15. The coal eyed woman.

In that life, in fact, he'd been a woman. From her earliest days as a girl, she had fascinated everyone who watched her. Her eyes were like coals, and her hands and feet had the texture of petals.

She had been named after a flower too, a rare flower known only in the language of the place where it grew, which was the only place in the world it grew, where she grew, from a girl with flashing eyes into a woman of such grace that her flower-name seemed mundane.

Every man in her town wanted her, made constant pleas to her father for her hand in marriage. Because this had been in the days and in a place where women were property: first their fathers', then their husbands', and finally the property of their graves. Her father brought each suit to her though, to seek her agreement, because she was precious to him and he couldn't have endured her anger. She rejected each one.

This woman, for all her beauty, did not want to be possessed by an earthly man, or woman for that matter. Since she had been a girl she had stared up at the skies and wished to commune with the gods.