"Who are you?"
Its voice was the most aberrant sound she had ever heard.
"Who are you?"
The woman stirred from her position lying in the midst of nowhere, suspended in everything with a tremendous view of somewhere. Somewhere, that is, being the near-invisible face of Death. The woman drew back with a silent yelp.
"What sort of spirit are you?" Death asked. Its voice was wrong in that it was like nothing the woman had ever heard, neither male nor female, not even alive. Despite it—or perhaps because of it—she knew who was speaking though its name went unsaid.
"Who... am I?" The woman's voice was weak from disuse. She stared at the ground of the nowhere place and tried to remember where she'd come from. There had been blood, and a sharp pain, though she couldn't see her body now to pinpoint where it had come from.
Death waited for her response.
"Who am I?" the woman repeated. "I'm... dead."
"You are no human spirit," Death said. "You are not dead."
"What?"
"I know all who are dead. You cannot deceive me. Who are you?"
"My name is..." The woman looked around as if she would find her name adorned with lights somewhere in the abyss. When she found only the expanse of nothing, same as before, she returned her gaze to where her feet might've been if she still had them. "My name... my name is Andreya Marivatan."
When the words left her nonexistent mouth, it all flooded back to her. Her life, the darkest of nights, the glisten of the blade that had ended everything.
"I do not know you," Death said. "You are not dead."
Then the woman awoke.
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The Duchess Cannot Sleep || ONC 2021
FantasyDuchess Andreya Marivatan was murdered at the age of twenty-two. It was during the hours the pool of night was deepest, Andreya soundlessly asleep in silk sheets behind the curtains of her elegant canopy bed. By the time she awoke to a noise, the de...
