Sylas kept his eyes closed for a while longer. Having entered a body, a life, felt like a contradiction that merged over time. Those old memories, mixed with memories of this child, echoed in his mind. Each of them was neither a child's nor an adult's memories. The burden carried by a soul had taken over another body. There were two lives inside a body.
In those years when his mother expected him to be a perfect painter with all of them, the child was stuck between a chain of fine art awards and achievements. When Sylas felt those memories, he felt as if he had lived them himself. His mother's cold, perfectionist attitude was nothing but a void filling the void inside Sylas. There were rewards for every step, a punishment for every mistake. "All you have to do is be perfect!" His mother's voice still rang in his ears. That tiny hand was forcibly shaping every moment, every frame of his life.
And then, that memory was something like helplessness. A child, fighting the world and trying to create a life… Sylas could deeply feel the traces of lost dreams in this child's eyes. The child had dreams and talents that were lost under the pressure of his mother, but there was no way out of that world.
Now, there was something heavier than that pressure in that child's memories. For a soul to enter his body was to feel that pain. To enter this body was to carry the child's pain. And in time, Sylas had to say goodbye to that lost world. The tyranny and oppression that a child experienced no longer belonged to him. But, this child… carried the lost memories of that soul.
And then… Sylas entered a new era. The first steps of a new life slowly echoed in another body.
His aunt was welcoming Sylas to his new world.
When Sylas looked into this woman's eyes for the first time, he did not see any surprise, any fear, any trace of fear in her eyes. Everything was unusually normal. With those determined eyes, the aunt was unaware that Sylas' soul was born from the union of two times. "I think you are a mature child," she said, patiently caressing Sylas' gaze. There was a past that was lost in the depths of something, but that lost thing was now found in that woman's gaze.
There was never any pressure, never any coercive feeling in the steps of his aunt, that woman. She approached him with love and gentleness, as many parents do not. When the aunt stepped into this child's life, she did not question any past. Even though the child in this body carried such a different past...
The aunt was a very relaxed woman. She was a funny and intelligent woman who lived her own life. Sylas felt a contradiction despite the pain and losses from his childhood memories and the compassion of this new woman. Suddenly, a very different reality was now replacing the painful and dark void in the child's past.
While Sylas was trying to get used to this body, he could not believe the child's immediate size. "I am like a stranger here, inside that child's body," he said, his inner monologues flowing not from the eyes of a child, but from the perspective of someone who had lived his years. The intersection of memories… The increase of each emotion… Sylas was now existing as a human being, rather than the perfect painter identity he remembered from that old time.
The aunt, very calmly, did not even notice the difference between Sylas's soul and body. "I think you have grown up more, but I don't think that has made you more mature," she said with her laughter and ease. Everything was like a familiar process of growing up. Sylas took a deep breath with the sadness of being here as another being after that past, those pressures. "I am not this child… but I have to live in his body."
And then, the aunt offered to adopt him. As Sylas began to get used to his body, something began to change with the calm and loving attitude of that woman. The more relaxed and unpressured the aunt approached, the more Sylas felt an inner emptiness. It was as if a new soul was accepting old memories with the shadows of the past. "Yes, even though I am in this new body, I come from a completely different life."
Sylas felt the conflict inside him. A child's soul was being combined with the perspective of a person who had lived for 20 years. But reality was taking shape with the merging of both souls. Slowly, his once lost identity was coming into being again. This child's body may not accept him, but an adult soul was getting more accustomed to this body.
Throughout all this time, accepting a soul was a journey in itself. As Sylas discovered the point where the two lives met at each step, he began to understand himself better.