Cold against her touch, Patience ran her hands over the snout of the skull. Her fingers wrapped around its side, lifting it off the wooden chair. Holding his face up to hers, she stared into the skull. Refusing to let her eyes stray from the vacant gaze, she walked to the parlor and sat in the center of the sofa. In the dancing light of the fireplace, she shut her eyes, taking a deep breath. Slowly, she placed the skull over her head.

The jolt felt through her neck affirmed their connection. Patience stood, head bowed, eyes closed, breaths calm. A familiar tickle of mist feathered down her back. A rasp barely distinguishable from the crackling fire kissed her ears.

“You put me back on?” whispered Anax.

“Tell me,” said Patience as she sat on the sofa, “what do your kind do with their second lives?”

Pausing a moment, Anax pondered before he responded. “Most simply go back to their families. They find it difficult to let go, so they return.”

Patience mulled with her knees drawn up to her chest. The last remnants of her father’s work stared down at her, the glow of the fire lit sparks in their glass eyes. Her parents were her world. Ever since they passed, all Patience did was maintain the life they had lived together. 

She had never gone to see the ocean nor the mountains. She had relied on her parents to bring the world to her, through exotic game to be stuffed, through the museums they took her to visit in the city, through the books they read her. More importantly, they left her with skills, knowledge, and a home. They gave her everything she needed to tread out on her own path and gave her a place to return to. Yet she was here. She had always been here.

“What was your past life like?”

Anax remained silent for a minute and then replied, “I grew up with my mother, father, and two sisters. When I came of age, it was time for me to leave them. So I did. I found a band of other bachelor males and joined. Eventually they left one by one to start families of their own. Until only I remained.”

Family. Patience wanted to keep her parent’s legacy alive, doing everything she could to keep her home as it was when they left it, a past life. Tears fell from Patience’s face as an ache of realization slowly crept through her.

“Do you remember how you died?”

“There was a snowstorm on the mountain. I couldn’t see very well. I lost my footing. I fell.” Anax paused. “I broke.”

“And you were all alone,” whispered Patience. Toiling day after day to keep the fires of a past life burning was not what her parents wanted for her. It was not what they intended the moment they brought her into their home and hearts. They wanted her to make a life for herself. She was their legacy.

Patience held a hand up to Anax’s skull. Warm fingers stroked his mandible. He met her hand with his own, cupping it gently.

“Even if I awoke back in my homeland, I would have little to welcome me,” he said. “So I’m glad I ended up here.”

Patience’s mouth wrinkled into a smile underneath weepy red eyes.

“Well then, let’s make this second life worth living,” said the girl.