I was sitting outside watching the clouds drift by. It was Wednesday if it mattered at all...
The neighbours were barbecuing something. Possibly lamb. The smell of fennel and thyme drifted through the air. The grass was cool and the sun was warm. I was wearing a light blue sundress Suzy had made for my birthday, and a pair of daffodil-yellow sandals.
I had eaten a bowl of leftover pasta for lunch and I was feeling round so I was resting it off outside on a nice Autumn day. I wasn't idle however.
Earlier that morning I had run some tests on some new equipment and to cut it short, I died. Heart, brain, spleen, and all the rest. All just stopped working. Most inconvenient really. I awoke to Suzy shouting about something to do with badgers and my fingers.
It wasn't the first instance. I had died three times over the previous week and not only was it dangerous, it was annoying.
I noted everything from the phase of the moon to how many times I had defecated during the week, yet nothing presented itself as being out of the ordinary.
"And I have absolutely no idea why," I said.
Suzy and I sat around the dining table and talked while we waited for our dinner to settle.
"I checked the ifram-quantone emitters," I continued. "They're all putting out a steady stream of retrograde frequencies so they shouldn't be interfering with my bio-arcane resonance..."
I stopped.
Suzy was staring straight through me.
"It's not disturbing the magic in my body that's keeping me alive," I summed.
"Ah," she said, nodding.
I continued, "And I checked Grim over. If he's cutting out then that could be the cause but he's as fit as a fiddle made of dead cats and that's the best you can expect really."
"Well, you'll have to look into it tomorrow," she said. She stood up, stretched and picked up her bag.
She stopped half way through pulling on her cardigan when she saw I hadn't moved. I had of course completely forgotten.
"The Convergence?" she said in the same tone of voice one reserves for those who aren't good with big words.
I rolled my eyes and slapped my forehead.
The Convergence is the time of the year when the spirit world, named Iveskiali, passes closest to the material world and the barrier between the two is at its thinnest.
It's not only a good opportunity to see some old faces, but it's the only time of the year when I'm able to gather some particularly valuable resources that would cost me a generous sum were I to acquire them anywhere else.
Also it was my job to make sure it all went smoothly. Self appointed really. And with me popping in and out of oblivion, I nearly went and forgot about it.
I'd like to mention at this point that there are several kinds of death. The first is the standard kind where you die and your spirit goes to Iveskiali. It stays there until one of two things happen. Either you fall prey to the wild creatures of the spirit world, survive long enough to turn feral yourself, starve from lack of essence or "survive" long enough to disperse naturally. No one knows what happens after that. Not even Necromancers can bring you back from spiritus mortus. Some think you become a god. Sounds like a lot of responsibility to be honest.
Personally I enjoy the silent infinitude of the other kind of death, which is achieved by few who aren't privy to the arcane arts. Being undead subverts the otherwise "natural" process of life and death, and when I die I generally find myself in a state of being far removed from the conceptualisations of a living mind. As a warlock, naturally I've done my damndest to conceptualise it.
