It was a Wednesday morning unlike any other when Violet rolled into our classroom—a burst of color and life in a sea of gray uniforms and muted faces. She wore a bright green dress that stood out boldly against the monotony of school blues and whites, a splash of vivid sunlight framed by her neatly tied-back hair. The wheels of her chair gleamed as if kissed by the morning sun itself, the orange-yellow spokes spinning quietly, almost like they carried their own story.

Her legs were encased in braces, stiff and mechanical, betraying the delicate grace with which she carried herself. But what truly struck me was not the chair or the braces—it was the aura of quiet dignity she radiated, the kind that commands attention without demanding it.

When she first appeared, the classroom’s atmosphere shifted. I noticed how everyone’s eyes flicked toward her with a mixture of curiosity and caution, how whispers flitted like nervous birds. The usual chatter dimmed; smiles became tentative, voices softened. There was a collective hesitation—as if she were a rare and fragile artifact, too precious to touch, or too strange to understand.

But I saw none of that. I saw a girl. A person who deserved to be treated as fully as anyone else in that room. And so I did what came naturally—I spoke to her. Not with pity or fake kindness, but with genuine warmth.

“Where are you from?” I asked.

She looked at me—really looked—and smiled. But it wasn’t just a smile; it was a knowing, a recognition. As if she was seeing beyond the surface of who I was. “You already know,” she said, her voice calm and clear.

I blinked, surprised. “I don’t.”

But then she said my name: “Eleanor.” The sound of it sent a strange ripple through my mind, a feeling like a half-remembered dream. “Do you remember me?”

I shook my head, searching her face for familiarity. It was new to me, unfamiliar. But her eyes told a different story, a story I couldn’t yet understand. “It’s okay,” she said gently. “It’s been a long time. You were very little when we last saw each other.”

Her name was Violet. She was unlike anyone I’d ever met—not just because of her wheelchair or her braces, but because of how naturally she existed within herself. She didn’t flinch when I treated her like any other friend, and slowly, I stopped seeing her as someone fragile. We became companions in the truest sense of the word.

I found myself pushing her wheelchair in the lunchroom, navigating the crowded hallways to make sure she was never alone. I carried her books, rolled her across the schoolyard when the sun shone warm, our laughter mingling with the breeze. Violet’s humor was dry, sharp, and often surprising—her comments laced with a wisdom far beyond her years. She seemed to see the world through a different lens, noticing the things others overlooked—the way light bounced off leaves, the subtle expressions people tried to hide.

One rainy afternoon, while helping her with math homework, I pointed at a particularly frustrating problem and sighed, “Why does any of this even matter?”

She looked up at me with a tilt of her head and said something that stopped me cold: “You really don’t remember, do you?”

“Remember what?” I asked, furrowing my brow.

Violet rocked slightly in her chair, eyes distant but focused. “I used to be just like you. Not trapped in this chair, no. But lost. Searching for answers that never seemed to come.”

There was a pause, a weight hanging between us. Then she whispered, “We were friends once. In another life. Something happened to change everything.”

At first, I thought she was joking, maybe playing with me. But the intensity in her gaze was unmistakable. “We were meant to help each other,” she said softly. “But we were torn apart.”

Her words stirred something deep inside me, a vague unease mixed with curiosity. Over the coming weeks, Violet opened up a little more. She spoke of an accident—how her body had changed, how she had had to relearn everything. But she talked about it like it was a story from another time, another existence altogether.

“How could we have been friends?” I asked. “I don’t remember any of that.”

She nodded. “Something made us forget.”

One chilly morning as we walked to the bus stop, I caught sight of a faint tattoo on her wrist—a symbol, delicate and intricate. It sent a shiver through me. I had seen that symbol before, in a dream that had haunted me for years. “Where did you get that?” I asked.

Violet’s smile deepened. “That’s the key. It connects us. You’re beginning to remember.”

And indeed, I was. Fragments of dreams, feelings of déjà vu, a pull toward something greater—all resurfaced in that moment.

“The world needs us,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “Don’t forget again.”

Before I could respond, a sleek black car pulled up. A tall man in a suit stepped out and called to Violet. “It’s time. We’ve been searching for you.”

Her lightness vanished. She turned to me, eyes heavy with solemnity. “This is where we part. You have the power now. I was just the reminder.”

And then she was gone.

In the days that followed, I replayed everything she had said. The forgotten friendship, the tattoo, the man in the suit—it all pointed to something larger, something inside me I hadn’t yet grasped.

For the first time, I was ready to believe.

Violet hadn’t just reminded me of a past life; she had awakened me to a purpose.

Though the future was uncertain, I knew exactly where to begin.

In the quiet of my room, I touch the tattoo on my wrist, tracing the lines of the symbol that once belonged to Violet. A promise, a connection, a destiny.