I opened my eyes. An unfamiliar feeling above my head... Was it my hair?
Of course that's my ears. Ears? I reached up to the top of my head and... Gosh, that's sensitive! I suppose, tonight was the night, then. It had finally started.
Nothing's started. This is the same as it's always been. The thought felt like my own familiar thought, but I knew better. This was it -- my second life. I couldn't afford to dismiss my first one as just a dream, even if that felt
natural right now. I'd practiced for this.
"Clone," I mumbled to myself, invoking my most-hoped-for ability. Nothing.
Well, it had been a long shot anyway...
Since I had fourteen years worth of memories, perhaps I would remember. What were my abilities? Depending on chance, I might have a powerful cheat, or a frivolous one...
However, none of the memories in the back of my mind right now implied I had a supernatural power on tap. Certainly, magic was a
thing, but I was pretty normal.
Hadn't I intended to test out the powers, see what I could do? My memories of my "old life" seemed to be fading, but I did recall forming the intention.
Then... had I forgotten? Or...
I didn't believe it. I vaguely remembered a superstition in my youth, one of a young girl's quiet dreams.
It was a bit odd feeling my thoughts turn naturally to myself as a young girl.
But of course. What else would I be? If there was something else, it was escaping me... certainly I must have been a girl when I was younger, even in my "old life."
If it's real.
No, that's not what was important. I need to try my power, especially if it's Clone or... save.
I can't remember. What had I just now been thinking about? Something about a dream? A dream where I'd been planning to live two lives, switching between them at night. My "first life," the other one, would swap out with my "new life" whenever I went to sleep, and vice versa. I chuckled.
A dream about dreaming. How ironic. But there had been something else I was thinking of too, some superstition in my childhood thoughts that felt eerily close, something about nine cheats.
Cheats? In the dream, it had been cheats, but the word meant something like a magic power.
How odd. I wanted to remember what I'd believed in my childhood, not the dream last night... Something about needing to experiment to see what cheat I had? Although, weren't there nine specific abilities?
No, that's not good, I'm getting the dream and my memory confused. I don't know why I really cared, but I was awake before my sister, which hardly ever happens, so I may as well use the time to think while I pretend to be asleep. So, back to my childhood ideas. I'd had this odd notion that time was forked like the branches of a river, except instead of flowing together into one stream it branched into several as it flowed. Like a river delta, I supposed. And I would have the ability to travel between the streams, to take a point and
Save--
What was that?
The clear memory of a deal with a literal devil came
rushing back into/out of nowhere into my mind.