Site Write Entry #38: Recycling

Prompt: June 13, 2012 - In an odd conversation, you and a friend are discussing the real afterlife. Your friend is convinced you will die and reborn as something else. To indulge in their chatter, what do you tell them? What is your character reborn as?

. . . . . "Got any nines?"
. . . . . The delicate priestess sitting across from him stared intently at the fan of cards in her hands, making quite a show of studying each one until - with a sudden ray-of-light-cutting-through-the-clouds smile - she stuck her tongue out at him and pointed at the dwindling pile of cards between them.
. . . . . Frowning, he picked up the top card, then crowed with glee as he laid down all four in his hand. "I win this round!"
. . . . . With a feigned pout, the priestess neatened the fan in her hand back into a stack and placed it back on the discard pile, which the darkly tanned farmboy immediately scooped up with the draw pile and began shuffling. As he shuffled the cards, he glanced over at the graveyard visible on the other side of the lake from the bench they were sitting on. A few of his own were buried there. He looked at the priestess. "Are any of your folk there?" A tilt of his head towards the graveyard indicated his meaning.
. . . . . The priestess shook her head and leaned down to sift her fingers through the soil for a moment.
. . . . . "A bit more 'return to th' earth' type, aye?"
. . . . . She nodded at him.
. . . . . "Y'know, we Gilneans leave grave goods with our ancestors. Just to remind 'em who their family is an' such. So they protect us an' don't get angry." He kept shuffling the cards, but thoughts of how close he'd come to death himself when the land broke had him chattering. If he was talking, he wasn't in danger of dying. "Some folk think what trinkets they leave will be used by the ancestors in the afterlife. I figure different, though. Ain't one t' sit around an' twiddle my thumbs for eternity, even if it is in the Light. I figure there ain't enough souls t' go around all the time, so they keep comin' back to be reused. Makes more sense to me." The priestess shrugged at him, but she was leaning forward slightly, one of those beautiful long ears twitching. So he went on. "I come back? I figure I want to come back as a ten-thousand-year-old kaldorei druid. I'd love to have all that knowledge in my head! Be able to commune with beasts an' plants an' sleeping dragons..."
. . . . . She let him natter on for a while, politely not rolling her eyes at the idea of coming back already old, then reached out and touched his hands mid-shuffle, reminding him that he was holding up the next round with all this talking. He turned a dark brick shade under his tan, blushing fiercely. And she just smiled.