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Narancia opened his eyes to a pink blur hovering over him. He blinked. Slowly, his eyes began to focus on the form. This person wasn’t Trish, though she looked around the same age. The girl was crying. Shameless tears traced down her face, contorted with unfiltered grief and pain.
Narancia propped himself up on his elbows. “Uh, hey. Are you okay?”
She shook her head from side to side and, to his surprise, pulled him in for a suffocating hug. In his ear, she whispered, “I’m sorry. You were in so much pain. It’s over now, okay? You never have to feel like that again.”
“Um, okay? What happened? Is the fight over?”
The girl released him, leaving him in a seated position. She’d stopped crying, but the pain was still plain on her features. “Only for you.”
Dread dropped hard into Narancia’s stomach. In a voice so impossibly small, he asked, “Did I die?”
She nodded solemnly and took his face in her hands. “It will be easier if you don’t look behind you, okay? That image of yourself shouldn’t be the last one you see.”
Narancia nodded in her gentle hold. He felt like he could trust her, for no reason other than the feeling her presence evoked in him: comfort, the same kind that his mother had given him. Her thumb gently swiped his cheek, and he realized that he was crying.
Through the tears, he couldn’t help but laugh a little. “No offense, but aren’t you a little too pretty to be the Grim Reaper or whatever?”
She smiled sadly, still cradling his face in her hands. “I’m just a ghost, like you. I chose to spend my afterlife as a companion for the children who need it most. That way, you don’t have to do this alone.”
Narancia stifled a sob. The girl continued, “It’s okay to cry, kid. You need to grieve. You died so painfully, and so young . You left friends behind. You’d barely started living your life, and it was torn away from you without even a warning. Crying is good. It means you lived a life worth mourning.”
If Narancia’s earlier tears had been rain, they grew into a torrential downpour. The sheer force of it pulled him downward, curling his form toward the ground. He dimly registered a hand drawing gentle circles on his back, which only made him cry harder.
He didn’t know how much time passed before he quieted himself. He didn’t know if time could pass for him anymore. Eventually though, he looked up.
“Thanks. I think I feel a little better now.”
“I’m glad. Now, it’s okay if you’re not ready yet, but soon you’ll have to decide whether you’d like to move on or stay here for a while. You can follow your friends if you’d like, though they won’t be able to see you. Or you can pass. I know you have people waiting to see you again.”
“Oh.” Narancia wasn’t sure he was ready to even think about that. “Um...What about what you do? Can I do that, too?”
The girl leaned back in surprise at his question. “You’d like to be a protector of children?”
“I think maybe I would. I’m pretty good at cheering people up. Can I try?”
“That’s not all that the job entails. Do you remember when you first woke up, when I was crying?” Narancia nodded slowly, unsure where the conversation was going. “I was feeling the pain of your death. When you choose to be a companion for a child that hovers in between, you feel everything they feel. Sharing the pain makes it easier on them, but it’s not for the faint of heart. Are you sure you want to do that?”
“Yes,” he answered, this time with confidence.”I’ve been through a lot. I really, really think I can help. I wanna be like you. I wanna be there for people who need me. I don’t know what I would’ve done if I woke up here alone, and...I dunno. If I could be there for someone else, maybe it would feel a little less like all of this was for nothing."
She smiled, stood, and reached out her hand. “I’ll show you how it’s done.”