Chapter Text
I wake up watching a dragonfly hover above my head, then buzz off to sit on some reeds jutting out from Trivka’s Pond, except that it’s not Trivka’s Pond, because I don’t remember Trivka’s Pond being that blue, and, as I get up to look at it, I don’t remember Trivka’s Pond being transparent enough to overlook a muddier, more realistic version of it as well as the whole of Keramzin.
I also don’t remember suddenly reverting to the size I was when I was eight.
If I’m not off hallucinating on some drug, though I can’t say I’ve ever tried that, then I’m dead.
I sit down, hard, on the grass.
The last thing I remember was falling asleep – so I went peacefully. Well, that’s certainly better than getting sliced in half by the darkling or getting stabbed in the chest to become someone’s amplifier – oh wait.
I sigh and pick a flower, examining it in the sunlight. But – speak of the devil.
A boy who looks the age I look like emerges from behind the reeds on the opposite side of the pond and makes his way around to me. I scramble up.
He seems just a bit younger than he appeared to be the last time I saw him – just a bit – and I haven’t seen him many times, and not at all during the past eighty years, but I can recognize his gray eyes, pale skin, and black hair anywhere. You see, according to Alina, he’s my long-lost cousin. Distanced by a hundred or so generations, probably, but my cousin all the same.
And I’m not sure if anybody can be dangerous in the afterlife, but it doesn’t hurt to be on guard.
He stops three meters away from me and studies me. I fidget.
After a while, he speaks up. “Madraya told me to bring you over to our cottage for tea when you come. Follow me.”
Without stopping to see if I’ll do as he tells me, he sets off into the forest. Should I follow him? Do I want to be a good little puppy and obey his orders?
It’s not like I have anything else to do.
I don’t think you can get seriously injured in the afterlife.
I follow him.