-shirt and small leather pants. When finished, I went to the bathroom and scooped a handful of water from a wooden bucket to wash my face. Feeling refreshed, I moved to the kitchen and sat to the opposite of Lyn and Firmon to do our morning prayers.

Lyn was the housemaid that brought me to this village when I was still a newborn and since then, she hadn’t aged a day. Sitting next to her was Firmon, her husband, a kind and gentle man that was the perfect opposite of his wife. Firmon, an old man that always seemed to hide a smile behind his grown beard, worked in the fields daily while his wife attended for the sheep and fed the cow in a neighboring farm. On the other hand, I was still too young to work; at three years old it was not easy task to do hard labors such as farming. But having been shown the current agriculture techniques, I wished to propose some improvements here and there in order to help reducing the workload and elevating the productivity but that is a story for another time.

Prayers said, we attacked the breads. It was hard to chew on and the texture was almost non-existent. However, there was no place to complain and I learned that in the hard way when in one of those hot and unnerving days where hunger got the best of me, I found myself standing in front of the thegn’s manor, basically the owner of the cultivated lands, begging outrageously for some food for the villagers. Lyn quickly caught news of my actions and forcibly dragged me away before the fist-fight between me and the guards would start.

‘You shouldn’t do that Arc!’, she said angrily, staring down at me, ‘Geburs work and they don’t complain, alright?’

Geburs were us, the peasants who worked days and nights farming the fields that the nobles were too idle to do anything about. The peasants were the majority of the village’s population and they were subjected to not only hard-working labors but also hunger and low wage to feed those higher on social hierarchy. Below the geburs and there were slaves. Nevertheless everyone seemed to be content of their situation. Most do not argue against brutal owners and pressing work charges thrown at their shoulders.

Luckily, I calmed down and remembered the words Lyn told me afterward the event: ‘You only strike when it is least expected!’ she whispered as we walked away from the manor, ‘But still! Avoid being punished, I don’t want to see my son coming home missing an earlobe!’

The word “son” still struck me deeply in my heart and soul till now. She never talks like that; usually when addressing me, she calls me by my abbreviated name “Arc” but never “son” and for a single moment I felt special. Gripping on her sleeve with my thumb and index finger, I felt like a child that had just thrown a tantrum and that his mother arrived out of nowhere to calm him down with whispers of love.

The next day, the Church came by and gave us some food. “Charity work” was what they called it but, in reality, it was a mean to quiet down the nerving peasants. They always do that: controlling the poor and the weak with some food so that they would quit chattering; efficient way in my opinion. When there are anger and frustration in the air, the Church would plan a small festival to celebrate some Saint’s birthday, a break to clear the ice between peasants and nobles while in the middle of the cheerful mood of the party and the abundance of food and wine, people dance and sing their displeasure and hostility out of their systems. The next day, they go back to work, all the animosity was forgotten in a single night, and life goes on. Because peasants were not the types to protest so there were only one or two of these pleasant occasions organized every year. That year, when I was still three years old, there were six of them.

‘Com’on!’, a young and dirty boy said to me, ‘Com’and play Arc!’

I shooed him away, absorbed in a book about fairy tales. He saw that and signaled the other children to come to play, leaving me behind sitting on a small hilltop.

‘By the way Fenny,’, I replied looking up but they were already gone to their games, ‘I’ll ask about it later…’

Fenny was a dear friend of mine when I got to the age of five. He was always the odd one, I was odder. While he was playing hide-and-seek with his pals, I was studying in a nearby library, a very small one with limited knowledge except children’s books. I always got my informations from either Lyn or her husband, Firmon, but on that particular day, the library got me interested in some books about fairy tales. Anyhow, Fenny and I met when during his time as a seeker, he challenged his friends that he’ll do it blindfolded and stumbled upon me at the library. Arriving without balance at my desk, he accidentally caught me in his arms and inspected my face with his dirty hands – some mud and dirt were smudged all over my face as he did it. He screamed out a name that I had forgotten and removed his blindfold. With my face covered in mud, he could not recognize me and started to playfully stroke my head with his knuckle, my head under his armpit. It went so fast that I could not react to the sudden turn of event, outside of my daily life. He later personally came to my house to apologize when he realized that none of his friend was blond.

On the matter of my current appearance, I must admit that I was a beautiful child: blond curly hair dropping to my shoulders, my skin perfectly white like lilies, a prominent nose that was formed perfectly in balance with my large blue eyes. I had a very lean body with slim arms and legs but they still kept strong and durable muscles. Those were the results of my daily physical exercises and long-term meditation, one of the wonders that I brought to this life with my previous memories. With that said, I do not glance at myself in the mirror at all time. Beauty is after all the result of the norms of society. Perhaps I only felt that I am beautiful because the notion of it is from the influence of my inner and outer circle. In the end, I only wish that I don’t become what people expect me to be. I might be beautiful here but hideous elsewhere.

I first noticed this when Fenny finally made the remark when he asked: ‘Why do your parents call you “Arc” when you’re a girl?’. It took me ten second to process his question and two to show him my sex before he fell into a deep trance. From that day on, he would blush whenever I touch him and run away yelping in high notes. Perhaps, it was a mistake teasing him…

The reason why I also came to like him was that he was surprisingly clever. Odd I will not disapprove but in that oddness there was a cleverness that never failed to surprise me. Yet he always sticks to his fairy tales and stories about dragons and knights; he never was interested in what was happening around him. When asked about it, he simply answered: ‘Fairy tales is like an escape. I can go wherever I want and the world become so simple. A knight comes and rescue the damsel in distress from the claws of a dragon. The fairies are nice to people and pure. I sometimes envy them…’. I was surprised by the tone of his reply from such a small voice. There was no hesitation in it and despite his naivety, I heard in his voice a dim sound of sadness and disappointment. Yet he was right, reality is like a wall of thick layers that no matter how long you dig, you always find more to it. You dig long enough and you’ll find out that there was nothing to it from the very beginning or that you have never even scratched the surface. Speaking from my own experience, Fenny was right. If that was the case, why not stick to the surface, abandon all hopes and embrace our own futile existence?

‘Arc!’, a boy screamed to me covered in sweat and dirt, ‘Come and play!’

‘Fine.’, I replied yielded to his spontaneous personality, ‘What’re we playing?’

‘Pirates! Come! It’ll be fun!’

I gave a long and weary sigh and placed my book on the ground. I might enjoy my new life for as long as it would last. Maybe tomorrow I’ll die again. Might as well play “Pirates” because when I turn to dust and I will, the trees will still be standing, the birds will still chirp, children will still play their games and the universe will still live on without me. Seize the day! Carpe Diem!