Ayra had always been different. She knew it, even if no one spoke it aloud. Children in the village were quick to run barefoot through mud, to shout, to play, to fight. Their laughter rang freely, their arguments flared like sparks, and within moments they would return to games as though nothing had happened.
Ayra, on the other hand, lingered on the edges. She was there, but not part of them. She watched, listened, and weighed her words before speaking. Her silence unsettled them, though they didn't understand why. To them, she was simply "odd"—the innkeeper's daughter with too-serious eyes.
The village children loved to play in the fields beyond the road. In spring, the tall grass grew high, swaying in the breeze like a sea of green. They would run through it, chasing each other, pretending to be knights or hunters or sometimes even the mages they'd heard stories of.
Ayra went with them when her chores allowed it. Her mother encouraged her, saying, "Go on, Ayra. You'll grow lonely if you don't play with others your age."
So she tried.
That morning, the air was warm, and the children gathered with sticks in hand, declaring themselves warriors of some imagined battle. One boy, Loran—the son of a farmer—shouted that he was the hero, and that the rest should fall into ranks behind him. A few argued, wanting to be the leader themselves, but in the end, most followed along.
Ayra held her stick loosely. She didn't care to pretend she was a knight, but she joined nonetheless, not wanting to disappoint her mother.
"Come on, Ayra!" Loran called, waving at her. "You can be the enemy!"
The others laughed, already charging at her with their sticks raised like swords.
Ayra sighed softly, sidestepped the first clumsy swing, and tapped the boy on the back with her stick before he could recover. "You're dead," she said simply.
The boy frowned. "That doesn't count!"
"It does," she replied calmly. "In a real fight, you left yourself open."
The others blinked at her. Some looked impressed, others annoyed. A girl muttered, "She's always like that. Talks weird."
Ayra didn't argue. She only stepped aside, letting them continue their game without her.
She wanted to belong. Truly, she did. But she couldn't force herself to laugh at things that weren't funny, or scream and run wildly just for the sake of noise. Her years trapped in a hospital bed on Earth had aged her in ways these children couldn't understand.
When they laughed at silly jokes, she thought of quiet books and whispered conversations with nurses. When they boasted of growing strong enough to plow fields or wrestle cows, she thought of the brittle weakness of her old bones and how miraculous it already was that she could run at all.
And when they talked of dreams—of becoming knights, merchants, or adventurers—she listened silently. For her, dreams were not just fantasies. They were goals, deliberate and sharp. She had been denied her future once. She would not let it slip again.
But how could she explain that to children who had never known death, who had never lain awake wondering if tomorrow would come?
So, she stayed quiet. And the gap between her and the others grew.
Not all treated her poorly. One afternoon, after another round of games in which Ayra had been pushed aside, she sat under the shade of a tree, drawing shapes in the dirt with a stick.
A small shadow fell across her. It was Mira, a girl her age with soft brown curls and wide eyes. Mira was one of the few who didn't mock Ayra for her quietness.
"Do you… want to play something else?" Mira asked timidly.
Ayra looked up. "Like what?"
Mira shrugged. "I don't know. We could look for bird nests. Or… or just talk."
That startled a small smile from Ayra. Talking—now that, she could do. She set her stick aside and nodded. "Alright."
The two girls wandered along the edge of the fields, Mira chattering about her family's goats, about how one had escaped the pen last week and eaten half a basket of laundry. Ayra listened, offering small comments here and there, and though it was simple, it felt… nice.
For once, she wasn't on the outside.
Of course, not everyone was kind. Loran, who often led the games, seemed to take special pleasure in mocking her.
"You think you're better than us, don't you?" he sneered one day, after Ayra had corrected his clumsy swing again.
Ayra frowned. "I don't. I only—"
"You always talk like you know everything. Like you're some old granny in a child's body."
The other children snickered. Ayra's cheeks burned, but she kept her voice level. "I'm just trying to help."
"Help?" Loran spat on the ground. "You're weird. Always staring off at the sky. Always quiet. Maybe you're cursed."
That stung more than Ayra wanted to admit. She tightened her grip on her stick, her Earth-born pride whispering for her to strike him across the head. But she forced herself to loosen her hand. Violence here would only earn her more isolation.
Instead, she turned and walked away. The laughter behind her followed her all the way back to the inn.
That night, curled beneath her thin blanket in the attic, Ayra stared at the ceiling beams. The words echoed in her head: "Maybe you're cursed."
She had been cursed, in a way. Cursed with illness in her first life. Cursed with the knowledge of a world far different than this one. Cursed, perhaps, with a second chance that she did not know how to use yet.
But she refused to believe it was a curse forever.
One day, she told herself, these children would not laugh. One day, she would rise above this small village, this small inn, and carve her name into the world.
For now, though, she was still only seven. Still just the innkeeper's daughter. Still Ayra, with too-old eyes and secrets she could not share.
So she endured.
The next day, she returned to the fields. This time, when the children played their pretend battles, she did not argue or correct them. She simply joined in, following their rules, even when they made little sense.
And when Loran tried to mock her again, Mira stepped in. "Stop it. She's just playing like the rest of us."
Loran scoffed, but he turned away, muttering.
Ayra's chest warmed at that small act of kindness. Perhaps, she thought, she wasn't as alone as she believed.
The days passed like that—half belonging, half apart. But slowly, quietly, she was learning. Not just about the village, but about herself, about patience, and about how to live in this second chance she had been given.
And though no one could see it yet, Ayra Veylen was preparing for the day the world would finally notice her.