Being A Helpless Baby Is Annoying

How many times did we pretend the end wasn't coming?

I remember that day like the taste of blood on my tongue. Thales and I had just returned from another mission, one of many that seemed to blend together like scars on skin.

New York was already a corpse by then. The fifth disaster had devoured it, left it breathing ash and rusted steel. We sat atop a building that looked more like a broken ribcage, its bones jutting into the sky, the air thick with smoke and mourning. Below us was what remained of the Statue of Liberty, half-submerged, the torch long since extinguished, and her face shattered like every illusion we ever had about salvation.

The beer was warm, tasted like gasoline, but it didn't matter. Nothing did at that point.

Thales said, leaning back, his eyes fixed on the dying sun bleeding across the skyline.

"Do you ever wonder? If maybe we had another life... maybe this wouldn't be it."

"You mean another world?"

I asked, my voice hoarse from smoke and exhaustion. He chuckled, but it was hollow.

"No. Another us. A different version. Where the world didn't end, and we weren't forced to watch it die."

I turned to him and smiled faintly.

"Well, if that version of us exists, I hope they're having cold beer and laughing over something stupid."

He looked at me, that familiar shadow in his gaze. His real name had died with his lineage, so he called himself Thales now. A name without history, without ties, without grief.

"The next one is the last, you know. Whatever the last disaster is, it's gonna take everything. There's not going to be a seventh mission. No rescue op. No rebuild."

"I know. At least we'll die fighting. That's something, isn't it? What else do we even have left to lose?"

He looked at me for a long time.

"If we die and get reborn... since we now know gods are real... if I forget all of this, what we went through, I want you to find me and remind me."

"And what if I'm the one who forgets?"

His smile that followed could've lit up the graveyard of a city.

"Then I'll make you remember me. And I'll make you fall in love with me again."

And then he kissed me. In the ash, under a bruised sky, as the world ended around us.

That memory hit me so hard I didn't realize I was crying.

I couldn't see clearly, but I knew something had changed. My eyes hurt. My throat was raw. My limbs felt like they were underwater. But the pain... it wasn't agony.

It was birth. I was born again.

The first face I saw was blurred through tears and my own tiny squint, but I felt the arms that held me.

I was here. The God of Runes kept his word. I was sent back.

And somewhere, maybe one day... I'd find him again. And I will make sure he remembered me.

No matter what.

------

Being reborn is not the miracle people think it is.

You wake up in a cage made of flesh and bone, a prisoner in a body too small for the weight of your soul. You remember everything and yet you can't even hold your own head up. You scream not because you're a baby, but because that's the only sound you're allowed to make. That first year was hell.

I was a girl, again. That was... comforting, in a way. But everything else? New and unexpected. I had been reborn somewhere I had never touched in my old life.

I was born in a hidden, government-sealed island in the lower wilds of North New Island, which is the northern island of New Zealand, which is part of Asia's domain. It was a remote paradise protected by legislation and fear, untouched by society, completely off-grid except to a select few permitted families. My family was one of them, endemic to the island itself.

They were the kind of people who looked like they had walked off the cover of an old fantasy book. My mother had caramel skin kissed golden by the sun, thick wavy hair, and eyes like green glass. My father was tall, his hands massive and worn from work, with hair like rust and a quiet steadiness that made him seem carved from the land itself.

And then there was my older brother, who was maybe three or four, freckled, sunburned, and absolutely convinced I was a gift from the moon. He'd stare at me for hours, humming made-up songs and poking my cheeks like I was some alien treasure that fell from the sky.

And maybe I was.

The house was built from polished wood and thick stone, nestled in top of a gentle hill where the sky looked closer and the grass never stopped moving. There were fields of vegetables, rows of fruit trees, a chicken coop that my brother took care of like it was the royal guard, and a barn filled with tools and the scent of soil.

No city noise, no screams, just wind, animal sounds, and laughter echoing across the hills.

It should've been perfect. But being a baby with the mind of a grown woman?

That was torment.

Everything hurt. My muscles were useless. My limbs flailed without permission. My mouth wouldn't obey, my neck couldn't support my head, and I couldn't even wipe the tears off my own face. You think that your brain is the most important thing, but it doesn't matter how sharp you are inside when your body can't execute a single command. I had to relearn everything.

I spent my days drowning in sensory overload—diapers, blinding light, strange food, bath water that felt like drowning, and toys that insulted my intelligence. Sleep came in bursts. Hunger came in screams.

And worst of all? I couldn't speak. Not a single damn word.

I was locked inside my own mind like a war hero trapped in a soft, pudgy vessel. I remembered forging metal with a glance. Now I couldn't even grasp a spoon. But, despite the misery... I learned.

I learned the scent of my mother's hair, the rhythm of her heartbeat when she carried me on her chest. I learned the lullabies she hummed in the language woven with love and myth.

I learned the way my father's shadow bent over the crib every morning, always before sunrise, to check if I was breathing. I learned that my brother had a tick where he flicked his wrist when he was excited, something he did every time he saw me.

And I learned patience.

Because no matter how much I remembered, I knew I had time now. For the first time in my life—both of them—I had the one thing I never got before:

A family.

And as humiliating and suffocating as it was, I was going to use it.

This body would catch up eventually. And when it did?

I'd be ready for my life mission to prove the gods wrong and save this world. But why did the Rune God say that I was not going to save the world?