Revive

How We Came Here

  She made it 400 miles around and up the forests and the mountains and the coasts. She never stopped running. She avoided the wars, the battles, the fights. But she didn't make it. To what, she didn't know. But someone grabbed her, pulled her, and stabbed her in the stomach. She thought she knew pain before. When she lost her finger, when her leg fell into fire, when her arm was shot. But no pain compared to death. It combined being burned alive while beaten, cut, giving birth, smashed, and squeezed at the same time a hundred times over. The murderer thought she was dead because she was in too much pain to breathe or move or for her heart to pump. She even thought she was dead. After hours, she willfully gave in to death, and the last thing she felt was someone whispering her name, but not the name she went by in the mortal world. Leya.
  When she awoke, everything was different. There were more people, but they took the form of whatever they wished. Still, she knew who were people and who were good and bad and who were dogs or Dolphins, and she could talk to all. She wished to see her family, what they were before the war started, and there they were. They talked, laugh, watched a movie that appeared at their will, played games (not the kind of games they played in the mortal realm, but the kind of games  in the after realm. They couldn't be described by a human, and nobody could measure the fun it was to play them. Leya, who later found out this was the name of her soul, also found her friends and pets. She had one living friend, whom she could gaze upon any time she wanted, and even help her friend. Leya could make assassin's footsteps louder, make her friend's aim better, and more. She met new people and formed new bonds. No happiness compared with the happiness of the after realm. But all that was about to change.