Sometimes life grants you a second chance, in the next life... |
“Ping!” cries the gold coin as it clanks on the ground. My eyes are not yet open but my ears are. Skin that shriveled and rotted long ago is fresh with a new glow as my once crystallized blood – more sour than the Dead Sea – flows with a renewed vigor. A queen lost to the fickle memory of time’s wheel can feel once more; but I am a queen no longer, for I sit in my sarcophagus, a stranger in an even stranger land, with not a penny to my name, save for the gold coins with which my people buried me. But now a name I cannot even claim for I have no memory of ever existing, only tangible proof that I sit here shrouded in cloth, crunchy from the stale air of my tomb. And as my eyes suffer the harsh glare of the afternoon sun, I notice a miniature coffin next to me… …and a lonely tear falls while the memories rush back as swift as the color rushes to my cheeks and I clutch my womb, knowing my tomb’s companion ensured my one-way passage to the afterlife. Troubled, I peer into the little open sarcophagus to see a smiling baby boy; and I no longer care how we ended up here, because we’ve been granted a second chance. |