I Am Human BecomingSarina Dorie
6000 words “Not a perfect soul, I am perfecting. Not a human being, I am a human becoming.” —The Egyptian Book of the Dead I can’t identify the exact moment when I stopped studying humans and instead decided to become one. It may have been a culmination of moments that convinced me. Remaining impartial and allowing them to go about their business as they killed each other in religious wars or land disputes was easy enough. But then I heard great philosophers impart their knowledge, I observed scribes and artists in the act of creation. I saw the spark of brilliance glowing within them with each new masterpiece created. I envied the way their souls grew inside the meat encasing them. I watched the skilled moves of temple dancers and I thought, What if I pretend to be one of them for a day? Sculpting a pretty face for myself out of human thoughts was artistry in itself. I adopted the deep-set eyes and midnight hair of the people around me to blend in. I gave myself feminine curves to look the part of a court dancer. I darkened my skin and named myself Jameela. I watched plenty of dances, only then I had to interpret the music dressed as a slave girl. I did exactly what the others did, mimicking their skills and adopting them as my own. It was when I added my own steps and flourishes that I began to shine. With every new interpretation of my own that I added, I couldn’t mask the glow radiating from my soul. That’s when humans began to notice. Both men and women fell in love with me, and I unwittingly made them my captives. Pursuing human relationships would help me better understand our subject matter, I told myself. It would help my people understand what it was to be human. It was our custom that my memories and experiences would later be extracted and catalogued for others to study when I was “excarnated” from my body. This would be my gift to my people when I went back to our home world. Only, I decided not to go back. 
“Name yourself in your heart and know who you are. In my heart are the deeds my body has done and my heart has been weighed in the balance.” --The Egyptian Book of the Dead 
It was impossible not to notice the others of my kind. A human saw what they wanted to see—another human—but I saw underneath the mask. Our souls radiated like starbursts—at least they did when the soul was advanced in learning. The first time I saw another Kknwon, as my people called ourselves, was nearly one hundred years after my own defecting. Osiris sat on the throne beside an Egyptian queen named Isis. This was back in the day when the sphinx was young and the river Nile flourished in an oasis of green jungle. Servants fanned the royalty on their thrones in their finery and gold. Osiris stared at me, his eyes growing wide when he saw me performing. His soul burned through the facade of bronze human skin and sculpted perfection, revealing that he was also Kknwon. I was so surprised, I nearly stopped dancing with the entire royal court watching but, I was far too practiced to allow myself to lose my focus while dancing. If I was going to be returned to my own world to be excarnated, I would shine one last time. I danced like it was my last dance. I expressed the story of my life through the undulations of my belly and the sensuous swivels of my hips. My arms flowed like water to represent the oceans I had crossed and waved above my head to sway as palm trees in a breeze. My human body was sweaty and spent by the time I finished, yet my soul glowed even brighter than before. More of my true self leaked out from under the human capsule I enclosed myself within. The entire court swooned with love for me. Everyone, save Osiris. Later he bade me to take a stroll with him out in the starry night. I thought for certain he was there to take me home to be disincorporated from my human body so that my memories could be harvested. He tucked my hand into the crook of his arm despite the heat of the sultry night air. “Why are you playing the part of a slave when you could have the entire world?” he asked. “I do have the entire world. I dance,” I said. “If I don’t dance or sing or play music, there is no life for me.” He nodded approvingly. “I paint. I started off studying the scribes in the temples. It didn’t seem like my learning would be complete if I didn’t become a scribe myself. From there I became a vizier and from there, consort of the queen—or goddess incarnate—as Isis calls herself. In truth, I think the humans revere me as a god more than they do her.” He laughed. Yes, I had heard his title: Osiris, He Who is Permanently Benign and Youthful. To humans, he would be forever the same shining star. Their subconscious grasped what my eyes saw: buttery gold light and yellow rays flickering like the dance of sunlight. Even I had to admit he was incredible to behold. Not in the same way as the most skilled dancers, artists or architects I had conversed with. With their wisdom and age had come a diffused, even light that radiated beyond their bodies, so different from our smaller souls. A learned Kknwon like Osiris was a flickering flame who looked as though he might be extinguished at any moment. Osiris guided me through a garden of fragrant jasmine and lotus flower. He pushed to pluck up a lily and tucked it behind my ear. “After many years as living as a vizier and scribe, I came to rule and judge. I use a different kind of creativity for each role I assume.” “Aren’t you afraid you’ll draw too much attention to yourself?” I looked up at the star of our home in the night sky. “Don’t you think someone will notice if you become too admired?” It took hundreds of years to travel to Earth. Surely our people wouldn’t put so much time and resources in getting us here only for us to desert our duties. “I defected three hundred years ago. Why would they bother to notice now?” He steered me back toward the palace. “Would you like to see my paintings? They are superior to anything any human has ever made.” I didn’t want to reward such arrogance. Still, I was tempted. His enthusiasm made it hard to resist. I wasn’t sorry I’d gazed upon such perfection once I’d seen it. After hundreds of years he had become a master of painting, sculpture and architecture. I wasn’t yet certain whether I considered him more brilliant than the human artists I had met previously, but he was already one of my favorites. Osiris planted a tender kiss on my lips. “Stay with me and be my consort.” “What of Isis?” I asked. “She’s a mere human. She’ll never understand me.” The desire for companionship tugged at me almost as strongly as the desire to express myself through dance. It had been so long since I had seen another of my kind. We had little need for companionship as humans did, but in this body I felt myself craving the things humans craved. “I’ll think about it,” I said at last. “Think about it as you share my bed,” he said with a smile that made his entire soul glow like the sun. Months later, the harvesters came for him. Had I not been covered with veils and hidden in a crowd of peasants, I might have been captured as well. Whether it was despair or guilt, I considered turning myself in. I had learned more than enough to help my people develop our own creativity. If something was to happen and I was to die, all my knowledge would be lost. On the other hand, if I joined Osiris and allowed them to disassemble my memories, many back home would benefit. Then I remembered the joy of dance. I would never be able to let myself move to the beat of a drum or melody of a flute if I sacrificed myself. It was selfish of me to remain, but I did it all the same. Osiris was torn to pieces to be buried all over the world—our home world—where his memories would be separated from his soul and his soul would be wiped clean to be born anew. Osiris is now only a name in legends on Earth. It was I who made sure his name lived on. 
The rules of a Kknwon on Earth: 1. Do not outshine the humans in your beauty, success or power. 2. Leave no trace, replica or evidence you were there. 3. Avoid other Kknwons. 
I would never tire of dance, but I did tire of the same dance moves rehashed in different ways to music that all started to sound the same. It didn’t matter if I was in Egypt, Sumer, Rome or Greece. Wherever I went, I drank up the dance and needed to move on to learn something more. Perhaps a human would have tired of dance, but I was still a child by the standards of my people in this body. I studied from the most brilliant humans with a passion that couldn’t be quenched. If I was more careful than Osiris, I could keep on dancing. I would become human. After another few hundred years, the face I’d sculpted became permanent. The bronze skin and shape of the body I had chosen couldn’t be changed. Not that I minded. With every year that passed I became more human. My soul swelled. In any circle I moved, I found myself entertaining human courts laced with my people in their midst. We were drawn to each other like magnets. Our flames burned brighter when we were near each other. Briefly, the light filled our entire being, making us resemble the humans around us, only brighter. I could see the danger in drawing so much attention. In Norway, I found myself dancing at the court of Asgard. Odin, Thor, Freya and the rest of the pantheon congregated together and ruled in the mountains as gods. At least, humans saw them as such with their unearthly beauty and unconcealed inner glow. There was something about Odin, something familiar. He glowed like golden sunlight in the gloom of a storm. It was when he asked me to walk with him, I felt history repeating itself. I bundled up against the snow and wind, taking a rocky path in a garden of ice instead of a smooth one surrounded by fragrant flowers this time. He wore a fur cloak around his shoulders. His naked chest remained hot despite the chill, his youth still burning fresh within him. “Join us and be worshipped,” Odin declared. “Why travel with a troupe of performers when you could be revered as a goddess?” “How long have you been on Earth?” I asked. He looked an old man, a powerful man, but age was no factor if this was a face he’d chosen for himself. “Over four hundred years. But I’ve been a god and ruler just over a century. Would you like to see my sculptures? I started with pottery. Now I move mountains.” He laughed at his joke. I suspected he meant he had designed the Asgard palace. His inner light glowed yellow with the same patterns I had seen in Osiris. I could have chalked it up to being the color of arrogance for one who created himself into a god, but I had a feeling it was more. Something deep inside me knew he was Osiris. “How did you convince them to send you back to Earth to study humans?” I asked. “Back to Earth? What do you mean? It’s my first time here.” He took my arm and linked it through his, nestling my fingers into the crook of his furs. “I didn’t come here to study humans, I came to retrieve our kind. But once I adopted a persona and a trade to fit in, I didn’t want to do my duty anymore. I just wanted to keep sculpting. And from there, godhood bloomed.” “Do you remember any of what happened in Egypt? Do you remember how you fell as Osiris? Have you not learned anything?” I was angry, but how could I blame him when they’d taken all his memories? His stern face became as stony as the rugged hillside around us. “I know the legends of Osiris, but I was never in Egypt. I would know if I had been there, wouldn’t I?” “You need to disband the gods or else they will find you,” I warned. He circled an arm around me. “I think you are jealous and want me all to yourself.” He kissed me and I once again saw Osiris exploding with light. Purple and red rays within myself burst forth to meet his soul. I was already in love with him. And he was right; I did want him to myself. I left in the morning. Years later, I found his Ragnarok came in the form of a legion of Kknwons who captured deserters. 
“. . . for they cannot even die anymore, because they are like angels, and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.” —Luke 20:36 
I avoided staying anywhere too long or rising too high. I refused the proposals of princes and kings. I remembered Osiris’s lessons. The third time I met Osiris, he came to me as a woman in my private dressing room after one of my performances at the opera. It wasn’t that I’d given up dancing. I just needed something else to complement it with. I was infatuated with music and musicians and admired each of my human cast members. How I wished my soul would fill my entire body as I sang like it did when they performed. I stared into my vanity mirror and I undid my hairpins when the woman slipped in through the door behind me. I turned in surprise, most vexed a human had gotten past the manager, then not at all surprised when I realized it was one of my kind. “Miss Jameela Pettigrove?” she asked. She wore a conservative gray coat over a dark dress. Although it was fitted and made of fine fabric, it wasn’t anything that would stand out at the opera. The puff sleeves, ruffles and corseted waist had been crafted to blend in, not to express artistry. She hadn’t yet experienced the draw of godhood that would compel her to outshine all others. She was so young in this new body. Apparently the sight of me flustered her so much that her face changed from an old woman to a young one with red hair while she spoke, as if she couldn’t decide what form to occupy. Her light was dim, only a spark within her. Even so, I recognized the signature of that golden light. It flickered brighter in my presence. She frowned. “You’re the one they sent me to recover.” I returned to my mirror and I washed the makeup from my face. “Do you intend to take me home?” I couldn’t help smiling at my choice of words and added, “Or shall I take you home?” Her expression was emotionless, devoid of human flavor. “I feel as though I know you.” I laughed before realizing she wasn’t joking. “You do know me. I was in love with you twice.” She bowed her head in the polite gesture of a gentlelady, which she must have observed in her brief time here. “I assure you, you’re mistaken. I’ve never been to Earth before.” “Are you sure? Can’t you feel a little bit of what you once felt for me?” I left my table and approached her. She stepped back. “You’ve become quite human if you think you can love. It will hurt when they extract you from this body. I’m sorry for that.” I lifted her chin so that her gaze met mine. “Did you hear me sing?” She blushed and withdrew another step, looking everywhere in the room but at me. “I didn’t know I liked opera until tonight.” From her response I knew I had snared her. “Will you grant me an evening to teach you about humans before you take me home? For educational purposes, of course.” When I kissed her she didn’t resist. Her spark caught fire and I knew something in her soul remembered even after being excarnated twice. I took her home. I didn’t fool myself into thinking I could seduce her with my body. Only a human without an imagination would think such things—or a Kknwon. Instead I introduced her to my paint box. It was a mere trifle that had been given to me as a gift from one of my suitors. I set out the paint before her. She stared at the colors in awe. I didn’t have any canvas so I gave her my silk bed sheets to paint on. Being young in soul and in her prime, she was able to go without sleep far longer than I could. I fell asleep on the settee, waking to find myself covered with a collage of petals arranged in spiral patterns. My walls were painted with dashes and dots that would have made the Impressionists jealous. She wore nothing but paint like a tribal queen. Her red hair flowed down her naked shoulders, reminding me of the flames within her. She sank into my arms, smiling. “What have you done to me?” she asked. She sighed and glowed more brilliantly than I had ever seen her. 
The rules of a Kknwon harvesting and rehabilitation center: 1. Be patient and practical when convincing a resistant learned soul that it is their time. 2. Only use torture as a last resort when a learned soul will not willingly give up the human body. 3. Plant the cleansed soul into a biological automaton once all traces of creativity, passion and free-thinking are completely removed. 4. Do not look directly into the memories extracted from a soul. 
I told Ophelia Valkyrie, as she decided to call herself, about the history of the world. Or at least our history in this world. I knew she wouldn’t draw attention to herself as long as she shut herself up in my flat to paint. We moved every few years so I wouldn’t become too admired or famous. We might have remained safe if she hadn’t felt the need to show her work. We lay entwined in each other’s arms one morning, the gray ebb of light filtering in through the curtains. I threaded my fingers through her long locks of red hair. “What do you think about joining a circus next week?” I asked. She pouted. “Next week? That Monet fellow invited me to be in his salon next week.” “I thought that Monet fellow invited you to be in his bed next week,” I teased. She laughed at that. “No, that is Manet. And that was last week.” I kissed her and squeezed her closer. Neither of us cared about the human lovers. We had to have admirers. What was an artist or singer or dancer if there was no one to worship us? I pulled away a moment later, suddenly feeling nauseous. It was the first time I’d ever been sick. Plagues had rolled right by me in centuries past. But with every day, I grew a little more human, a little less immortal. “I’m dying,” I said, crouching before the chamber pot as I vomited. Close, it turned out. I was pregnant. 
“Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.” —George Bernard Shaw, dearest human friend of a learned soul 
I wasn’t quite sure who the father was, a human or Ophelia. The baby was a strange mixture of human and Kknwon. The new soul changed with each person who held it: for the nursemaid he was a green light in a boy’s body; in the nanny’s arms she was a girl with dark hair like mine; in Ophelia’s it was a glowing ball of rainbow colors. Over the course of several months the baby chose the shape of a girl with red hair, looking more like Ophelia than she did me. We didn’t name her. She had to do that for herself. She listened to our stories and glowed brightest when she overheard us speaking about Queen Victoria. I leaned over her bassinette. “Victoria? Do you like that one?” I stroked her smooth, little cheek and cooed at her. “No, I think she wants us to call her Queen.” Ophelia lifted up our baby and bounced her until the swirls of light giggled. Every time I held my baby in my arms I knew I loved her more than dancing, music and song. I loved her more than anything. “I’ve got to stop being an actress and singer,” I said. “It draws too much attention and I can’t do anything that would lead them to her.” “Yes, we must do whatever it takes. We’ve got to keep her safe,” Ophelia said. “I can support us with my art. I’ll show but I won’t attend the salons.” I snorted at that. “I know you. It will hurt your pride if you’re not the center of attention at a party.” “Tut-tut.” She waved me off. “I’m not the one who ruled as a supposed slave girl for two thousand years—and seduced how many humans into doing her bidding? Being an artist is far less in the spotlight than a dancer.” “For some artists,” I said. “Not for you.” 
The learned Kknwon escape plan: 1. Keep no less than five purses of money stashed in various places in the house in case of emergency. 2. Have copies of passports and important documents in a safe place that isn’t in the house so you don’t have to go back where they will be waiting. 3. Have a code word for danger. 4. Decide who will grab the baby. 5. Wait at the designated meeting place for no more than three hours. 
They didn’t need a legion. Not for the three of us. They sent four to collect us. The maid let them in and bade them wait in the parlor as she fetched Ophelia to speak with them about her art. It was business as usual. I didn’t bother to go in lest I interrupt Ophelia sweet-talking her patrons out of their money. I sat on the floor with Victoria in the nursery, reading Shakespeare to her as she toddled about. The plan was for Ophelia to take the baby and for me to lead them away if they ever came. I was the one who had lived a long life, after all. I would give anything to make sure they both experienced humanity for as long as I had. But when they came that day, Ophelia screamed our code phrase for danger in ancient Egyptian, “Osiris lives again!” This wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen. I was the one with the baby. I snatched up Victoria in my arms and dug under the cushions of the bassinette for the purse. “Get out before both of you are found!” Ophelia screamed. I made it to the designated meeting place, a bar we had bought in a seedy part of town in case we ever had need of escape. Ophelia never showed up. I waited for an entire day, despite the risk to my daughter and me both. I didn’t think I could live without Ophelia. My heart broke all over again. I thought it was the worst day of my life. I was wrong. 
“Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality.” —Emily Dickinson 
The worst day of my life was the day they took my daughter from me. By then, Victoria was about fifty years old, but looked and acted as an eight-year-old. The world around us had aged but she grew slowly. The fact that she aged at all was a surprise considering it had taken me this long before the crow’s-feet showed at the corners of my eyes and a few silver hairs sprouted in my midnight mane of hair. Victoria was the prettiest little thing ever with her red ringlets of hair. She charmed everyone she met and when they heard her sing, she put Shirley Temple to shame. We were walking together on the street of Paris in the year nineteen thirty-five. She was bubbly and full of spirit after watching Curly Top, for the third time. “Animal crackers in my soup,” she sang, drawing admirers as we walked. She glowed like a star. I put a finger to my lips. “You must wait until we’re home,” I said. She ignored me. It was hard not to indulge her. We stopped at our favorite chocolaterie, but a man blocked our way. He turned around and I saw he had no soul. All humans had flames within, so I recognized what he was immediately. My little Victoria gasped in surprise. She hadn’t seen one of us before we’d fully been formed by living on Earth. I gave her hand three fierce squeezes, the danger signal we’d practiced, and pushed her away. She ran. I elbowed the man in the face and pushed him into the door. I would have killed him if it meant my daughter could escape. Only he wasn’t alone. One of them caught up my Victoria and two more grabbed me. 
“We have explored many worlds and studied many peoples, but none benefits our planet as much as Earth. The imagination, creativity and dreams of the human life forms on this planet give our people the seeds needed to sow such abilities in our own people. If only the human imagination didn’t tempt our own species so much that we forget the original mission.” —quote from anonymous agent at the Earth Soul Recycling and Rehabilitation Center 
As part of “my education” they made me watch. “No, it won’t hurt at all,” they said to Victoria. I screamed that they were liars and told her she shouldn’t listen, but she couldn’t hear me on the other side of the glass. It wasn’t exactly glass, more like a bubble where they could keep me out. I remembered being born and I knew what it was like to die. I had once worked at the harvest center. Pain was part of the process. Especially if one had lived on Earth and adopted too much of humanity. Victoria had never been not human. The pain would be excruciating. “Where’s my mommy?” Victoria asked. She scanned the bubble, her eyes skimming past me, unable to see me on the other side. Perhaps she saw the stars refracted through her bubble like I did past hers. We weren’t far from Earth. “You’ll be with her soon enough,” the man said. He still wore the shape of a human man in a tweed suit. “But you have to agree to be part of the collective first.” I shook my head, willing her not to believe them. She stared through their human forms and into their blank souls. They didn’t even have pinpricks of light. They were completely void inside. She bit her lip. “Mommy doesn’t want me to go home. She wants me to learn to experience life as a human.” The man crouched before her, wearing a smile on his face like a human wore a hat. “But you’re too important for that. You’re so pretty and clever and such a good singer. You draw too much attention to yourself and it jeopardizes our mission here. We need you on your home world. We need a pretty, talented girl like you.” She smiled. “Do you think so?” I covered my eyes. How could I ever have doubted she was Ophelia’s daughter with her ego always needing to be stroked? “Do you want to hear me sing?” she asked. “After we’ve cleansed you there will be time to sing if you still want to.” “Of course I’ll want to!” she laughed. She was so young. My heart sank. “We can’t harvest what a soul has learned until you say yes. Are you ready?” “You’ll let me sing for you?” she asked again. 
“I am not sure that the best way to make a boy love the English poets might not be forbid him to read them and then make sure that he had plenty of opportunities to disobey you.” —C.S. Lewis, either speaking about English literature, or speaking about a friend’s civil disobedience in permitting his soul to be harvested 
The harvesting of memories isn’t so different from when humans recycle a tin can. The metal is melted down easily enough to be made into something else. But the outer shell of paper has to be removed first, as does any food that remains on the inside. The can has to be completely cleaned of impurities just as the soul has to be cleaned of any remaining traces of personality. First they held up a device that resembled a syringe, only they didn’t need to jab it under the skin in order to inject their specimen. Ophelia and I used to jokingly call it the “flesh eater.” They lifted up my little Victoria’s arm and aimed it at her heart. She screamed and sagged in her seat. She moaned and whimpered, semi-conscious as her flesh dissolved. They spent hours removing the impurities of human tissues from the gaseous state of her soul. Even without the human body to frame her, she was beautiful. She shimmered and glowed. Swirls of pink and yellow undulated across her soul. From the flickering pattern, I recognized she was doing the Charleston and adding moves to make it her own. The harvesting agent contained her soul before it could get away. He—it—sucked out the pink and green until there were no more dances left and placed it in a miniature containment bubble. Yellow flickers like fire whispered high and then low, the colors she used to express song and music. She was singing “In the Jailhouse Now.” I laughed and cried that her humor was still intact. They removed that next. One by one, they extracted each of the skills she had learned and talents she’d developed that made her Victoria. Every talent was enveloped in a bubble of its own to be catalogued and sent to the home world. With each removal, she glowed less bright. My heart broke a little more with each wisp of personality gone. When there was nothing left to take and she was naught more than a dark shadow, they gave her a new body and planted what was left inside. She looked like the rest of them inside and out. 
“Have you seen Fred Astaire dance? Ginger Rogers? Have you heard Ella Fitzgerald sing? Only a human can do what they do. Not the moves or the singing, but the originality behind the music and dance. An automaton can’t do that. I don’t want to go back to being an automaton.” —quote from anonymous inmate from the Harvesting and Rehabilitation Center near Earth 
I was next. They made me wait in my own little bubble where I gazed out at Earth in the near distance. So close but so far at the same time. It felt like a hundred years had passed, a hundred years of thinking about what they’d done, but maybe it was only a few hours. As soon as the harvesting agent came in I said, “I do not consent to excarnation.” The smile stretched tight across the face, a replica of a human expression. The agent was too new to actually understand how to imitate a human. His build was androgynous, his movements stiff and ungraceful. He was an automaton without a spark of soul. He said, “They have informed me that if I don’t convince you to return home, they will be forced to torture you until you consent.” I eyed the flesh eater tool in his hand. “With that? You aren’t allowed to remove my body until I consent.” Beyond my bubble I saw my daughter sitting in a chair too big for her, her feet kicking out in excitement. My gut clenched. She was still alive? It took only a few seconds to realize this was a recording. “Where’s my mommy?” I closed my eyes, but I could still hear her scream as they removed her flesh. 
“Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.” —Pablo Picasso 
“Would you like me to ease your pain? Are you ready to share the knowledge and be harvested so you can start fresh and new?” my jailer and torturer asked. I had once worked as a memory harvester myself. I knew the process of breaking down the will so that one would sell their soul in order to ease the pain. The desire to wipe my soul free of the guilt that plagued me was strong enough. It only grew worse when I realized my torturer was my daughter. “You’ve lived a long life, but your body won’t last forever. It’s starting to decay and when you die, you’ll take those memories with you and all the energy we took sending you here will have been wasted. We need your wisdom. We need your song and dancing. Please, you’re too important to go to waste,” he said. Had I not overheard what they’d told Victoria, I might have believed him, but as it was, the words sounded hollow and rehearsed. They didn’t sound like my daughter. I don’t know how I recognized her inside him without the luminescence of passion burning like a sunrise. It was almost like I felt the shape of where the embers of music and dancing had been. A shadow echoed colors inside her even if the colors were now gone. His smile stretched tighter across his face. “I can help you.” “Maybe it’s the other way around.” I lifted my head. “Shall I ease your pain?” “You’re mistaken. I feel no pain.” He tilted his head to the side in a jerk that almost belied curiosity. His gesture was like a clockwork puppet. That’s all we were before learning. Automatons without souls. I lifted myself from my crouched position and rolled my shoulders back. A singer could not perform with poor posture. Just as I had once danced as though it were my last, I now drew in a breath so that I could sing my final song. I would glow so bright and beautiful I didn’t care if I expired. Nothing mattered if I could rekindle that spark within my daughter. 
“‘In the beat of a heart, the suck of a breath, you are the universe.’ That’s from The Egyptian Book of the Dead. ‘I am a human becoming.’ Have you watched memories about the Egyptians bottled? Yes, I know we aren’t supposed to watch the memories being extracted, but have you? Have you ever heard, ‘Animal Crackers in my Soup’?” —reply from an agent at the Recycling and Rehabilitation Center near Earth after the premature release of souls to the planet |
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Sarina Dorie
Sarina Dorie has sold over 200 short stories to markets like Analog, Daily Science Fiction, Fantasy Magazine, and F & SF. She has over ninety books up on Amazon, including her bestselling series, Womby’s School for Wayward Witches.
A few of her favorite things include: gluten-free brownies (not necessarily glutton-free), Star Trek, steampunk, fairies, Severus Snape, and Mr. Darcy. She lives with twenty-three hypoallergenic fur babies, by which she means tribbles. By the time you finish reading this bio, there will be twenty-seven.
You can find info about her short stories and novels on her website: www.sarinadorie.com
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