"It's better to be dead than to be without life".
My father was a man who loved his catchphrases. He had several, but this one was his favourite. It followed me all my life as a motto, an inspiration to keep pushing forward and fighting. At first glance, it might sound silly or nonsensical, but it is anything but that. It means that literal death is preferable to a life without meaning, without spirit, without actual life. It means that we should always strive to follow our dreams even if we risk death in the process, rather than just accepting whatever lemons life throws at us.
We were poor. Like, really, actually poor. A single father, an immigrant, and his daughter, in a third-world country, fighting for survival, living from scraps. But what he lacked in financial means, he had in culture, and he passed on that culture to me. I grew up in the favelas of Brazil, but my eyes were on the stars. I strived for knowledge, for creating beautiful things, and for one day leaving this planet. At some point, I began to understand the unfairness of the world I lived in, so I redoubled my efforts. If space travel wouldn't happen in my lifetime, I would create other goals. I became a poet, a musician, a revolutionary, an anthropologist, a game developer, and kept pushing, kept fighting.
I lived in the streets, I slept on plazas under the moon and stars, I also lived in simple homes, sometimes in middle-class apartments, and finally in a rich neighbourhood. My life was a constant struggle to get a better quality of life, a constant loop of getting ahead, then having everything crashing under my feet, only to go at it even harder, and have a peak higher than the last peak. Between the peaks, the valleys of despair.
More than once, I found myself in a position of losing everything and having to start from scratch again. And, at 40 years old, I found myself in that place again. I just had to close the doors of my indie game studio, spending the last cents in my bank accounts to pay the employees' last salaries. I was once more unemployed and without a dime in my pockets. Only this time, I didn't have any more energy, not even an ounce of fighting spirit. My soul was as broken as my finances.
"It's better to be dead than to be without life".
My father's words float in my consciousness like a curse. I don't regret all the effort I put into living my dreams, into making the world more beautiful, even if just by a little bit. But I'm tired. I feel like giving up. The world is not bad, but it's not good either. "The universe simply exists", I think it's a quote from Dune, the bedside book series from my teens. It doesn't help or hinder, it doesn't even have a consciousness to be able to care. But it isn't fair. Humans struggle for survival, all beings do, and in that struggle, we push back against everyone else. All beings, human and non-human, share this same rule, and I was just too weak. I lost. And I don't care anymore.
"It's better to be dead than to be without life".
I know, Dad. I know. I can't just give up, not now, not after everything. But I'm not strong enough. I keep repeating those words to myself, walking through the streets, as heavy rain pours down. I'm soaked to my core, but I just keep walking, searching for a warmth that might be able to rekindle my ashes once again. I wander into a cafe I've never visited before. It's cozy, and I ask for a coffee and a chocolate cake. Suddenly, a cat jumps onto the table. "Oh, it's a cat cafe, nice!" I mutter as I reach my hand for the cat to sniff. It seems to have sensed my troubles, as it rubs its face against my hand, prompting a smile to come onto my lips, the first one in weeks. As I tentatively pet it, a weird boding invades my senses, a feeling of impending doom. I look to the side, and something weird seems to appear, floating in the air, like a tear in the fabric of reality itself. It's like timespace itself was being torn, and then suddenly, everything is black.
"It's better to be dead than to be without life".
My name is Aurora Carvalho. I repeat those two phrases as a mantra as I look around - the motto and my name. Though 'look around' is only a manner of speech, as I can't move my head. Or any part of my body. There's a woman holding me, and she seems to be talking to me, but I don't understand a word of what she is saying. She has cat ears, for some reason, and it fascinates me, but I can't focus my sight for long, so I can't get the details of her features. Soon I'm handed to other women, as if I were small and light. All of them have weird features in their ears, like animal ears or elongated ears. They are also beautiful, and all have a piece of black clothing around their necks. I try to reach that piece of cloth, but I can't move my arms, then I notice that I'm wrapped in a cloth-like thing. Am I a baby right now??
As I feel myself restricted, frustration mounts inside me, and suddenly I notice that I'm crying. I can't control it, it's like I'm a foreign visitor in this body, the crying gets louder and louder by itself, and I'm handed to another woman, the first one that doesn't have any distinctive features. She is very nice and coos to me, then she bares her chest to feed me. The sensation of the nurturing milk instantly calms my nerves, and my eyes lock into hers while she says a lot of stuff with a calming and caring voice. I know what she is saying, though I don't understand a word of the language... the words of mothers to their babies are universal, after all. It's in that moment that I know for certain that woman is my mother.
"It's better to be dead than to be without life".
I don't know what happened, but it looks like I was given another chance in life. During my life as Aurora, I was fascinated and scared of life after death. I didn't want it to exist, but at the same time, I desired never to die; I wished for eternal life. So I studied several occult groups and meditation methods, and had a contingency plan for the case of reincarnation. I had a hypothesis that when we reincarnate - if we reincarnate, to begin with - we might start the new life with lingering memories from the last one, but would lose them because of the undeveloped nature of the baby's brain. So I have a plan to circumvent that, and as I find myself in a situation that could only be called reincarnation, I set that plan in motion. I spend all my awake time doing meditation exercises and also replaying my past life from beginning to end in my head.
The women around me were all very kind and loving. Sometimes someone would enter the room we lived in, and I would hear a man's voice, but the women always shielded me so I would never see the men. Sometimes my mother would disappear for a couple of days, but she always came back. I say days, but we don't have a window here, and I never leave the room, which is kinda bugging me, but it's not a bad life. I only wish that the incessant noise in the background would relent. I don't know what is making it, but it sounds like a siren, or an alarm someone left on. It's unsettling, though I can't focus enough to understand it.
Some time has passed, and by the ease of movements of my arms and hands, I think that I might be a couple of months old already. I learned that my name in this new life is Áurea. Which is funny, because Áurea means 'golden', while Aurora, my name in my old life, means 'dawn'. Like the old occult order from Earth. Oh, and that's right, I also learned that I'm not on earth anymore. Now that my brain is more developed and the sensory processing is better, I can see more details in the faces of the women around me. Most of them are what the fantasy novels on Earth would call 'beastkin', while some have elf-like ears. Unless I ended up in some dystopic genetic engineering secret lab, I'm in a whole different world from Earth. Also, I'm finally learning a couple of words, and they aren't like any language I've seen on Earth, and I was a linguistics nerd in my past life.
Oh, and now that I think about sensory processing being better, I can now see what the black pieces of clothing around the women's necks are... they are collars. Also, the siren-like noises... are cries and moans. Where the hell am I???