Skai Natblida

stationed

Being pushed out of a birth canal is a feeling one can unfortunately become accustomed to. As soon as I realized I had died I knew the next cycle would start soon. So I waited (not like there was much choice) in my mother hoping the birth would be successful.

After repeatedly being stillborn I would rather be drowned (again) than have to go through the jarring process that was my 342-347th lives. I relaxed my body and let the process work itself out. Once finally birthed warm lights and gloved hands welcomed me.

So definitely sometime past the twentieth century. The technology is hard to make out but the grey is reminiscent of hospitals. Not much color besides the uniformed people and the obvious blood.

My eyesight was still lackluster but having the life experience helped me to observe my surroundings. Somewhat. Alright my senses were shitty and being a squishy small person didn't help the situation.

Stop thinking about how vulnerable you are. Don't think about what's happened to you before. Nothing is for certain, you don't need to freak out...

I started screaming. Thankfully this is in the realm of newborn behavior, expected even in order to assure the baby has working lungs. A few of my lives were spent studying medicine. It became easier to mimic the actions of an average child once I understood them. Too many babies were presumed dead because of their silence.

Fuck that.

I screamed louder.

The blurs of people started to move faster. Possibly due to the abrupt change in my volume. My body is placed in my new mother's arms. There is nothing like feeling the warmth of unconditional love from a parent. Her face is red and sweaty, quite rightfully so. But her smile is so sweet I can't help but return a gummy one of my own.

"Sihana-Valoj Livadh," she whispers to me, "My little moon. You've burned out your poor mother."

Huh. Not a bad name at all. Bit of a mouthful. Pretty sure they just threw some words together but I like it.

The next few days pass in people fussing over my adorable self while I sleep or scream. My new father seems to be a standoffish type but so far shows no abusive signs. This new set of parents are genuinely happy to be parents. That's always a pleasant surprise. They feed me and change me, not being the neglectful sort either.

So far, giving them an 8/10. But what do I know. I'm a fucking baby.

▪︎☆▪︎☆▪︎☆▪︎☆▪︎☆▪︎

It's been about three years since I was born. So far my development has been average except for one fact.

My black blood.

What the fuck.

Apparently that isn't normal here either judging by how my mother freaked out when I cut myself on a harsh metal edge in our pod. Luckily the wound healed quickly and didn't require medical aid.

Accelerated healing means possibly heightened senses. Both remnant ablilities from past lives. I can work with that. Better yet if metaphysical manipulation can be achieved.

Her stories make sense now. She's always talking about our ancestry and how I inherited the "keryon" without explaining what that is. Something about a woman named Becca and radiation, the latter which would explain why we never go outside.

At least that rules out vampires, not sure if I have the patience for that right now. Although it doesn't explain why I only ever see through the windows at night. Perhaps the sun exploded and caused the apocalypse? Or maybe time works differently here?

Theses were thoughts too frequent and too complicated for my toddler brain to deal with. So I tried to focus most of my time on improving my motor skills.

Crawling is quite literally child's play by this point. At least theoretically.

Being this squishy is almost never fun.

My knobby knees and pathetic upper body strength can only do so much so I've mostly stuck to observing my surroundings.

The technology I've seen so far has been pretty advanced, but where I live (science commune? maybe some robot bunker? more to investigate later) has some strange rules.

There's rations for everything, and everything eventually gets repurposed. Which I guess makes sense because of the apocalypse (again need more answers) but it's oddly juxtaposed by a class system. Surprisingly modernized for a political hierarchy with supposedly limited supplies.

But am I surprised? No. Somehow social status will always have a part to play.

I have been introduced to some other children my age but not many, and never more than one per their set of parents. It seems logical in terms of resources but pretty boring when making friends.

There is a public childcare center not far from where both my parents work. The kids there are between the ages of one and twelve, all coming in at different times. I've managed to separate myself from the screamers and biters. Most of my time there is spent with the older kids listening to a book reading session.

My father usually drops me off on his walk to his station because my mother works most nights. I'm not entirely sure what their respective jobs are yet but I believe they're involved in mechanics or farming or both.

One particular day he said he had a surprise for me. He took me to a community window I've glanced through a few times and told me to wait. He then blabbed on about mandatory rotations and other things people usually say to babies because they can't understand.

Ha.

I slowly started to drift off, gazing at the constant image of the galaxy outside the window when things started to shift. A silver light, stronger than the stars, crept into view.

At first I was worried it was some type of laser or nuclear bomb. But as it moved (or apparently we moved) the figure became clear.

The moon. Fuck, I'm in space? Sure I've traveled to other planets before and I've even been different alien species a few times, but this seems different.

Wait.

Rations. Father from Agro, Mother from Mecha, living in a place called Factory. Our leader is called a Chancellor and I even met some kid named fucking Bellamy.

I did the only logical thing to do for a toddler sprung into a young adult fiction series.

I promptly shat myself.