Rebirth
Only when I feel myself mostly enclosed by an ungainly surface and born away from both the shelter and my former roommate do I realise – truly realise – who I am – what I am – in this place.
This horribly familiar place.
In a horribly familiar event.
For a long, long time, all that I can see is a field of blue marred with silvery markings, and all that I can hear close to me is the frantic pattering of a heart smaller than the shelter – than my birth mother – accompanied by the rapid, harsh breath of an animal that knows very well how trapped it is.
And farther away, the feels and sounds of an urban battle as the Midgardians named it – pained and dying cries of voices deep and deeper, vicious seiðr and arrows singing, bellowed orders and curses, structures crumbling and exploding, animals and civilians screaming, weapons firing and clanging and thumping – hem us in from all sides, worse than a pack of hungry wolves closing in on helpless prey.
More often than not, my holder – my protector, my kidnapper – has to stop running and hunker down somewhere, folding themself round me in a pitiful attempt of protection, in a sad mockery of the shelter – the womb – I was in in what feels like moments ago. They murmur feverishly after each instance, even as they run faster, sounding more like desperate prayers than anything else.
They sound young. They feel young.
I have been spirited away by a child. One of the two kin-feeling individuals that the shelter – my mother! – introduced to me, in fact.
And they are alone. Not even accompanied by the other one as guard.
Pitifully inadequate, in the midst of a vicious, desperate battle.
Which happens in the middle of a town of civilians.
I heard the tales. I read the books. But I never thought that events could be like… this.
A living, waking nightmare.
I was born in battle.
I have been reborn in battle.
But what for? What is the use of me reliving my wretched life? What is the use of me being a weak newborn carried away in a battle?
Did the Norns wish to show me how not abandoned I was after all? Well, they should consider me informed, now, and return me to oblivion!
This existence, it is even worse than the eternity I spent under Thanos’ lack of mercy. I would do many, many things to be free of it.
Including howling with all my inconsiderable might, both physically and mentally.