Prologue

It was dark, wherever she was. Dark, yet warm and comforting. Placidly she lay in the darkness, finding a strange comfort in her inability to move or see. Perhaps at one point in time she had found herself panicking at the thought of being so complacent with the fact that she was completely and utterly helpless. Perhaps at one point in time she had felt a fierce rage at being so constricted. But all she felt now was a soul-deep weariness, an ever-pervasive ache that sent roots down into the essence of her being.

She was so very tired.

She had been in this darkness for what felt like an eternity. Perhaps it had been. When she had thought of the afterlife (when she allowed for the possibility that there might be one), she had never imagined this warm, soothing, all-encompassing blackness that seemed both endless and confined. This had neither the feeling of the beneficence of Heaven nor the damning punishment of Hell. Instead, she found herself letting go of all her fear, her panic, her anger…

She knew she was dead. She remembered it. Or at least, she had at first. The sting of death had been sharp and cutting when she had first found herself in the darkness. Now, she felt like a stone that sat at the bottom of a riverbed. All of her sharp edges and rough outer layers were being washed away, bit by bit, until all that was left was smooth lines and the strong core of her inner self. She found some details in her mind blurring, washed away by the soothing, unending darkness. She could no longer recall the image of her childhood home or her first day at school. And yet there was no fear that she was losing herself or that anything important was being taken away. She still remembered the reassuring sound of her mother's laugh, the confidence of successfully completing a project, the joy of running through the fresh air. But everything was… muted. Faded. The sting had been taken out of her loss and all that remained was the vague reminiscence of what had been.

But the process had tired her, this slow grinding away of her sharp edge of loss and the rough wearing of life. And now that all her anger and fear had been worn away, she found herself without much left to grasp on to. There wasn't much there, in the darkness. And she yearned for something more, something new.

A little while after that, she found herself regretting that sentiment.

Gradually, slowly, the darkness wasn't as comforting anymore. There was tightness and pain. Out! It seemed to say. Out you go now! You're not staying here! And suddenly she became aware that yes, she did still have a physical body, and yes, things could still hurt.

And then there was light. Bright, blinding light that was accompanied by a rush of other sensations that she had been so long deprived of in the darkness. Her sensitivity made her cry out in pain as she coughed out the blockages in her airways and inhaled sharp, cold air. Her head ached at both the sound of her own cries and the influx of other, deeper noises that seemed to surround her. Abruptly she found herself lifted up into the air, cradled between large, warm hands and brought to an equally warm body that was covered in rough material that scratched painfully against her sensitive skin. She leaned backwards and peered up into the indistinct face that was looming over her, murmuring deeply to her in words that she felt were vaguely familiar, but was too panicked to recognize. It had begun to dawn on her.

Somehow, someway, she had been reborn as a baby. And she remembered. Something was very, very wrong here.