Reborn

The End is Just the Beginning

          When I died, I expected to wake up in a bright  place, and meet my parents again in Heaven. What actually happened, was that I woke up to garbled noises, and darkness everywhere. I couldn't see, couldn't hear, couldn't smell. It was unpleasant, very much so. I vaguely heard crying, but I didn't know who that was. They could pipe down a bit, I was trying to sleep! 

     Was this death? If it was, then it was terrible. I didn't get to see my parents, I felt like I had shrunk, and to top it off, I couldn't see! I had always valued my eyes over any other body part, and to not see was absolutely horrible to me.

     Only an hour later, did I feel a prinprick of realization that that crying could have been me, but I dismissed that thought. I didn't care. 

     The months passed in a whirl of garbled sounds, sleeping, and other things. Mainly sleeping. I was pretty lazy. Only when I was one year old did I realize something: I was alive. Somehow, I was alive. 

     And this world wasn't anything like what I had left behind.

ooo000ooo

     I was reborn, I thought, trying to move my legs so that I could crawl. I was reborn with all my memories. Great. And this place is so much different! 

     The world I left behind was much less loud. And crowded. Here was loud metal things with wheels on paved roads. Back in my time, I had lived in a Georgian Colonalial house with my Grandma and Grandpa, because my parents passed away. People rode horses, and the roads were mainly dirt. There were no black boxes that flashed out moving pictures, there were no black roads, and there certainly was no metal things on wheels that somehow moved on the paved roads.

     My life back then was simple enough. My Grandpa was an apothecary, who made medicine out of various herbs, ingrediants, and plants and sold them in his little shop. My grandma, since she was a woman, had to do all the household chores, and I, as a girl, had to help her. She taught me how to weave, sow, use medicine, cook, preparing the fires, laundry, and other chores for women. We were expected to follow men's orders without hesitation, and were expected to be married by the age of twenty. I didn't want to be married, if it meant having all of my few rights stripped from me, but this was our society.

     By the time I was ten, I was diagnosed with a terminal illness, which meant that I was going to die. It was uncurable. By that time, the colonists were getting rowdy. We didn't like King George III's laws and taxes. We didn't like the oppression by the British, the redcoats. Things escalated from there with the Boston Tea Party. I managed to live long enough to listen to the news of the Declaration of Independance, but I didn't see the end of the Revolutionary War. I was thirteen when I finally died from my illness.

ooo000ooo

    So here I was now. A one year old child. 

    Well, I was glad that God, or whomever, gave me a second chance at life. In a completely different world from which I was used to. But whatever, I can adapt. When I was six months old, I had said my first word. I could still remember the scene...

  "Olivia, say 'mom'!" Her mother said, smiling gently. I decided to humor her a bit.

"M-mo-m-mum," I said, except I ended up actually not being able to say "mom" correctly. Oh well. My mom squealed, and whipped around, saying, "honey, did you hear that? Her first word is mom!" When did babies usually say their first words again? I don't know, but I don't want to be a baby genius. I want to just enjoy my time as a child, and act like one. I didn't get to in my last life. 

  "Cool, great, awesome," my dad said dismissively, not looking up from his newspaper. Was that a puzzle on a newspaper?

  "I thought you would make a great father, but here I was wrong!" My mom said dramatically, acting like she was scolding my father. She was more carefree, and cheerful, accented with her blonde-white hair, sky blue eyes, and hourglass figure. My father was more of a work person, but whenever he could, he liked to play puzzles. He had cocoa brown hair, dark brown eyes, and some beard stubble that sometimes itched whenever he leaned down to kiss me on my cheek and it touched my cheek.

  I had inherited my father's hair, except it was a lot darker, almost black, and I had his dark brown eyes. In my old life, my hair was pitch black, and I had light brown eyes.

   In this life, I was named "Olivia Clark." In my old life, I was called "Charity Bell." I still like my old name better, because I was more used to it.

   Huh. But I do like the name "Olivia." Anyway, watch out world. Here comes Olivia Clark, reborn, and ready to explore the unknown! Or, at least, as unknown as the world can get.