It was total darkness; although I was not suffocating, I felt like I couldn't breathe, and my consciousness often left me. I wasn't sure if I was sleeping or awake, not even if I was alive or dead.

Without the slightest idea of how much time I spent in that state, my situation suddenly changed; I felt a pressure that was expelling me from that place.

My head was the first to feel the cold air, and by the time my ears did, I could clearly hear three people screaming. The voice that seemed to be that of a young woman was much louder than the rest.

I don't know if it was because of the noise, but I finally seemed to be waking up from my long lethargy. By the time I felt the air on my face, I realized that I could now actually breathe.

Once my body was completely freed from what felt like a tight sleeping bag made of wet flesh, I realized that now a pair of gigantic hands were holding me.

Out of fear, I decided to open my eyes, which proved to be much more difficult than I had expected, but once I managed to do it, I found myself face-to-face with a smiling elderly lady.

The woman soon handed me over to a teenager, who took me in his arms. His watery blue eyes stared at me so intently that I was afraid he was thinking of eating me. But what caught my attention the most was his silvery hair.

Apparently, my strange death was not a dream, and it turns out I have been reborn as the son of a rebellious teenager who dyes his hair...

"Afta, sie bacre dir mele!" After watching me for what seemed like an eternity (I was already getting embarrassed), the teenager finally said something.

What... what language is that... I hope it's not too difficult to learn or I'm going to have problems.

The young man carried me in his arms and knelt beside a bed where a beautiful girl with brown hair and golden eyes was resting... golden eyes?

"To landa zu fine vi tie hiren sie dir." The girl, also a teenager, spoke tiredly to her partner and gave me a look full of love. I don't remember anyone ever looking at me like that in my past life.

Now that I think about it, I really shouldn't be able to remember anything at all...

"Kare, vi lux lio tez nafir? Ronde te lio sisi fenar..."  The boy spoke again; now, he gave me a worried look.

After settling me into just one of his arms, my father raised his hand and let it fall onto my bare baby buttocks. An intense pain ran through my entire body and almost brought tears to my eyes, but my soul was that of an adult, and out of pride, I resisted crying with all my strength.

"Te lek tez koria!" The girl lying down drew strength from her maternal instinct and exclaimed something to her partner. I didn't need a translation; from how she looked at me, I could deduce that she was worried about the strength of the impact.

Honestly, the slap didn't have much speed, and therefore, the contact wasn't that strong, but my body was that of a baby, and I must admit that it hurt a lot. Whether out of shame or pain, I couldn't help but cast a resentful look at my new father.

"Quase sie dol… Haha! Tadil afta ruck, nelda ahir exier ander ect" Whatever the young man's concern was, it seemed that my defiant gesture had calmed him down. After kissing me on the forehead (as an apology, maybe?), he handed me over to the arms of the now reclining girl.

My new mother hugged me very carefully and proceeded to kiss me on the forehead as well. Then, perhaps out of a spirit of competition or simply pure adoration, she gave me two more, on my chubby baby cheek and on my nose.

The truth is that I wasn't a fan of a couple of unknown teenagers showering me with kisses, but... feeling human affection after so long wasn't so bad. The real problem was what happened next.

It is true that one of the first things I realized when I regained complete control of my senses was that I was hungry. But it wasn't until the teenage girl who had me in her arms uncovered one of her breasts that I realized how I would be fed in this first stage of my life.

Of course, my libido was zero; I don't think it is biologically possible to feel aroused inside a baby's body in the first place. But, still, the closer the girl brought my face to her nipple, the more guilt I felt.

If I knew how to speak their language, I might have confessed my situation right there and then... Or maybe not; who knows what they would do if their baby started talking at birth.

Unable to devise a way out, I soon found myself in front of a white fleshy mountain crowned with an orangish nipple. I felt a silent pressure on the back of my neck as my two new parents looked at me expectantly.

I had no choice but to close my eyes and throw myself into the situation.

I hugged the breast while filling my mouth with its nipple. In my mind, I tried to imagine that it was a toy pacifier and not one of the most delicate parts of an innocent teenage girl. But the feeling of my tiny arms sinking into the soft flesh made it quite difficult.

I thought I was drowning in guilt, but it was actually the milk that had started to come out, so I hurried to swallow. I don't think I can recommend human milk to anyone; I'm not saying that because of its taste; it's just that knowing it was human made me feel a little sick.

But in the end, hunger always won, and during my infancy, my new body was able to acquire the nutrients it needed without problems...

*****

I'm unsure if a baby's mind is faster at learning new things or how retaining memories of my past life has affected that. But the truth is that after a year, I could understand this new language quite well.

    As an example, I can mention the following words:  

(Look/See: Afta) (Be/Are/Being: Vi) (Doing/(Also)Being: Lio) (Good/All right: Fenar) (To have: Bacre) (Same/Equal: Tie) ((So)Much: Tez) (With: Lek) (Eyes: Mele) (Color: Hiren) (Tranquility/Calmess: Nafir) (Strength: Koria) (That/Those: Landa) (Your/s: Dir) (Maybe: Ronde) (Few/Little: Zu) (But/However: Kare) (No: Te) (Ugly: Ruck) (Hair: Fine Normal/Usual: Lux) (Breath/Breathing: Sisi) (Seem/Seeming: Nelda) ((To be)Born: Ahir) (Healthy: Exier) (After: Ander) (All: Ect) ((I)Just/Only: Quase) (Touch: Dol) (And: To)

Of course, it is one thing to know what a word means and quite another to conjugate it correctly.

There were also more complex words to understand, like "Tadil," which you use when something regards you or it's being done to you (me, to me, etc.) and can change the meaning of the next word.

Also, there were words like "sie," which were even more challenging to grasp due to the grammatical uses it has in this language, but even so, by now, I can understand almost anything.

However, I'm not going to deny that my parents talked to me in a baby voice and with simpler words, which I greatly appreciated.

In this year of my new life, in addition to learning the language, I also learned quite a few other things. But by far, the biggest shock came when I realized that apparently, I was not on planet Earth... that is, I had been born in another world.

Well, to say that it was a shock is a bit of an exaggeration. To tell the truth, I had already assumed it shortly after being born. Not only did I know too many stories of similar cases, where the first indication was that you remember your previous life, but I also thought of the words of my murderer: "Your soul went to the wrong world," and "I'll send you back."

What did she mean by that? And why did she claim to be my daughter? It's nothing to brag about, but I had never had a girlfriend, much less children of my own.

For the moment, I'm not going to worry about that; there is also the possibility that she was simply a lunatic, and this was all a mere coincidence.

There are many things about the event in which I lost my life that I wouldn't know how to explain, but I also can't explain the magicians' tricks that appear on television. There isn't much I can do until I get more information (and I can at least go to the bathroom on my own).

Going back to the previous topic, this couldn't be planet Earth. There were many factors to give certainty to that. First of all, some people I have seen in this new short life presented traits I had never seen in normal humans.

Let's start with the hair and eye colors. My young father, Vindel Dibelos, has normal blue eyes, but his hair, on the other hand, is silver, and it is not dyed (I confirmed this when I pretended to be playing with his head). Of course, In my mother's Telize Dibelos case, I didn't stick my fingers on her eyes, but over time, it was clear that she wasn't wearing any gold contact lenses.

But, in any case, these colors do not seem very common here either; Vindel's blue eyes and Telize's brown hair are overwhelmingly prevalent in the small village where I was born.

It is worth mentioning that when I saw my reflection in the water, I realized that I had inherited the weirdest traits of each of my parents. That's right, I, Rendal Dibelos, with my silver hair and golden eyes, am the strangest of them all.

But, at least I don't stand out that much in this world. When I was a few months old, Telize carried me in her arms when she accompanied Vindel to a village meeting with some merchants with animal ears and tails... And on another day, while looking through the window, I spotted someone near the forest who seemed to be a hunter carrying a bow... and had long pointy ears!

From all that, it was already clear. Unless I found myself in the middle of a secret cult of cosplayers hidden away from civilization, there was no doubt that this was another world.

I say this about being far from civilization because there was no type of technology in my village, not even electric lights.

Our tiny home, built of wood and stone, consisted of two rooms, one with a bed where the three of us slept and another larger one with a central rocky space for the fire, which served as the kitchen and living room.

The toilet was separate from the cottage, and that was the main reason why, despite retaining my adult intelligence, I couldn't go on my own even after a year. I'm not saying this because of the distance but because of what lived in the space in between... creatures known as batenka.