[action]
[He's quiet for a bit, trying to pull the relevant memories out from the jumble in his mind.]
Mm… this was one of the times when I was incarnated in India. I was male that incarnation. I was… I don't know how much you know about Indian culture, but there's a very rigid caste system. Those on the bottom have great difficulty climbing the social ladder.
I was an Untouchable, the lowest of the low. I worked cleaning toilets. It was boring work, and I hated every minute of it. I was set up with an arranged marriage to a woman from another Untouchable family. Life was peaceful enough… and about a year after we were married, we had a little girl, with dark hair just like yours.
… She hated that she was an Untouchable just by who she was born to. I encouraged her behavior, though my wife tried to get us to stop. She stole any scraps of books that she could, trying her hardest to learn something worthwhile. I taught her what she could understand, what was relevant for her at that point in history.
She loved dolls. She made her own out of scraps of fabric, and stuffed it with old linen. She carried her around wherever she went, even when she got older. She was bright and clever and… for once I thought life might not have been so terrible, as long as I had her. I knew she would forget me once she was reborn, but still… it was hard to deny that she had a certain cham.