The first sensation that returned to me was warmth.
No, the sharp kind that stings your skin when you try to touch a flame. This was deeper than that – an all-over, steady heat, as if something had wrapped itself around me and decided with quiet certainty: I am safe, I am protected.
There was liquid too.
It pressed against me from every direction, thick enough that when I tried to move it was like molasses. It smothered, thick and intimate, and every time I tried to move gravity would shift back, as if telling me to wait.
I tried to lift my arm.
Something answered my command. The movement was sluggish, but it was mine. It was the strangest relief – being able to think a thought and move a limb – and for a brief, ridiculous moment I wanted to laugh. I couldn't of course. I don't even know if I have a mouth yet, but the feeling was there.
Then my hand – if it was a hand – met something hard. A wall.
I pushed again, more carefully, and felt the curve of it. Smooth. Solid. Close. No matter how I moved, I could not find an edge or a seem. An Egg then.
The words hit with a weight that should have frightened me. A person is not supposed to wake up inside an egg. A person is not supposed to wake up at all, if we-re being honest, when they die. I remembered.
It wasn't dramatic. Not with screams, or flashing hospital lights, or some last-minute confession to my loved ones that's full of meaning. It was quiet.
The memory was like a dream when you wake up too early: soft but hard to hold onto.
A room. Warmth – different warmth, human. A blanket that smelled faintly like detergent and the clean, tired sweetness of home. The sound of someone shifting in a chair. The rhythm of breathing that isn't mine. My wife.
Melony.
Even now, in this alien place, her name felt like a hand on my chest. She had been there from the beginning – when I was still young and stupid – and she had been there at the end, when I was old and understood. She was just as beautiful as the day I met her.
It wasn't the kind of beauty you see in Hollywood or on runways. It was the beauty of familiarity – the soft lines earned by years of smiling, the gentle strength of someone who has seen you fail and didn't leave. Her eyes were still loving, and sharp, even if the moisture gathered in them. She tried not to let the tears fall and it made my chest ache.
There were other faces too, blurred at the edges like water color bleeding through. Children. Grandchildren. Small hands and careful whispers. Gentle kisses and sweet touches as if I was made of glass.
"Goodbye," someone murmured. "We love you."
I wanted to answer. I tried.
But my body had already begun to let go, loosening its grip on each breath in a song as old as time. My vision dimmed. Not suddenly – slowly. Like someone turning down a flame.
Melony leaned in. I let her fingers interlace with mine. Her palm was warm. Solid. Real. Her eyes were the last thing I saw. And then… nothing.
No tunnel. No Heaven. No pain. Just the end of sensation.
A good life. A satisfying life. A life full of love.
If this was what death was meant to "feel" like, then I had no complaints. So why–
Why was I warm again?
Why was there liquid? Why was I thinking at all?
The memory of my death did not bring grief, but gratitude and, beneath it, a mild irritation that I couldn't shake. I had finished. I had done the whole thing.
I had lived. I had lost. I had loved. I had grown old. I had died surrounded by the people I love. The universe could have left me alone.
Apparently, it had other plans.
I let the memories fade and returned my attention to the here and now. Time was… weird.
One the initial shock of my circumstances had settled, it was boring. No sun to measure, no ticking clock, or digital numbers. I exist in a constant state of warmth and pressure, silence and stillness.
Sometimes I thought hours had passed. Sometimes it felt like days. Sometimes like forever.
The liquid around me had changed, though. That was one of the few anchors I have. When I first awoke, it was everywhere. Now it was less and less, to the point that I could move freely at some point. I could press my limbs – wings? legs? – against the shell and feel the resistance.
Based on knowledge from my previous life, that could mean only one thing. Hatching wasn't far off.
The idea should have terrified me. Instead, I am just curious.
Curiosity has always been my problem. It got me into plenty of trouble, kept me up late, and pushed me to places I had never imagined. It's also the reason I met Melony in the first place, so I suppose it was good for me in the end.
Still – reborn in an egg. As what? A bird? A snake? A turtle?
A reptile.my mind supplied, as if it already knew. That made my stomach – whatever type it was – tighten in amusement. Of course it will be something dramatic.
I read stories like this. Not religious, but the fantastical kind that fans brought to life. People reincarnated into other worlds, reborn as animals, monsters, swords, even rocks if the author was feeling mean. I had rolled my eye at some but had loved others like a man enjoying an energy drink.
Reborn as a creature. Grow stronger. Evolve. Until you become something cosmic and untouchable. It was ridiculous.
And yet, lying here in this darkness, this was my life now. The scary part wasn't being an animal. Animals live honest lives. They ate, slept, survived. No mortgages. No taxes. No awkward work meetings where everyone pretends the manager's jokes are funny.
The scary part was the other thing. Humans.
If there were humans in this world – and there usually are – then the worst-case scenario was being found. Captured. Prodded. Caged. Used.
It's funny, the things that linger in your mind after you die. I had lived peacefully, surrounded by love, and yet the thought that crept in wasn't about losing Melony. It was about the ugly parts of humanity. The parts that turned wonder into exploitation.
Humans are capable of the most beautiful things and the most terrible.
I knew that from history. I knew it from the news. I knew it from living as a human myself. If there were humans here, then I hope they are far away. If they weren't... well, that's a new kind of terrifying, isn't it?
I shifted again, testing my limbs.
I had two legs, I realized, though the joints felt wrong. My arms – if they were arms – were different too. They had sharp points at the end. Claws, maybe. The movements felt instinctive, like my body was trying to teach me how to use itself.
That was another strange thing: Instinct.
I could feel it like a second voice under my thoughts. Not words. More like impulses. Pressure. Guidance. Move this way. Curl like this. Keep still. Conserve.
As a man, I always thought instinct was just quick thinking or old habits, but, whatever I was now, felt much older. Like something primal carved into my bones. Sometimes, through the shell, I sensed something else.
A presence.
It shifted around me, heavy and protective. Warmth manifested with heaviness and dimmed when it left. The first time it moved away, panic had ripped through me with an intensity that shocked me. Then it had returned and the panic had vanished like it never existed.
Mother.
The word – the meaning – came to me without ask. It wasn't memory, it was knowledge. Certainty. I couldn't see her, but I could feel her attention. I could feel the faint vibrations when she breathed. Sometimes there was a low sound – so light it was felt more than heard – that made comfort spread through me. She cared.
That realization hit me harder than my own reincarnation. Because if I had a mother again, that meant I was truly starting over and that meant–
I snuffed the thought out. Not because it was painful, but because it was too big to hold inside. Instead, I let myself drift into smaller muses to pass the time.
I wonder if my father exists? I never sensed a second presence. If he came, its was quietly or not at all. Maybe whatever species I was didn't do "fatherhood". Maybe it did and mine was dead. I honestly didn't know which was worse.
I wonder about my awareness. Was it normal? Did all babies think like this, trapped in their first dark rooms, quietly building theories about the world? Or was I a complete anomaly – just a leftover conscious stuffed into a new body?
If babies were aware like this, then what happened to us? Where did the sensitivity go? Did we lose that sensitivity to emotions as we grew older?
And if babies weren't aware like this… then how will this affect my mentality as I grow?
Mostly, I was just bored.
There is no dignified way to say that. I was a man who lived decades, who had watched his children grow and grandchildren run through water parks – and here I was, inside an egg, bored out of my… well, whatever part of me did the thinking thing.
Modern life has spoiled me. Phones, specifically. Endless entertainment at the end of my fingers. In here, there was absolutely nothing to do but exist.
Sometimes I would try to count. Heartbeats, but then I would lose track when my mind wandered. The times my mother would leave and return, then I would forget. Time was a fog and I was a man used to schedules and calendars.
I pressed my "claws" against the shell again, more intently this time. The surface didn't crack; it remained solid and immovable. Not yet. Fine.
I settled back down, letting the warmth encompass me, and waited.
The liquid slowly grew lower and lower. My limbs started to feel stronger and the instinctive voice under my thoughts was becoming more insistent, not in words but in restlessness. Something was coming.
I don't know how long I lay there, drifting between thought and stillness, but eventually a jolt of awareness awoke me. The shell felt… tighter. The air – there was air now – felt sharp against my skin. My body urged me to move with an urgency that had never been there before. It wasn't a suggestion. It was a demand.
I inhaled, testing my new lungs. The movement felt awkward, like learning a skill you should already know.
I pushed one limb against the shell. Then another.
A faint sound reached me, a low rumble from outside – Mother shifting, maybe. The warmth intensified as she leaned closer.
I paused, suddenly aware of how much depended on what I did next. There was no gong back into the quiet dark. No more drifting or reminiscing. Whatever was on the other side of this shell would be my new life.
I don't know how to crack an egg.
I don't know what I was.
I don't know what world awaited me.
But I knew one thing with surprising clarity: I wouldn't be alone.
So, I drew a big breath and pushed again, harder. Now – how did you do this?