What followed utter chaos was silence. Cold, dark, empty. The world around me, if it could even be considered that, was a cruel haze of light and dark. Dreams, reality, and memories became a jumbling mess. Every darkness in my soul had been pulled free; given faces and voices that took form and sat on my shoulders like the devil in my ear. They played my guilts, mistakes, and regrets like a song on repeat.

Once or twice, I felt as though I was tipping down the road to madness. None of my attempts to escape them was successful and, eventually, I grew weary. I sat still and allowed myself to be swallowed whole.

Soon, I learned that, in my acceptance, these strange shadows—formed from what I assumed were my sins—would drain themselves and vanish after a while. In their embrace, I would feel unbearably cold. It stung. Like my flesh crumbled off the bone and latched onto the icy shadows. Warmth would occasionally seep in to offer some comfort, a form of reprieve and a reminder somehow, before plunging me back into the torment.

In a way, it was much too cruel. I was given a taste of the good thing intermittently—like a drop of water in a sweltering desert. I would have preferred it if they had left my there without giving me a taste of salvation.

I was unsure how long I stayed that way, but when the last of the shadows disappeared, I finally got to open my eyes. The world became a vivid, crushing reality. The sky loomed, and the walls narrowed, bearing down on me from all sides. This pressure was different, but it was a welcome change from the empty weightlessness that I had been feeling until then.

I took a deep breath, tasting the warm air. It was almost as though I had gone through a thousand years of sleep. My body didn’t feel like my own—it was jerky, uncontrollable, and weak. I felt numb all over.

A lullaby drifted into my ears, reminiscent of those stars.

The events of that time had now become like a distant memory. However, I could recount every detail I experienced. I was sure I didn’t hallucinate everything.

I stirred and found myself nestled in a cotton mattress and fluffy blankets. The stars and moon hang above me in thin strings. They circled the sky. A horse tailed the figure of a deer in their midst.

Confusion and wonder bloomed at the back of my mind, yet my brain was too muddled to comprehend what was going on clearly.

Tired, I slipped back to sleep.

And on it went—a cycle of dream and waking moments. Though I feared this was another one of those torturous reminders, the coldness I expected never came. Instead, I was constantly embraced in warmth and comfort, encapsulated in loving whispers and bathed in the sweetest of songs.

I heard distinct voices whenever I would get the chance to open my eyes. However, they talked in a strange language I could not understand. On more than one occasion, I saw a woman with amaranthine eyes peering down at me. There were love and sadness and worry—tugging on the woman’s brows, wrinkling her forehead, bearing down on the corners of her lips. Despite this, the woman would reach in to touch my cheek and sing me a song untiringly. Day in. Day out. The woman was a presence that was always by my side.

In the gibberish mouthed to me, there was one constant word: Evyionne. In some instances, it would take a new form. Evy.

A day came when I was able to finally maintain my consciousness for a decent time. Enough to take in the world around me properly. I took the time to observe my surroundings, trying to understand what sort of situation I was in now.

Tilting my head to the side, my cheeks brushed against the fluffy blankets tucked under my head. There was a low, dense wall beside me—the sight of which was blurry for me to make out properly. I lifted my hand but found it inadequately short and unsteady.

My hand.

Round, barely able to stretch past a fist. It tipped a fat arm with only a line for an elbow and a wrist.

Baffled, I lifted my feet and kicked it back and forth experimentally. The strength I exerted ended with a toe in my eye. “Ughhh. Uwaggghhh.” I gurgled from the pain and found difficulty in forming words from my throat. I wanted to curse, to ask the world what was happening, yet all I mustered were high-pitched cries, nothing past babbles and gabbles.

Frustration took over, and the waterworks began.

As the tears pooled in my eyes, I wondered what had gotten into me to make me so…sensitive. I usually didn’t cry over something so simple as frustration.

Footsteps reverberated. Loud thumps startled the stringed stars and moon hanging above. Not long after, a beautiful and fair face peered past the wall—a ridiculously large face—with dark hair that vibrated violet under the bright light. The woman was familiar. I’d seen those eyes before. The strange color, amaranthine, was quite hard to forget.

I recoiled in fear. My tears stopped from the shock. If it could, it probably would have rolled back. “Naww. Guuaaaahhh aaavvawwwwy,” I tried to say, but found my sentences barely comprehensible, even to myself.

In the end, I had been taken from the comfort of blankets and into the arms of the woman. My head was propped on the fair shoulder, supported by a hand on the back of my neck.

“Evy, kon Evyionne.” The woman rocked to and fro, humming softly. We then crossed the threshold of the room. The light swaying was successful in calming me down. Too successful, in fact, to the point that it nearly made me fall asleep.

If it wasn’t for the fact that I was in such a strange, strange situation, I would dismiss all care in the world and slip off into my dreams once more. Unfortunately, this wasn’t something I could just ignore, so I fought a battle that I didn’t know if I was capable of winning.

My heavy lids continued to pull down shut as we roamed about the room. It wasn’t until I caught sight of myself in a vanity mirror that I jumped with a start. A baby not past, perhaps, six months old, with a tuft of red hair and big, amaranthine eyes stared back. I squealed in shock and wonder, eyes popping wide open upon the realization.

What the hell, I thought. What the actual hell.

Evy. Evyionne.

Unsettled and confused, I finally realized who this Evy was.

It was me. I was Evy.

The talk of reincarnation, of being reborn—it had happened alright. And it would seem that I had started at the very beginning.

As a child. A baby.

While I came to terms with my situation, the door clicked open and a new presence stepped in. A regal man with honeyed red locks approached me and, presumably, my mother. His long robes fluttered around him, the warm shade of jade accentuating the beautiful golden tan of his skin.

The woman spun around to greet the man, words sounding of delight rolling from her throat. “Konnyr. Shu lovanur?”

“Lovan, kon ana,” a deep voice replied.

I pushed myself to get a better look at the man. My jerky movements surprised the woman who held me, but she seemed to understand what I wanted to do and allowed me to turn.

As I came to face him, he regarded me with unhindered joy. “Ah?” He leaned down with a large smile. His broad and rough hands alighted on the top of my head, lips on what little hair I had. “Evy, kon maliya. Sol diele et nere.” I stared into his eyes, curious and frankly overwhelmed, but I had a good idea of who he was. I shoved a fist into my mouth and anxiously regarded him. After all, I knew that red hair. It was similar to my own.

My gaze flew past his broad shoulders. He had left the door open when he came in. This allowed me a glance at a beast waiting by the doors.

It was a wolf—big enough to contend with a full-grown man. It had a pair of lush green eyes and nearly translucent white fur.

I held its gaze for moments in awe then instinctively stretched my hands to its direction, delighted by its beauty. Despite the fierceness, the creature had an odd, magnetic charm. The wolf, noticing my gaze, rose to its feet and strolled away from sight. I grumbled in displeasure and wondered if it had been appalled at seeing me that it simply had to leave.

“Elleria,” the man said, addressing the woman.

Elleria. I looked at the woman with the amaranthine eyes. It was a beautiful name.

He began to talk in that language I wasn’t familiar with. It was the same one I had been hearing until now. Fascinated, I tuned in—trying to understand. No matter how much I tried though, I could not place the words in a language I knew I had, at least, heard before. It had the most beautiful of rhythms, nonetheless. The dips and rise in its tonalities carried a force of command and sophistication, but the words were a smooth glide of warm butter on bread. The way they spoke made it seem like they were chanting something—there was inherent music. It was beautiful, yet haunting. Though try as they did to talk to me, it wasn’t as though I could understand a thing.

Elleria nodded in response to him and sighed. I watched the exchange, still with a fist in my mouth, and found anxiety tugging on the fair woman’s face. The man placed a hand on Elleria’s arm to comfort her and leaned down to plant a kiss on her lips.

I was now dizzy with conclusions. And though I hadn’t been willing to acknowledge this fact since a while ago, it was already clear what this was.

What else could it be? Mother, father, and, of course, baby.

If I wasn’t mistaken, this should be my family.

My presumed father laughed when he saw my disgruntled face. He fingered the deep crease between my brows with his thumb before taking me from my mother’s arms. His gesture sent me panicking. He was far rougher, unintentionally squeezing a little too tight when he gripped me under the arms. I could tell he was trying to be gentle, but he still had trouble managing his strength.

And I wasn’t alone in that idea.

“Konnyr!” Elleria frowned at the man. “Avus! Avus!”

“Pavaden ko,” he replied with a sheepish grin. He fixed his hold around me and toned down his strength by several more notches. When I was finally sitting comfortably in his embrace, he didn’t even dare move, stiffly gazing down at me.

Sweat broke from Konnyr’s brows. The cluelessness and fear that stretched on his face was hilarious that I actually laughed.

He relaxed upon seeing my reaction. “Ka daven ko?” He looked searchingly at Elleria, asking for confirmation.

“Dun, de vilis,” Elleria said, patting his shoulder comfortingly. “Shu diele kan. Daven.”

He nodded, agreeing. “Kon maliya, kon anala…sol diele…diele!” he said to me with the brightest of smiles.

Was diele supposed to be the term for father?

Over time, my conjectures were answered. Konnyr would unceasingly point to himself and say diele like a broken record, poking at my lips and pulling at my chin while forming each syllable with exaggeration. I could tell he was very determined, so I decided I would humor him for a bit. I could use some practice over this unruly tongue. Unfortunately, I underestimated my control over my body. Nothing left my mouth that was even close to what I was trying to say.

“Gowdammmieet,” I whispered, then looked up startled by what I said.

That wasn’t so bad. I guess.

My tongue wasn’t quite my own yet. In fact, I felt rather strange and…loose in this body. At the same time, I was pumped with a renewed supply of vitality that I was unable to utilize. While it wasn’t uncomfortable, it was very frustrating. Right now, I wanted nothing more than to find my amber-eyed guide and ask him questions. Considering the state of me though, that was sure to be an impossible task.

Oh, the irony of it. I hadn’t wanted to be reincarnated, but somehow it had happened still.

And now I was a baby. It was ridiculous no matter how I looked at it. How come I was still conscious? Was it because of the river?

I slowly eased into my name and, with it, my new family. Evyionne was a challenging name to pronounce, so I have no hope of saying that with this tongue anytime soon. There was a unique accent to it as well, one I was sure would be far harder for me to acquire. The syllables blended into each other to the point that they nearly disappeared. Eh-vee-yown would sometimes be Ev-yown depending on who would speak it. My mother was more the former, and my father the latter.

We spent moments in contented chatter before Elleria began to feed me. And while I was hesitant in doing so, considering how awkward I was feeling inside, I did feel a little hungry. After getting over my embarrassment over suckling, I drifted off to sleep once more and, eventually, lost interest in drinking altogether.

I faintly gathered being set back down into my nest of blankets before words were pressed to the sparse hair on my head. Words that, somehow, I understood. I opened my eyes just wide enough to see a pale gold blanket being pulled over me.

“Elandra dun, kon maliya,” my father’s deep voice rang.