How strange a thing it was to be dead.
Stranger still to emerge from the dead.
It had been quite by accident. She did not need to sleep in the afterlife, but she often did anyway. She had been woken from her slumber by some great thunder and she’d lifted her fine, downy head and watched them careening past. Hundreds of them, mouths gaping, eyes rolling as they hurtled by her. She was slow to rise, the skin tearing as she pushed herself to her feet. But it did not bleed here and she often wondered why being dead did not automatically cure her of her defects.
Though she had never been inquisitive in nature, she followed at an ambling pace. She was in no hurry, never had been. She tripped through the veil long after the last of them had staggered across the threshold.
It had been centuries since she last drew breath and her first frigid breath made the lungs ache. She recoiled, recognized her mistake, and turned back to the veil. But it was gone and she was alone on that great stretch of beach, just her and a heartbeat she had not felt in so many years. The cold is blades on her skin and it begins to bleed where it had torn as she’d risen to her feet. It drips blood as she traverses the length of the beach and climbs up into the world. She always did prefer the feathers bloody.
If she had ever given it a passing thought, perhaps she’d have thought that if she ever emerged from the dead she would do so back in Beqanna. But this is not Beqanna, not at all.
She walks until she reaches the river and submerges herself in it. Instinctively, she knows that the icy waters will stop the bleeding. When she drags herself from the depths, the water beads along the surface of her feathers and streams down her legs until it is gone.
She lingers there at the edge of the river until she lands eyes on a stranger. She moves slow up the bank and approaches without ceremony. “What is this place?” she asks, the voice all filled with rust.
and the nightmares that accompany it
