I was sure that I was supposed to achieve something faster, achieve something without so much mishaps, so much hate.

Yes…I was trying to hide it and was really scared of letting it out…That I…Was full of hatred…

But, at this moment, where I was free and did not have a master, I was taking in this small amount of happiness before it might disappear, to possibly some wolves or bears teeth to end it. If they bite me in the heart, again, I would be combusting and be flown away to start again…Again…

The strange thing about becoming ash, was the blurry figments that I could see. With little bits and pieces of seeing what was going on outside, I was able to see that three years went by from dying the first time, before I was finally reborn once again. This second time, I was ash for a year, before finally becoming the infant that I am now. A whole year…

With the little segments of information that I was able to obtain, I still didn’t know what natural beasts or cultivators may be here in Ceptily, as I’ve also never ventured far in my life…In fact, seeing the sky was a very big thing for me and I really was sucking in the glory of being reborn and having a new life!

It really sucked though, because I was so weak in this state, so I was unable to turn around or just walk around to relish even more of my freedom…No, I was stuck here and no doubt, shortly, something will come soon!

 

 

An hour later, I heard noises and a growl. Some animals either flew away or pounced, I wasn’t sure if they were natural or cultivators though and then the noises got bigger and bigger and I knew something, or someone, was coming towards me…

Just as I thought that I was going to have to turn into ash again, so quickly after being revived, I was then picked up by someone naked and they cooed at me in confusion, “Hey, little one…What are you doing here?”

Before now, I was never able to know what others were before I cultivated myself…But strangely, I already knew this man had a wolf creature and had obviously shifted, as he was now naked.

Yes, some creatures weren’t able to be dressed upon shifting back from their creature…

But…Nakedness wasn’t really a problem here, it was more so that the man’s brown eyes reminded me of…

I looked at this man and sighed in my heart…There was less than five people who had tried to ever help me, one of them was my father…Who must have loved me because he had eventually died for me…That was my father Brendon…

As I was taken in by this wolf creature and man, who had the same eyes as my father, I accepted this new life…With hope that I can break apart my hate or continue to lock it up inside myself…

I grew up among a small wolf clan, I did see questionable eyes to how I ended up in the bush and why it felt like I acted beyond my years, so, I had to be careful.

Acting as close as I could to the age I was, I slowly grew up and finally had a less stressful upbringing then that of my first and second life’s.

 

***

 

My father was a heron creature, and he already had his family before he accidentally touched a maid, finding her to be a falcon creature. Both of the creatures had yearned for each other since that first touch and my father had let things go with the flow, having told me that he had never wanted to coax a woman so desperately in his life!

My mother’s name was Ripley and she had wavy brown hair like my own. He told me that my eyes are hers, as they had a golden tint to my yellow iris’s. She had been smaller then me though, as I was up to my father’s shoulder and my mother was up to his higher chest. But, just like the falcon, she had led a solitary life and used her predatory instincts to survive her servant’s life. With her hearing and easy, quick escape methods, it was told that my mother stayed out of trouble and was hardly ever seen…Even though she worked at my father’s residence…

He had distant eyes when he told me this story and I was at the stage back then of finally believing him to be true, but now at the present day, it felt like a very long time ago…

Since he was a heron creature, his loyalty to one wife had already been destroyed because he already had a second wife, and then he was desperate for a maid. Of course, the maid was not only a surprise to my father, but that of his first and second wives. Luckily, they did not find out about the maid until after the deed had been done and that my mother was already pregnant with me.

He had smiled, telling me it had taken two days to woe my mother over, but then he had frowned…

I really hadn’t been interested in the intimacy of his story, but he told me anyway…

Stating that it was a strange type of sex, that he had never done prior to my mother, he wondered if it was because I was the Phoenix, yet none of us had any answers to that…

Telling me that it was great, but also painful, I could only sigh now to my own memories, because to me…Sex had always been painful and never great…It wasn’t something I wanted to remember like he did…

 

My father’s creature had not let him finish until my mother’s had been completely ready…And by that, it meant that they were so hot that drops and drops of sweat had made the bed, which completely drenched it as though it had been in the rain. Not until both him and her were nearly suffocating into heat and dehydration, was he able to finish and accomplish his goal. He told me, even through my blushing features, that even though it was painful, he still wanted to continue it, and that feeling had only stopped upon finding my mother pregnant.

He laughed about all the excuses he had to make to disappearing back then for many hours at a time. Not only was it seen that he had not worked for an entire day, but he had not let anyone into his bed chambers as well. Not only were his other wives worried, but so were the servants whom had prepared food or staying close by, as nothing had gone in or out of that one room for so long!

He shook his head to the predicament, as he had to change his own bed around before he could let anyone in!

My mother was escorted out through a back entrance to rest, as she was thoroughly exhausted!

And, since such an occurrence took place a couple of times, and how rare and strange it was, both the maid and my father had been silent about it. It wasn’t until my mother had been four months pregnant, unable to hide it anymore, that my father sighed and said he had to take her in as a wife.

He looked in the distance then, his thoughts far from being beside me…

 

I hadn’t spoken much to my father in the whole time that he had come to met me. In fact, it was worrying that someone would come, because I still had a master and we were hidden in a cave. At this time in my first life, I was being hidden by the Mosquito King himself and his palace resided underground…My cave was a desolate cave that was only able to be entered by the King himself and no one else. He…He had treated me the worst in my first life…Yet…

I wondered how my father had found me there, even in this present day…The underground palace was filled with royal mosquito people and there were so many of them that they didn’t need the other population to come and help by being servants or guards.

I did happen to hear that this was normal there, so when I had gone to the country of Dura, I had been surprised to how they had lived there, thinking that it was strange…

My father though, he was even sure that no one was to come and that he wasn’t going to leave until he told me about my story and how special I was.

I remembered being a bit worried about his presence, but…He still did speak what he wanted to, before he left…

 

…He knew it right from the beginning, because of the completely rare way that not only how I was conceived but because his creature and my mother’s creature yearned for each other, until the pregnancy finally happened.

Cravings of burning hot food and that of colored food…My father told me that since I am the Phoenix, burning hot food seems to make sense, yet the colored food…

My mother would have a food of different colors every day, for at least a month, and that was the only reason my father was able to work out what she was doing, yet, never understood why. It didn’t matter what the food was, just as long as she had the color. Whether it be green lettuce or green celery…It just had to be green. Chillies or capsicum, as long as it was red…

My mother apparently drank more then twice the amount of water that his other wives drank, always saying that she was hot and bothered. There were the times that my father said he couldn’t even touch her because he would get burnt!

Another unexplainable event back then, was birds of all kinds would slowly creep towards my mother and look as though they were bowing!

Not only his creature, but other creatures that were close by my mother, would unintentionally want to bow as well!

Then, another thing that had surprised him, was the way that my mother had made a nest for herself before giving birth. Fire…She had wanted fire, fragrant herbs and spices, including cinnamon and myrrh. My father showed me his excitement while telling me this, and I doubt he was less excited years ago upon this really happening! He even told me that he was faithful to my mother from the time that he first touched her. He was not a faithful creature, or person, not bothering to really love one at a time, yet, he was unable to be with another since my mother!

Even when he did get burnt, he still wanted to touch her. Even when she ate weird things and the weird fact that creatures came to prostate themselves to her, he was the loyalist he’s ever been to a woman!

 

…But what he told me, really didn’t help me at the time.

I wasn’t special…Well, I had not felt special at all. I felt like a lap rat, a person that had no rights to anything, even to think properly.

I knew things were a little different to me then to other enslaved people, as I was able to fight the connection and desires more, but I was still unable to break the connection completely. I was also unable to completely eradicate their desires from my head!

After telling me his story, my father got up and kissed me on my forehead, telling me to be strong and to never give up hope. He told me that I will be reborn and that I must always take care of myself…And then he was gone…

Not long after, I heard he had died in the attempt to killing my master, the Mosquito King.

His attempt might have looked half hearted or even crazy, but I was never able to forget that my father had tried his hardest to obtain my freedom once again!

With blood being something found as a weakness to the King, that is what my father had used. He contaminated the blood of which the Mosquito King drank and from then on, the King was poisoned and even though my father died in the process, it was a few days after that, that my connection had been cut!

Through all this, no one ever knew, that particular man was the one who helped bring me into this world. He was a ‘nomad who went crazy’, but he was the first person that had put their own life on the line to try and help me…And it had made me very sad!

 

That was the strongest memory that I had on my first life…Not only because of my father’s actions, but that he was the reason that I became free from my second master. Of course, it had not helped me, because I also died in the process, but I had died free…

I did remember what happened to me after a year that I was first born, but I had to be told that of the burning house and killing three people upon my birth…Including that of my own mother…

This had made me undoubtedly sad, as right from the start, I was a murderer…I had even killed my own birth mother and will never get the chance to met her, to have her grow old with me by her side and for her to teach me right from wrong…It was also like a stain upon my heart…Someone who deserved every bit of bad luck given to her…

Perhaps, my hatred is kept at bay because of what I did to my mother. Perhaps, I feel like I deserve this type of existence…

Yet, at the same time, if I had a choice, I could honestly state that I wish I hadn’t burned down the house and killed those people!

But it was done! She was gone, and I had spent years figuring out that I needed to accept this and move on as best as I could from it. So, from my second life, it might still be a stain upon my life, but I choose to believe that I don’t deserve more of what I have lived through. You could probably say that my first agonizing life, was for justice of my mother’s death. But, now that I was in my third life, I needed…Yes, I needed to live for me!

I can’t continue to believe that I’m bad luck and that I was a murderer from the beginning. What I want to believe now, was that I had paid for my crime of accidentally and unknowingly killing three people, and I was going to start a fresh…

 

Sadly, the only motherly love I have received, was from an elderly woman for eight years, in both lives…And there’s just so much bad things that happened afterwards, to always think that time as gratitude all this time. I feel blessed, yet, I feel like maybe I could have been better not knowing a devoted type of love before, because I had not felt it since…

I know what it’s like to be ignorant, and I wished now that I was ignorant of that love, so that I could have survived better when I had been taken by force to never see the light of day for months at a time. If I never knew what I was missing out on…

No, I suppose, since I have overcome that now…Again…That it is probably good that I knew how to be fun and compassionate. Otherwise, I may have never become the person I am now…Perhaps I might have taken a whole other path that was…A lot different to this one…

…I was taken away by my father’s own, old nanny. Back then, I had no idea how close to death she was already, but it was only a couple of years before she had died, and I was fending for myself for the first time.

…She had been such a lovely old lady…

Taken away in secret, as though I was never born, I was to grow up in the old lady’s humble house that was near the sea. My father had told me that he was glad to protect me, that he was worried about me staying there in his residence and being brought up with bullying and abandonment. That, making me live far away, it was the best that he could do at the time…

His nanny’s name was Edna and she had a dolphin creature. She told me that she was actually really happy to live away from my father and the capital, because she much preferred to stay closer to the sea.

 

The Mosquito capital, named Torte, was bordering the sea but the sea was outside of the city gates and was very much guarded by many of the mosquito people. So, for Edna and I to live near the sea, we had to travel quite a number of days before we weren’t going to be a hindrance to the mosquito clan and King.

Because the Mosquito King was like this, taking possession of most of the water and being one known to suck the blood out of young maidens, he was not a likeable King by many and the capital was the second lowest population on the planet of Seal. At least half of the population they had in Questro, was that of their own creatures of mosquito’s, making it also a place hard to obtain and take over, if one was to go to war with them. Most of the cultivated powers that they used had to do with their blood or the blood of their enemies, making them quite a tough foe, yet, they also had their weaknesses, just like everyone else. Once, they had been flooded and lost a substantial amount of population, only to have gained numbers once again fifty years ago and the other weakness was the obvious thought of through their strength, which was blood. Poison was still the best-known strategy to defeat them, yet who would take the risk of poisoning their own blood?

So…For quite a long period of time, the mosquito clan has resided and stayed here in their capital, not ever being completely exterminated.

 

Even though the mosquito clan and Mosquito King had their problems, there was still one capital in Dura that had less population, and that was because of yet another resilient and old type of creature that people possessed…And that was cockroaches…

The capital in Dura was called Sirest and the Cockroach King had claimed any type of good thing for him, leaving the rest of the population to have to endure with even less than that of any other country, making many people try to leave in the prospect of finding a better future.

What the cockroaches were good at, was team work and they would always come out in flocks, making one unable to get away…

My life there had been…The worst. It wasn’t just the Palace that was under the earth, it was the entire capital…For much of my life in Dura, I spent very little time being out in the open…

But, not particularly wanting to think of that particular life, I focused once again on Edna…Remembering my time with her was a lot better than…