Chapter Text
Day 0
Dying wasn't anything like Kate Milligan expected.
She knows she's dead right away. There's no question about it. She's not sure how she knows, exactly. She simply... understands.
Her eyes opened and she couldn't think much. It was quiet, the kind of quiet you get when it's winter and all the sound seems to have been absorbed somewhere and snatched out of existence. Then she felt that she was soft and comfortable, and she saw that snow was softly falling from the sky, and she was lying on her back, and she was in the woods... somewhere.
She knows she's dead because this is the first moment of her existence where she didn't feel like she was going to keel over with anxiety.
It's quiet. There are no birds, no highways, no crunch of animals in the distance. Just snow.
Kate lies there for a minute. She's not sure how long. She closes her eyes again. A snowflake melts on the tip of her nose. She inhales, deep and long, her so long constricted ribs taking everything in. She smells the dirt and the water and it's all so very real and natural and nothing shocks her to learn that it can't be anything but heaven.
Then she's overcome with an unshakeable urge to get up and move, like someone tied a piece of rope to one of her ribs and was tugging every so gently, and she follows eager like a dog.
Her feet are the only thing disturbing the perfectly thick block of snow, but when she looks behind her she sees a dusting filling it back up. By the next hour, it'll be gone.
The walk is more than pleasant. Her mind is blank, not in a sedated way but in a calm one. Like a pond without a ripple. She's... comfortable. She hasn't felt so at peace in... well. She couldn't tell you when, actually.
For some reason, it doesn't make her sad to think about.
She hopes her little boy is in some place like this. Of all people in the world to go to heaven, it should be him. Maybe you could call that a mother's whims, but she really believes it. Not just because she has to.
She can't remember dying, but it doesn't bother her.
The sky doesn't seem to exist. Everything is a foggy white, from the ground to the place where blue should be. Splashes of color exist on the tall, pale brown trees that seem to reach impossible heights. She wonders if birds will come. Is this where cardinals get to go when they die? It would be lovely to see some birds.
Kate imagines little skeletons hopping around from branch to branch, blindly pecking away, and her lips quirk to the side in a half smile.
There is no distinct path but she's walking like she has a destination, and maybe there is one. She doesn't care.
She stops whenever she pleases, pausing to admire a particularly sparkly patch of snow or gaze up into the milky sky or to press some snow to her forehead when she starts to overheat. She's been crammed into so many puffy jackets in her life despite her protests. Minnesota is cold, yes, but exercise can correct for a lot of that. This coat, once she thinks of it, reminds her plenty of her childhood to an uncanny extent.
Her face is pleasantly frozen and she's short of breath once she gets into a fast and steady rhythm of things, and she knows she must be pink in her nose and cheeks. She thought it was cute in high school, she remembers suddenly, a midwest makeup-free look. It was cute on every other girl, at least. She had hoped that it was on her, too.
In the distance, she spots more wood that certainly isn't in the shape of a tree.
She takes a deep breath, pressing her fingers backwards against her cheeks. Alright.
That's... something. That thread tugs on her once more and she bends easily and happily to it's will, sticking her hands in her pocket and walking with a new fervor. As she gets closer she can see that it's a rustic wooden cabin, the same kind you would see if you drove down certain country roads in her hometown that you could hardly tell were roads. Maybe that's what she's traveling down, a covered and overgrown thing that might resemble a road in the warmer weather if you were to squint and see the truck tracks.
There are, to no surprise, a distinct lack of truck tracks here.
She supposes there are no trucks in heaven.
The house gets closer and she can see it inside and out in her mind's eye, not in clear pictures like a tour but in its colors and shapes and the smell of wood and she knows, she just knows it's for her. It glows warm like a beating heart deep inside her chest.
A grin breaks out on her face as she comes up to the door, which rests underneath a little roof cover with green shingles, keeping the shoe mat free from snow. She stomps the snow off, putting her hands back in her pockets before braving the metal of the snow. Her fist wraps around something that startles her- she thought these pockets were empty?
She pulls out a lovely little key on a simple ring, it's just a plain looking one like you would get from any locksmith, , but she smiles down at it like... well, like it holds the key to heaven.
It doesn't shock her that the key slides in easily and when turned the handle presses the door open and it creaks gently.
She smiles and laughs, breathily. "Wow," she whispers, and she thinks that's the first words to leave her mouth in this new world. This brave, beautiful new world.
There's a little plastic thing to step on and leave your snowy boots, just like when she was a kid. A wave of nostalgia without a specific attached memory hits and she keeps smiling brightly. The foyer bleeds right into the living room, a space lit in bright yellow with a soft looking brown couch and two recliners parallel to a large window with a dark brown wooden frame, adorned in the corners with carved flowers. If she squints, she thinks she can see a vine carved down the rest.
She sheds her boots quickly, unclasping her thick coat and tossing it on the coat rack in the most convenient spot that it could be placed. She wants nothing more in that moment to explore, like she's been taken over by a small child staying at a relative's summer house for the first time. She wants to open every cabinet and read every book and look in every nook and crevice, but the other part of her is still a grown woman with a quiet joy for every little beautiful thing.
The wall across from the furniture is just bookshelves, a break in the center where a big record player sits. Underneath it, instead of books, is a collection she instantly recognizes as her grandfather's- he got the bigger half, her whole life he always managed to have more. Then she started collecting and put hers in his bin. She runs her hand along the sides of them, the plastic he kept them in so carefully to keep from warping. The only family member really on her side.
The books were a big library of titles she recognized and some she didn't, some copies old and matted and annotated to hell and others looking like they'd just been plucked off a bookstore shelf. On the coffee table is a small stack of books with dogears- huh. The one she had read the most recently.
Kate smiles again. She's not used to doing it so often.
She runs her hand along the arm of the couch. It's kind of like corduroy but not, all soft and plushy. She sits down, exhaustion overtaking her completely.
It's just as relaxing as it looks and she feels her eyelids slowly shutting themselves.
Yeah. She can explore later. For now... she's comfortable.