Maybe there were two kinds of death; one of the body, and one of the soul. My body had succumbed to a dagger, but my soul… My soul had died a thousand times over with every paper cut it received.
Something tapped at the periphery for my attention. A sound, perhaps. It was hard to discern whether it was coming from somewhere else, or from me—like a ringing in the ear. Only, it was more of a leisurely, evenly timed dripping, and I got the impression it was getting closer somehow.
Slowly I realized it wasn’t the melodic tap of a droplet sliding off a leaf to a waiting puddle, but footsteps.
Step.
Step.
Step.
It halted.
I waited in silence long enough that I convinced myself I’d never heard the sound at all.
Fingers snapped.
Instantly, the nothingness of darkness had been replaced by the nothingness of light. My eyes didn’t need time to adjust, but it was difficult to focus too far into the pure white surrounding me that was depthless, and yet not.
The place was unnervingly similar to the one Endymion and I had been trapped in after I’d pulled him into my dream.
I looked down at myself.
No blood.
No blade.
My leathers were replaced with a flowing dress that was as black as the place I’d just come from, adorned with a long, lace train fanned out perfectly behind me.
As I looked forward again, I started, bringing a gloved hand to my chest.
A hooded figure, large in stature, stood just out of reach. Slowly, fingers ran up the rim of the hood, and I couldn’t help but notice that his hands were young—or relatively so. Not young like mine. But in his sixties, perhaps. Which was young, considering I’d half-expected them to me knurled. Ancient.
The hood of his cloak slipped back, revealing a kindly face that looked at me with deep sadness. His moss-green eyes still held a youth his body didn’t. He looked human, but he felt… else. A full head of thick hair had long since silvered, as had his brows.
Something nagged at me as I took him in. Like I’d seen him before.
He just stared at me. And I at him.
“Do I know you?” I finally asked, my voice startling me as it echoed like we were in a large, empty estate.
“Yes. And, no.” His voice was many and one. Old and young. Timeless, yet present.
“I knew you then? When I was human?”
“Yes. And, no,” he said again.
“What does that mean?”
“We’ve met through the shared memories of one we both love.”
My brows furrowed, and I took him in again. I swallowed as my mind reassessed him, slowly reconciling who stood before me with a painting I’d seen almost daily. Shock and realization crashing through me.
“You’re…” I choked on the words. “You’re Mr. Erickson.”
“Yes. And no. Though, that was the human form I took for a time.”
The human form he took for a time? “Who are you?”
