The Dead Scout's Handbook of Afterlife Survival

Chapter Nineteen: Thermopolis

The following morning, Sarah and Cayden remained awake, as Martha slumbered atop a log. Charlie also refrained from sleep, but walked with Rebecca, well behind both Sarah, Cayden, and the floating lumber Martha slept on. For the past month and a half, Charlie and Rebecca had a weekly date day, and no arthropod-humanoid monstrosity was going to stop them. So tonight was date day again, or at least, it should have been. Instead, Charlie was trying to convince Rebecca the swelling wasn't so bad.

Rebecca had attempted to mash together berries and leaves into a makeup palette. Unfortunately, as Martha described, one of the berries was called Acid of the Fields for good reason, and one of the leaves included was 'like poison ivy mixed with gasoline'. Martha informed Rebecca that it looked fine, and after some ripe remarks, informed her the inflammatory reaction would subside well before her inflammatory comments.

It struck Cayden with some disappointment that Charlie and Rebecca weren't nearby, and he now walked with a sleeping woman he didn't trust and another woman he didn't trust himself around. Yet, after an hour of striding with Sarah over the open stretches of snow in silence, he accepted the quiet was more mutual understanding than awkwardness.

"Thank you," Sarah muttered.

"Huh?" Cayden straightened his posture, having been resting on a daydream's fine edge.

"Thank you. For not making this awkward. Just enjoying strolling out here and watching the sky pass by."

"Yeah. I like to do this too. Staring out there, wondering what it's like somewhere else."

"Do you do that a lot?"

"Yeah. Probably shouldn't. Squeeze the day and whatnot."

"No worries, I do it too."

They continued to gaze into the swirling sun as it seemed to wave back at them, its tendrils slithering over the clouds.

"What sort of place do you imagine?" Cayden's question surprised even himself.

"I want a place where people just leave each other be, where they just embrace 'to each his or her own'."

"What does..." Cayden drifted off, suddenly realizing he exposed a hint of his ignorance.

"What does it mean? As an example, if someone thinks peppers belong on nachos, and another person thinks peppers don't belong on nachos, they don't fight about it, they just let each other have the nachos they want. That's what I dream of, a land where people can eat their nachos in peace without anyone caring what anyone else has on their nachos. It isn't their business."

"What about people who don't like nachos at all?"

"They don't get to come to my universe." The flickering sunlight caught on Sarah's white, glimmering grin, her thin lips curling up on her freckled cheeks.

"Hey, so how come we know we like nachos... but we don't ever remember having them."

"Dunno, Cayden. Maybe us liking nachos is a fact while memories are something different."

"But memories happened, they're the same thing as facts."

"Not at all. Memories are subjective. They can change or be planted with enough suggestion. That's why I don't miss them. How would I know they were real?"

"Because they are. I mean, don't you have one memory?" Sarah's jaw clenched and Cayden took two glances then almost tripped over a thin branch protruding from the exposed dirt. "You remember something?"

"Nothing about anyone else, but everything I need to know about me," she grumbled.

"What does that mean?"