Warm liquid covered my skin.

Before I could understand why, cold air struck me, and my body tightened on instinct. My chest burned as I drew my first breath, then a sharp cry tore from my mouth.

I went still.

The sound had come from me, but it was not my voice.

I forced my eyes open. Bright light flooded my vision, broken by blurred figures moving above me. Someone supported my head while another person wiped my body with a cloth.

I tried to ask where I was, but all that came out was another cry.

A woman nearby said my lungs were strong.

My lungs?

The room slowly came into focus. White clothing, masks, gloves, machines beside a bed, and the unmistakable clean smell of a hospital.

My thoughts were clear, but my body felt wrong. My arms barely moved, my fingers were impossibly small, and I could not hold up my own head.

Then I remembered.

I had died.

The memory returned in fragments. The locked room, the silence, my trembling hands, and the terrible certainty that no one would come until it was too late.

There should have been nothing after that, yet a nurse was carrying me across a hospital room.

I looked down at the tiny arms pressed against my chest and finally understood what my mind had been refusing to accept.

I was a baby.

The nurse placed me against the chest of a woman lying on the bed. Her face was exhausted and wet with tears, but the moment she looked at me, she smiled.

“My beautiful girl,” she whispered, drawing me closer.

The words struck harder than the cold air had.

Beautiful.

No one had ever called me that without cruelty following soon after.

A man stood beside the bed, holding the woman’s hand. He leaned closer and welcomed me in a voice thick with emotion, his fingers hovering above my head before he touched me with careful tenderness.

They were strangers, yet I already understood who they were.

My parents.

My new parents.

The truth settled over me so completely that I forgot to struggle.

Reincarnation was real.

I had died, and somehow, I had been born again.

A laugh rose inside me, but my new body turned it into another cry.

My mother adjusted her hold at once, and a nurse suggested that I might be hungry.

No, I wanted to say. I have just discovered that death is not the end. Hunger can wait.

I opened my mouth, but another helpless sound escaped.

Being a baby was going to be difficult.

My mind still belonged to the person I had been, but my body reduced every thought to crying. Confusion became crying. Fear became crying. Protest became crying.

At least I had not been reborn into my previous family.

The thought brought more relief than it should have. Had reincarnation returned me to the same parents, I might have believed that death itself possessed a cruel sense of humour.

For one terrible moment, I imagined opening my eyes and seeing my first mother staring down at me with the same disappointment she had worn throughout my childhood.

No. Once had been enough.

The woman holding me continued speaking softly. She told me I was safe and that they had waited a long time for me. The man beside her stroked my head with such care that my body gradually relaxed.

I wanted to believe them, but wanting to believe anyone frightened me.

Trust had never ended well for me.