Chapter 4 Vulnerable

"Look! Look Johnathan!! His eyes! They're wide open!", A woman said with a husky voice while handing him into another person's hands.

Seth was stunned; he must be very light-weight to be handled that way.

The woman continued to look at him with a smile while he was still in the strange man's arms.

The man walked towards another woman lying on a bed and leaned forward, showing her something.

That woman's forehead was covered with sweat, her eyes held tears in their corners, and she heavily panted with a look of pain across her face.

They both looked old; they must be in their forties, 'Why isn't he crying?' The woman wondered.

"This is the first time that I've see a newborn baby stare so calmly, he will be a curious  child." The man next to her was still looking at his face as if he saw something impressive.

The woman said, "Dear, I want to name him Isiah, and I hope that he'll live a long good life."

Johnathan nodded, adding, "This time, our child will live a good life for sure!"

Seth was perplexed over what was happening before him; somehow, the light that shined bright into that empty place he was trapped ended up leading him to this place with these people.

A quick analysis made him realize that he was born again; reincarnation was a mythical thing that his parents and their cult believed in.

It wasn't realistic to him, and his only source of information was the reincarnation novels he read years ago. He didn't even like that genre!

Thinking with scientific facts, he eradicated that thought from being possible, and having it happen to him, left him baffled.

The woman sighed as he laid back down, leaving him with the man named 'Jonathan.' The midwife took him from the man and changed the sheets he was wrapped with because they were stained with blood. Instead, she cleaned him, changed the sheets, and put him in a wooden cot.

The confusion stayed with him for months; the fact that he chose life when he was in that emptiness pushed things into this state.

He realized that if he did not choose to live, he most certainly would have remained trapped for much longer…

The first days didn't bring him much information except for his name and his parents and their neighbors who visited them, he was able to understand them because they spoke english .

He slept most of the time and cried for the rest; being a baby was tough, and being a conscious baby was much harder.

Communication was the worst part; when he needed to pee or shit, they tried to breastfeed him or make him laugh; when he was sick or felt pain, they wanted to hold him and walk with him.

That made him very angry as he had no control over his body, and being in this position was much more emulating than he thought for the first time.

His new body was vulnerable to the touch, and the memories were too harsh for his state.

Seth remembered those late events as if they were happening to him.

His new parents had a tough time raising him after that. Sometimes, he had nightmares, and they were highly vivid.

One year after, he started to formulate an idea about this place; his new parents' names were Johnathan and Lisa Duncan. He was not their first child because they always talked about Lucas, his brother, who was much older than him.

The story he managed to piece together through little bits of information was that he left the family 5 years ago... Why? He had not figured that out... yet.

Lucas was 10 when he did that; the idea itself was crazy, but not to his parents. They accepted it as expected, but the fact remained that they missed him dearly.

Seth was having difficulty accepting his new reality; it felt like a dream... Like he was not there... Like he was watching a film or, even better, playing a video game. Something must be wrong, but he couldn't see past his room even when he could look around at what was around him.

Months later, he started to walk, and then nothing could stop him. He was curious, and he had to collect answers to his questions.

At first, he wasn't responding to them calling him Isiah, but they started to feel something might be wrong with him.

His mom, Lisa, thought he might be deaf, and she cried a lot, but his dad always comforted her and explained that everything was going to be okay.

To Seth, being stubborn made him realize that he was pushing the inevitable; he was a new person, in a new family, and he was definitely not in an ordinary world.

As he started exploring the house with his baby steps, he saw his father using something like energy or fire. He couldn't identify it because he had never seen something like that.

His mother would do the same thing while cooking, cleaning, or even growing vegetables in her garden outside the house.

Then, Seth linked every piece of information he had gathered for the last few months and formed an idea.

The idea was that he wasn't on Earth like he knew it; however, he wasn't sure whether it was an alternative world or on Earth but at a different point in time…

Everything was confusing... The only thing that was very clear was that this time he was given a chance to do something more with his life because, unlike what happened to him with his parents, this time, he would not surrender to family bonding or be treated poorly like he used to simply because of a blood relationship.

This time, he would do what suited him best, whether they liked it or not.

"Isiah, dear are you looking at mommy from the window? Do you want to come out here?" He said with a massive grin.

This was the first time he responded to him calling his name; he smiled innocently at his father and giggled, "Mama..."