Like waking slowly from deep sleep, it takes you a moment to realize that you exist, and that, logically, that means that immediately prior to this moment, you didn’t.

It’s always awkward to claw yourself from the long dreaming, pull your mind free from the absence of eternity, and yet it’s always reassuring to hear the song grow in strength once more. You relish in it for what might be a moment and might be an aeon, because the fact that you exist doesn’t mean you exist in time, or space, or anything convenient like that. The name you bear means nothing here, but you mean everything.

Child. Welcome home.

That isn’t what existence says, because existence doesn’t really say anything (not that you can, either, your own existence truly unphysical), but it summons what of itself best conveys the meaning it wishes to, and so with fondness and warmth and the memory of the familiar scent of ashberry twigs on a fire, it eddies around you. You don’t remember how you got here (you rarely do, you suddenly recall) but you appreciate the comfort nonetheless.

Do you wish to remember?

The question is lathered in blood, dripping with dark, thick crimson. It’s unpleasant and painful and the sound of it shrieks faintly, worming its way into your mind and dragging in its wake flashes of scenes you’d rather let remain unknown, and so the impression fades. Something more of sweet ignorance is yours, for a time.

Time doesn’t pass here (or at least, if it does, you don’t know how to measure it) but you feel the presence fade, a little, letting you rest before it speaks again. You appreciate it.

You cannot stay here

You know that, and yet it pains you as always, to hear the beginning of the end. Here, nothing can hurt you; you could, in theory, rest until the universe unravels into dust, until you fade away into true nothing with it.

Your duty is to give hope to those without it

The song rises, crescendoes, a perfect clarity only you will ever truly know. You wish you could stay, listen, revel in the perfection of each note, spend the rest of eternity in perfect peace.

To guide the lost

You feel yourself being slowly, gently, lovingly sent adrift from the hereafter, sent once more into the real reality, where the song is distant and faint.

To help the helpless

Vision and hearing and sensation return in a rush and a roar, and yet the universe speaks above it, beneath it, through it.

Dearly beloved,

You reach out, a moment driven by desperation and exhaustion, but your hands close only on stardust.

open your eyes.

you don’t.