Idea - 1: Prologue - Memories of a Past Life.

As the summary in the new collection says, this is an idea I randomly had and ended up writing, so I wanted to post it here in case anyone wants to read. Consider it as One-Shots, which may eventually turn into a story in the future.

For now, they are just ideas.

[...]---[...]

Being an orphan wasn't the best thing in the world, obviously; at least, the orphanage I lived in was relatively decent.

I wasn't placed in the orphanage because my parents didn't want me. From what I had learned about them, they were good people. That, of course, didn't stop them from dying in a car accident.

The only reason my two-year-old self survived that accident, besides luck, of course, or misfortune, as I often found myself thinking, was the love my parents had. Not some magical nonsense, just care. They had bought the best child seat for me to sit in. It was what prevented me from being crushed or thrown out of the car and flying away.

I don't remember anything from that time, maybe a blur or two, maybe some sound or smell. A two-year-old doesn't have a very good memory, so I have no personal memory of my parents, just some of their belongings that I keep in a box and a few photos.

After the accident, whoever investigated everything and found my tiny body among what was left of a car smashed against another couldn't find any more relatives of mine. No grandparents, uncles, aunts, nothing. I had no living relatives other than my parents, both only children, just like me, with parents already dead... Just like me too.

So, I ended up in an orphanage, spending my childhood and early adolescence there, until I turned thirteen. Well, fourteen, since my birthday was in two days, but I didn't make it to that.

Living in the orphanage was monotonous: daily tasks, studies, reading, the same old routine.

It wasn't bad, but I didn't have much choice in what to do either. Maybe choose which book to read, but that was it. We weren't allowed to go out unaccompanied until sixteen. We couldn't go on school trips because the orphanage had no extra money, and we had no grand celebrations for the same reason.

It was suffocating, restrictive.

Of course, I never blamed any of the caregivers. They always treated us well, strict but kind, trying to teach and take care of everyone as best as they could.

I blamed the director a bit, but that might be my pettiness for never having beaten that old man at chess.

But that didn't change the fact that I wanted to live, to try something new, to escape the boredom that was my current life.

The opportunity came when the orphanage won a trip to the beach, a contest, basically, whose prize was a luxury trip to Paris. However, the director, who had won the contest, managed to negotiate.

At first, the old man wanted to exchange it for money, selling the tickets and everything else, but as that wasn't possible, he negotiated to swap everything for a trip to the beach for everyone, as it would be much cheaper than a luxury trip to Paris. The contest organizers accepted.

Funny how things are; if the old man were more selfish and had gone on the trip to Paris, things probably would have been different.

If the contest organizers had agreed to give money instead of the trip, things would have been different.

If the old man hadn't won the contest, things would have been different.

If I weren't an idiot, things would have been different...

The trip was as expected. Everyone was excited, the caregivers were working twice as hard to take care of everyone, even on the bus, and they went over the rules dozens of times.

"Don't run far away."

"Don't leave our line of sight."

There were a few more, which I'll admit I didn't pay attention to, but the most important one was: "Don't go to the deep sea."

Of course, younger children were to be accompanied at all times. This last rule applied to the older ones, which included me to some extent, as I would be celebrating my birthday in two days.

Fourteen years old was one of the oldest, or at least close to it.

I took the trip as a birthday present, by the way, even though some people gave me dirty looks for my "Claim."

Arriving at the beach, initial chaos was avoided with promises of dessert cancellation and dishwashing punishments for a year.

That calmed almost everyone down quickly, except for some of the older ones, which included me.

Hormones, human foolishness, teenagers, sea, and lack of supervision didn't mix well at all. I can attest to that; anyone who disagrees is wrong. It wasn't a debate, it was a fact.

I, along with the other older orphans, organized a group and waited. When it was lunchtime and everyone was distracted – caregivers taking care of the kids, kids eating, and the old director probably sleeping – we sneaked out without anyone noticing.

Exploring the beach had been fun. Finding a rocky part with a reef was also exciting. Swimming, not so much; I was never a fan, even though I could swim well. However, getting into the water was the only thing that seemed to keep everyone else's clothes intact and still on their bodies.

The cold water helped calm the hormones. Not that I had that problem; I was more concerned with seeing the corals and fish than the girls.

My puberty hadn't arrived yet, something the old man teased me about since I was the "Dwarf" among all the older ones and even some of the younger ones.

Still, some of them had their hands here and there, which prevented them from paying attention to everything else.

I focused on spearfishing with an improvised spear I had made, caught some fish, but because of that, I almost always had my head down, looking at the sea.

The others, if they weren't busy clinging to each other, were trying to copy me and failing miserably. So, overall, everyone was either spaced out or paying attention to the water, not the sky.

I found out that coastal storms are something that happens out of nowhere. One moment everything is fine, ten seconds later the sky suddenly darkens, rain starts falling like a water curtain, and the sea kind of gets pissed off with everything inside it.

Which basically included all of us, and then my stupidity happened.

Did I hesitate to get out of the sea? No. Did I go back into it when I saw two idiots who had gone deeper to fool around underwater? Yes.

I wasn't the only one who went to save the couple of idiots; two other guys came with me. They might be horny idiots, but they were our idiots; everyone in the orphanage helped each other as best as they could.

It might have been foolish of me to go back to help, given that I was the "Dwarf," but I was the best swimmer, and thanks to that, both idiots, the girl and the guy, came out alive.

I managed to guide the relatively calm girl, while the other two guys helped the panicked idiot.

I didn't realize the girl wasn't wearing a bra until we reached the shore.

I got the girl out of the water quickly and didn't even wait before going back into the water to help the two who seemed to be almost dragged underwater by the idiot.

If I had waited a bit, I probably would have received a group hug from the girls or something as a reward, but I didn't think about that at the time. Probably the adrenaline from everything happening and my lack of hormones.

Funny how not being a horny teenager ended up killing me.

In the meantime, others of us had gone to get help, but I knew it wouldn't arrive in time, so I threw myself into the sea anyway.

Getting that idiot out of the water along with the other two was difficult. Spending practically the whole day in the water, fishing, playing, tired everyone out.

Which included me, of course. I could swim well, but my body had a limit.

While the two guys pulled the idiot out of the water, a relatively strong wave threw me against the corals, which hurt. It also ended up pushing me into an underwater current that dragged me away.

Amidst the noise of the waves and the storm, I'm sure I heard screams calling my name and saw everyone looking for me, many of those on land jumping into the water to search for me.

Fools, all of them... They couldn't swim like I could. Going back into the sea was practically suicide; still, they jumped. Idiots...

The stupidity was so much that I could see the lifeguards, who had arrived, pulling them out of the water before they died, even if they tried, in any way, to return to the water.

At least, I think they were lifeguards; they could just be random people. Seeing things while avoiding drowning was complicated.

Breathing, too, by the way, especially with a hurting chest. I'm sure there was a nasty cut there; my exhausted body didn't help either.

As I had said, as good as I was at swimming, my body had a limit, a limit that the sea tested and eventually found.

Sinking was something frightening, the desperation of not being able to resurface. A part of me knew I would die, which gave me a burst of strength.

It wasn't enough.

Feeling the air escape from my body was even more desperate. The lack of light, the further my body sank, along with my vision darkening, made everything worse.

Still, after a while, everything seemed to become distant, peaceful...

The pain in my chest began to diminish, my vision along with it, faster than before, and my body started to get cold; the sounds had disappeared long ago.

I had heard that, when near death, you can relive your entire life for some reason. The old man had explained to me that this was basically the brain trying to find a way to keep you alive, searching through everything it knew.

Well, mine was smarter than most, or lazier, since that didn't happen.

My brain, my body probably already knew I was going to die, so it bothered, just accepted the end calmly.

Then I blacked out, everything disappearing at once.

Death was curious; one moment you were alive, the next you were not.

I had no afterlife, if it existed; I didn't know if I believed in "souls" and all that, nor was I religious. Maybe that affected things? I didn't know.

What I did know was that, for sure, I had died, or come so close to death that the difference didn't matter anymore.

Then, for some reason, I wasn't dead anymore.

How? I had no idea, I didn't even know where I was; my consciousness seemed cloudy, far, distant...

This lasted some time, years? Maybe, everything was slow and distant; I didn't feel the passage of time, my thoughts didn't even seem coherent.

When I emerged from this state, it was as if I had woken up from a prolonged sleep. I had never been in a coma, but maybe it was similar.

My first memory was strange; I was playing, or at least my body was, with a little boy who seemed to be about two or three years old.

The strangeness of the situation made me not react erratically, screaming or anything. Maybe I couldn't control my body well; that helped too.

I looked around the place we were for some time.

It was a room; it had a bed, a mirror, a dresser, all normal, but it was a girl's room. That kind of shocked me back to reality and made me move my arms, which I found to be tiny in the region of my groin.

I was wearing diapers, which was strange, quite embarrassing actually, but I managed to check what I wanted; my buddy was there... Little buddy now.

After sighing in relief and realizing that I was a child who had just lost the title of "baby," I panicked, knocking over some of the other child's toys in the room, making him cry, loudly.

Very loud, and he hadn't even been hit by the toys, nor were they the toys he was playing with!

At least the commotion served to get the attention of a woman, who opened the door a few seconds after the crying started and also served to wake up a girl who was sleeping in the bed.

I hadn't seen her before; being a gnome didn't give me a very good field of vision. I was smaller than before...

I noticed that the two women were blond, the same with the child in front of me, who was also blond...

"Saphron Arc, didn't I tell you to watch your brothers?!" The woman spoke in a stern tone to the girl in bed.

Brothers?... In the plural?

I hadn't seen any other children in the room, so this can only mean that I was one of those brothers...

"I was watching!" The girl retorted, pointing with both hands at me and the other child. "Jaune started crying out of nowhere! Lavan didn't even touch him!".

It was the first time I heard my name, at least the name I had in this life.

Lavan... Arc...