The Lives That I Have Lived

Finding The Second

I woke up after what seemed to me to be just a nights rest. As I walk out of the dusty, sunlit cobblestone room i heard a woman calling to someone. "Ronwe! Ronwe! Rowie where are you?"  She had long light brown hair. Fair skin that was evenly burnt around her shoulders, and lime green eyes. Deep down i felt like i had known this woman for years, but she seemed different somehow. Not to cause to much concern of her behalf i heeded her calls and responded. "I am here, in the house."   

It was mid-day, summer. I was awake on a farm, to what it looked like I owned. My new name was Ronwe for some reason, and this all felt uncomfortably real. This was all i was able to gather in my first waking moments. 

As the day grew old, and the fields of which i tended to became cast in a blissful golden hue, I found out more of who this person I was. More importantly, however, the looming fact that i was no longer in Ireland, and my family had long since perished and forgotten. The year was  now 64 Anno Domini. More commonly known as AD, also this land that i spent the day tilling, seeding, and yielding, from was nowhere near my past home. I was in a land called Roma, and i was a farmer for his Majesty Emperor Nero. I asked the woman why we hadnt met this Nero, with which she retorted "Only if he wished to take what little we have with his clammy hands my love." 

As days grew to weeks, weeks to months, and months to years, I collected vast knowledge of this new land i had very abruptly been left in. The fair woman to whom i had awoken to was indeed my wife, and childhood friend, Caelina. When i had awoken, oddly enough, I was the same age I was when i thought I had died, 17. Years went by for Cael and I, we had two children, Alluia, our first born, and Cyprian, our youngest son. Time had yielded prosperous for our little farm. What extra crops Caelina and I could spare were divided into groups. One for the homestead, a second for the locals who went hungry, and a third for next seasons crop. 

In the beginning it was difficult, I would constantly show inconsistencies between myself and the old Ronwe. I often spoke of my home in Ireland to Caelina, to which her curiosity often prompted her to delve deeper into why i kept bringing it up. Finally, after months of prompting and prodding at me to gain information that she had sought so desperately, I succumbed. I had often reminded her that it was how the mid-evening sun danced across her eyes; in which i became enamored and lost track of what i was saying for a short time. At first she was worried that i had fall ill or sun crazed. To prove her wrong I made her a promise. That i would show her something the likes she had never seen before, all to which she had to keep secret under penalty of gruesome death, and to this she giggled and agreed. 

As I mentioned previously, my mother, my first mother, was a healer in Ireland. However most did not know that she was also gifted with spell-casting. Which was why it seemed she could alleviate any and all ailment brought to us in our tiny house. More importantly, as her only child, I was brought up practicing the same spells, runes, potion making, and herbal tinctures that my mother made. And throught my time with Caelina, between the farm, raising two beautiful children, and perfecting my impersonation of this Rowne, i had little by little been recalling those teachings that were given to me so many years ago. I kept these notes on stone, gathered on my almost weekly ventures into the mountain ranges for herbs and fish. At this time, Cael and I were 26, considered old for that time. Nearly ten years had past, and she hadnt known of my secret. I kept my teachings in a small hole that i crafted in our cobblestone home wall, near the bed for easy access. Once she had seen that I was not the Ronwe she had thought she knew for so many years, all the questionable comments and oddities about an Irish home, and skirmishing neighbors made sense. 

With this knowledge in hand, Caelina beckoned me towards her, held her hand on my chest and spoke three simple, yet arguably the most powerful words of all, " Te amo Ronwe." I love you. For nearly ten years i had hide something, my whole life as i knew it, and in a matter of mere second three words enlightened my burden. Cael told me of how she always believed my rants deep down, but never understood why or where i thought of them. For the next two days my beloved Caelina and I shared tales of past memories, to which at one point in our conversations she looked at me and shared more of her beautifully insightful wisdom. Cael mentioned of how if a persons spirit is strong enough, and has enough will to live, can come back and be reborn. As to my specific set of circumstance she had this to say, "How you are now my love compared to who used to inhabit this body had many differences in outwardly values, but something inside the Ronwe i knew drew your spirit towards him." 

For the rest of the time we spent together, and into the next life, I had believed my beloved Cael to have spoken the truth regaurding how i transformed into Ronwe. I would soon find that It was not some inner set of core values in a certain person that i would tend to latch onto.