Chapter 108: Rewinding

I'm dragged into darkness, both physically and mentally, but I have no concern for the physical.

I'm lost in a spiraling hole so deep and black it devours the calm, my heart, my will to live.

Light flickers, images, pieces of my past, a vortex of memory rewinding slowly at first and then faster and faster until I'm sucked through my life as though I'm a toy bobbing in the center of a tornado that will tear me into tiny slivers as it did Cade.

Rewinding. Rewinding. Rewinding.

All the way to the end.

To the beginning.

***

Birth. Cold wetness and loud sounds, warmth at last, hands lift me, a sweet voice whispers her love in my ear, the scent of her made precious because of our contact.

Growing. Two others, like me, the woman hovering over us, her love as strong as though we'd been born of her body instead of the hard glass tubes of our shelter. And a man, I know him, know him very well, hovering over me too, his smile as kind and gentle and loving as hers. He has a name.