It could perhaps be said that the easiest part of being dead is not being aware of what it does to everybody who cares about you. You don't get to see the loss in their eyes, hear the anguish in their voices; the dismay and confusion at how it could be this way, how something that once was could simply no longer be...

I suppose we'll have to face it: Death is only relevant to the living. If you can ignore the physical agony that usually accompanies the cease of life, or if you are somehow in such a situation to not encounter the pain, but still feel it happening... imagine the wind whipping a pile of fine dust from the cobbles, snatching it up grain by grain, raking away at its edges as it slowly erodes to nothing on the breeze. You notice suddenly that there is less of you, and you can feel yourself becoming less; the place which you define as 'you' is getting smaller as parts of it start to disappear.

What is happening to you, you wonder? Where are you going, little by little? You don't know, because what of you that has gone is no longer part of you, and cannot tell you; you cannot feel it, you do not know it. But it is gone. The grains trickle away, and the fear builds with realization, fear without a basis, for there is no pain, there is no regret, you will feel nothing, and then the function collapses in a wash of peace. You can no longer fit in the tiny space that's left for you... the wind continues to erode at your edges, taking pieces of you away. You no longer know what you feel... you no longer remember why you did the things you may have done, but cannot seem to worry about it.

Your last fleeting thoughts as a single being pass by. I can only guess they'd be different for everyone...
but for My writer... My player... My friend...
he thought,
"I'm shutting down now..."
"...goodbye."


That was the last I heard of Matthias, the cub you knew as Stoney. ... That was what it was like, one month ago; for, though he eventually was too fragile and small to comprehend his memories, he still wrote them, and I have them all right here. ... I'm sure you'd all expect yourselves to feel alarmed, to panic, to try and claw yourself together, fight it, force yourself to exist somehow, but when it's happening, I can tell you--there IS no force... there IS no panic... there ARE no claws... there IS no fight... there IS no alarm. You don't have TIME to build outrage. By the time you know it's happening, that 'this is it', you're too small to reach where your emotions used to be and the connections that once attached you to that are gone.

people miss him.

They're dissatisfied with my role, for I am poor at replacing what he was. He loved someone... someone that I cannot feel anything for, and the way she begs at me breaks my heart all the more, but what can I do...? Lie? How DARE I mock the joy, the passion, the hope he once felt by 'pretending' to love someone to the dizzying, disorienting, all-consuming degree that he did? The one person I ever felt even comparably to ... does not even exist, and mayhap never will. Can I bring myself to defile -her- memory...? The only real quality of hers that exists in this world, by virtue of me...?

When they talk to me, they know that something is different. I can't hide it. The harder I try to hide it... the more it shows. I didn't come here to replace him. I had no intention of this happening. I coveted neither his friends, nor his family, nor his career, nor his den, nor his possessions, NOR his circumstances, though respect them I do. ... I was handed his life, and I feel that this role is that of a steward; a curator. This is not mine and I have no right to treat it such... it would be an affront to my honor, his faith, and absolutely -everyone- else's trust.

... I forgot where I was going with this. I suppose it's a question:
What am I supposed to do..? I'm ten years younger than I was when I was still in my world. What can I do...?

I wish Lyliac were here...