The wind whispered as it billowed between the trees. Forest songs wrapped my brain in a blanket of wonder. Birds chirped their way to my soul. Deers pranced away from my bleeding body. Everything but my head felt numb, as if I was in a dream. My head was throbbing, as if it was the only thing left.

I wished to scream, but my voice was silent. The pain of my death echoed throughout my body. Could I even call this ethereal form my own? What was I? Just a soul? Thinking back upon how I died, I knew it was inevitable. We all die, but the way in which I did, it was my fault. I knew the rules of the Wicsey. Deserters never lived long. Still, I longed to return to the material realm. I could not embrace my chilling corpse or shed a tear in mourning myself. The gentle, cool touch of the wind was absent. I would never again feel the chill of winter, nor the scorch of the Helton summer. However, I suppose the only good to come of my own death is I would never again be subject to the Wicsey's "protection." You truly do not love life until you experience death.

I landed and was relieved to know that I wouldn't fall through the Earth. Looking back at my mortal form once more, I noticed that there was someone else by me. An Elf boy, no older than seven years old, was slain by the Wicsey guard. His face triggered memories, but they were foggy at best and almost absent at worst. I knew not his name, but I knew of his death. We were together in the end, when the guard had sent us to our graves. He was killed for thievery and for religious fracturing. In my last moments, I wanted to save him. I thought, if my own life could not be preserved, at least his could be. But alas, I was too late and he was slain first.

I sat down beside the boy and stared up at the dark, starry night sky. A memory whisked through my mind. One of my father and me, watching this very sky and these very stars. I could hear his voice, telling me the names of the constellations and their spirits. And then, one of them spoke to me.

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"Sendar, protect his journey," I uttered, speaking for the first time since my death.

I tried to close his eyes to ensure a safe journey, but suddenly my hands glowed a bright white when they neared him. I retreated from the elf boy and looked down at my hands. They were translucent, but when they were near the elf, they lit up. Crawling over to the boy now, I reached out towards him. My entire arm began to glow now. The bloodied skin of my ethereal body began to return to its normal bronze color. But something else was happening. The boy's wounds were beginning to heal. I had thought it to be in vain, but to my surprise, the boy's eyes flickered back with life.

We stared at each other in disbelief. He looked like a ghost, and he might as well have been as much of one as me. His skin was ghastly pale and his eyes were bloodshot. He spoke in a language I could not understand. When I noticed he sounded scared, I wanted to reassure him that he was okay, but I didn't know that for sure. I had no idea what just happened, nor what I could do now with this new power. He held up a knife.

"That's no way to treat someone who saved you!" I yelled and watched as the knife passed through my translucent neck.

"Where am I!" he screamed and tried to tackle me.

When he fell through me and to the ground, he turned back to stare me down. I couldn't blame him, I was just as confused as he was when I died.

"Am I dead?" he asked, terror in his eyes.

"You were," I sighed and sat down cross-legged.

My arms still looked normal, but the rest of me was about as ghastly as you could imagine. The elven boy on the other hand, only looked pale. He looked to be processing this new information. It didn't look like he was taking it well.

I sighed and held out my hand, "My name is Raena, yours is?"

"Fel," he looked off to the side.

Something inside me started to burn. I had brought this boy back from death, but he shouldn't have died in the first place. It wasn't his fault he didn't believe in the Wicsey spirits. I was angry at the guards, not even for what they had done to me, but for what they had done to him, to everyone. But, I couldn't let my anger get to me. I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself down.

"Let's head back to town," I said.