Natasha remembers a flower, an orange-red-blue flower with color mingled in strips from its neck to its petal; she thinks that bloom was once her. She couldn’t feel anything, but she could feel and hear. She recalls becoming that flower. She remembers her last moments as that flower. She could hear two distinct voices arguing. Two men. They were brothers.
“Please, I ask you. Stop him; it’s not her fault!” The voice was familiar but distinct. She could sense the man’s agony and grief.
“I know,” the other brother consoled, “he is now cursed, and the spell has taken his sense of humanity; he doesn’t even know who he is anymore.”
“Does this imply you won’t stop him?” She was terrified by the way the voice sank in response.
“It’s also true that if she survives….” The other voice faded off, apologetic yet calm.
“You…” the voice shuddered. “You want him to do this,”
“Brother, I will prologue you to forget….”
“No, You…” the man said with a hollow, lifeless laugh, “If he reaps her, I destroy him.”
“He won’t feel anything; it won’t matter to him,”
“Then I’ll wait till the day he feels, and then I’ll destroy him!” The man hissed.
She knew she hit the earth after it, crushed under mortal boots, and then she heard a voice, the voice of the calm brother.
“This is the end of your life here, may you manifest one day in what you were meant to be,” it was reassuring as she drifted away and her petal turned to dust.
She remembers being a seed, growing into a plant, and ultimately being able to breathe above the soil. The pain of being dragged away from the roots, leaving the comforting moist earth, turned the sun into her enemy, sucking out all the life energy and her breath left her, her leaves turned to dust, and she faded. She recalls being in the breeze, hearing the talk, laughter, tears, grief, sorrow, heartbreak, and love that lasted more than a few lifetimes. She could sense people in the wind and feel gratitude when they were under her branches when she was a tree. She enjoys the children’s laughter as they chase her, imagining her gorgeous wings as a butterfly. She knew what it was like to be hunted like a deer by a wolf, lion, or tiger. She knew she was defeated in that race of life till one predator caught her and clutched her under their feet. Sometimes her neck is broken, and sometimes her throat is torn, but she cannot escape because her predator will sink its teeth into her flesh and drain her life. She knew the agony of one soul being ripped from the body; she knew what it was like to run a forest, to be faster and stronger and insane with hunger. To kill to satisfy until the next hunger come, driving away all senses and falling for the bait, an easy kill and finding the arrow shot into your gut.
She remembers being a soul and opening her eyes once, fearing for the anguish to hit again, but it doesn’t. Instead, it’s a black sky and barren terrain; the trees here are different, black, and frightening. What’s strange now is that she’s standing on two legs. She has two feet and two hands. She is taller and dresses. The tree, the tall, gloomy sky, polls every few yards away, holding torches, she turns to take in her surroundings, and there is a castle constructed of stone and Grey that seems to touch the sky. Once, she was caught in a spot like this when she flew inside, unknowing as a bird. Her experience was unpleasant. She shuddered but couldn’t take her gaze away from the magnificent tower and a man standing apart and alone in one of the towers.
“You were supposed to go to this side,” an elderly man with a friendly smile stated behind her. She looks around.
“You’re in the underworld, and your soul has evolved.” “You can now take birth as a human.”
She had no idea what that meant, but she did recall shifting forms. She deduces that it is only a part of it. The older man motioned to another younger woman holding parchment and a pen.
“Please follow me,” she said, wiggling her toes. When she moved, the earth gave her a peculiar sensation, and she turned to look back at the castle, but there was no one in the tower. She turns around and follows the lady.
She led her to a calm river surrounded by cliffs and dry trees, dead tree stumps. The bank had several small boat ties, and then on the far corner, there was a giant one with unusual designs, a pol tied to the end, and a lantern dangling from it. The lady in black robes and a charming smile tells her to sit in the boat, but every ship has carving, which she doesn’t understand. A ferryman arrived wearing an old faded cotton shirt and breeches. He sat on the boat with the lamp in his hand, the ship moved, and there was no ripple in the water. She and a few others sat aboard the boat. An elderly man looking down in his palm dejectedly mumbling something along the lines of ‘there is so much I could have done, all of it to waste’ kept repeating itself.
“Don’t worry,” the man sitting near him remarked, looking middle-aged with glass in his eyes. His stomach was going to rip the waistband of his breeches.
“We’re going to the next life; you must let go of the past now, you know?” Try to think about what you want in your next life, and I won’t mind having excellent looks. I was wealthy in this life, but I never had a wife or children, you know? “I want to start a family.”
The boat began to move, and she attempted to see through the water, but there was no movement. It remains completely still and black.
“What would you desire in your next life, young miss?”
She looked at the man with wide eyes, surprised by the sudden question directed at her.
“Were you mute in this life?” the man inquired politely.
“What does she know?” She has never heard of human speech, and this will be her first birth as one,” The ferryman stated in a gruff voice as if he’d had a cold for months.
“Can she comprehend us?”
She nodded and turned back to avoid more talk. They were far from the bank, but she could still see the castle and the man standing in the tower.
She’s curious about who he is. Her thoughts soon fade away. She was born and died within two days due to premature birth, and the village physician was powerless to help. That’s what the lady in black clothes wrote on the paper as she was put back on the boat and turned to see the guy in black robes standing on the cliff, and there was something melancholy about the way he stood looking at the infinite sky. His gaze shifts to her side, the boat shakes, and before her thoughts vanish, she notices his blank stare.
She saw him again going by the river the next time, but he was far away. Everyone bowed to him, some warily, some nervously, and some cordially. She couldn’t catch his glance, he didn’t turn, and he was out of sight. She settled onto the boat she was sharing with a queen from the life she had just left. Whose nose appears to be in, as if she smells something awful, and a lovely elderly couple. Natasha was born in a Greek village and died from brain fever at age five because her parents were poor and couldn’t afford medicine. She continued to look down at the water, waiting for it to stir. It didn’t.
“No, ma’am, I assure you, you were not murdered,” a youthful guardian of death insisted to a middle-aged woman on the line next to her. Natasha was waiting in line for her turn, which was quite long. The middle-aged woman insisted that her brother murdered her. The young Guardian wipes his brow, attempting to control her.
She recognizes the now-familiar lady in a black robe and grins as she approaches.
“You died again?” she asks, raising an eyebrow and looking down at her parchment.
“It appears to be a theme here,” Natasha chuckled.
“You just die too young, age?”
“Fifteen,” “Death cause?”
“Poison,”
“Murdered?” The lady raised her brow again. Natasha’s focus shifted to her recently ended life; she was born into a duke’s family in England, lived a luxurious but limited existence, and lost her mother to illness and mistreatment by her stepmother. It’s better this way. It seems good to have her back in the underworld instead of wherever she went.
“Stepmother,” she said.
Lady shook her head in disappointment as she turned back to see the castle, looking for that aloof man, and found him standing like an eerie piece of the statue on the wall. The wind is picking up, and his figure appears to rip the current in half.
“Off you go,” The lady proclaimed, and she continued looking over her shoulder as she proceeded, she settled into the boat, and this time she was the sole passenger in her boat. Her thoughts faded as she tried to hold him in her eyes.