Luna woke up in a bedroom she didn’t know, but she remembered everything that happened before she fell asleep and, with a sigh of relief, the things that took place in her dreams. It was strange to think that she’d had a whole thing with Donner before and went around not remembering it, the bridge and Snowman, too.

She wondered if she could talk to him.

Silently, in her mind, she asked, “Donner?”

His groan was heard, yet not, and she smiled. He was there after all. He wasn't a figment of her dreams. She would never be alone again.

“Don’t be happy about that! I’m getting out of here!”

He said it so loud that it made her head hurt.

“Not for a while,” she told him. “Since you don’t even know how to leave.”

“No, but I have an idea. You’re going to have to die.”

“What?! I’m not dying again!”

“You won’t stay dead if you don’t want to. Don’t you remember what Snowman said? Even if you don’t I do and it was heavily implied that even if you do pass for a time you can return. You should have died during that fire. There was no way you could have survived it. You fell head first to concrete. You should have broken your back at the very least. Your bag wasn’t full of clothes or anything soft enough to break that fall. Instead, you woke up perfectly fine and I can only imagine what the doctors thought of it all, but the point is you’re not injured and you need to go back.”

“Do you think you’ll be able to leave if I leave?”

“Maybe. It’s the best shot for now. So, Luna, go kill yourself.”

“But, how?” She didn’t know how to die.

“Take the plastic bag out of the trash can by the bed and put it over your head.”

As it turned out it wasn’t quite that simple and it took several minutes for her to suffocate, which wasn’t pleasant, especially as he complained all the while about how bad she was at dying, but she did find herself back on the bridge.

Unfortunately, so did Donner.

“Goddammit!”

“Hey, Snowman! You’re still here?”

The white-haired man was slow to speech even now; he had to think about things before he spoke. She never did that. Words came and she said them. Or not. She didn’t spend much time speaking when she thought of it. She didn’t spend much time thinking either. Without the television, because even after crying it out she couldn’t stand the thought of looking at the screen, she would do more thinking. And reading, which she assumed Donner would want since he needed answers and had no way to get them. Unless of course he was out once they left this place again, in which case all his angst was for nothing and he would be happy about that but she wasn’t sure she would be.

She’d never had a friend before.

“Luna,” Snowman finally said. He looked like he didn’t want to be glad to see her, but was despite himself. A half smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I happen to know that there is but one way to arrive here, so why don’t you explain?”

“I put a plastic bag over my head. I won’t do that again unless I have to though, it took forever!”

He frowned at that. “I wish you wouldn’t do it at all. Death isn’t to be taken lightly.”

“Well, I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Donner,” she pointed at the man who stood on the rails of the bridge, contemplating throwing himself off.

“Donner?”

“He’s like the Donner Party, you know? The people on the train who turned cannibal to survive the avalanche?”

“I don’t think that’s the-”

“Details, details,” she waved a hand in the air. “It’s the spirit that matters. He’s like that. Depressing.”

“I won’t argue with that, if he’s anything like the ‘Donner’ I knew then the name fits.”

“You know him, too?”

He held her shoulder and his expression was very serious. “Yes. There are many things for you to discover sooner or later and most of them I shouldn’t reveal, but you’ve already come here and because you’re so young you should have some warning,” he paused, “rather insight. What you do with it is up to you.”

He was quiet long enough that she wondered if he forgot what he was talking about. Long enough that Donner showed up, furious as ever, dry as a whistle after trying and failing to jump. Apparently, she was right about the water not being real and there was nowhere to go which made sense considering her inability to be rid of Ink Pen when she tried throwing him off the bridge.

Where was Ink Pen anyway?

Not that she’d go looking for him and she didn’t care. It was better if he remained on the outer boundary of reality.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

While Donner stalked further into this way station than they’d gone before, as Snowman appeared to have been sitting in this spot since they left, his speech began again.

“This place is where we meet, but we could never meet anywhere else. I’ve been here many times, and sometimes it looks different, but never before has someone else like us showed up at the same time.”

“Like us?”

He nodded slowly. “That’s part of what I don’t feel I can tell you, an answer you’ll come to yourself, in time. But wrapped in that truth is another that I think you should know, especially because we’ve been here at the same time.” He looked off into the distance. The artificial distance that was the painted ocean. “I’m here from a place nearby, like you are, but we are not from the same place. All worlds lead here and then onward, somewhere we cannot go.”

Once more he trailed off into silence, watching the bridge that went on.

“I don’t know where it goes,” he said. “I have my suspicions about it, but I can’t say for sure. You’ll have your theories no doubt and I don’t want to influence you.” He looked back down at her, sitting beside him. A child who at some point on the long, long road of unending, chose to forget. He would not make her remember. “The point is while we are alike, we come from different...dimensions. Different realities. You could think of it as if we were each walking separate halls, going in the same direction, but surrounded by walls. We can never see or hear one another. Traveling as we are, we met in this place, a waiting room, but if we both decide to move ahead, we will go back to walking our hallways.”

Luna sat as silently as he ever had and then said, “That means if I leave, and you leave too, I won’t see you anymore?” He nodded and patted her back, her head, when tears began to fall. She didn't think she'd ever cried so much in her life. Why was everything so sad lately? “I don’t want that to happen. I already can’t see Pink anymore.”

Snowman, as she called him, was hardly more than a stranger, yet she felt a deep attachment to the white-haired man. He was the first person she met after Pink died and he talked to her like she could understand him. Pink hardly talked to her at all and anyone else who did thought she was too little and too stupid to know what they were saying. Even Ant mostly talked to herself so far, that or she was giving directions. Luna knew Ant didn’t mean it in a bad or patronizing way, but Snowman wasn’t telling her what to do, he was doing something different even if she couldn’t put words to it.

“Well,” he said, speaking despite her crying. “I was tired and I thought I should stay here awhile. It’s been a long journey so far and I think the next time I leave it will be a long time before I get back here. Of course, after a while time doesn’t mean much. But I’ve been like you,” his smile was kind, pearly, “and I know it can feel like forever.”

He supposed that was why she was a child now.

“Mhm,” a nod and she pawed at her eyes. Snowman produced a handkerchief which was used to better clear her vision and nose. “So, when I come back, you’ll still be here?”

“To be honest I’d rather you didn’t. Death is not something to take lightly and while it doesn’t keep you from returning to life, I’m concerned about the effect it may have mentally. Still, I can’t stop you from doing it. As long as you’ll come back, here I will wait.”

She looked over her shoulder. “What about Donner?”

“I don’t know about him,” he sighed. “What exactly happened when you left?”

“Oh,” she was getting more animated. This was an interesting story. “I woke up in a hospital. Turns out I was in a coma for a while and I didn’t remember coming here at all until I fell asleep after looking at the turned-off television made me think of Pink, which made me cry, which made Ant cry, and then I passed out! I guess she put me to bed and while I was asleep, I found Donner in my head and I remembered meeting him during the coma. We talked about why he was there, kind of, but he wouldn’t tell me jackshit!” she exclaimed. “He got defensive. I asked him where his body was and he didn’t answer. I figure if he’s in my head, he must be the one who's dead.”

A snort. “You could say that.”

“Is he? Dead?”

“His body may be, but his soul is intact and has somehow attached itself to you. I don’t know anything about that. As we are alike, there is another like him, but I’ve never had this experience with ‘Donner’s’,” air quotes, “counterpart. It doesn’t seem like I can help you with this problem.”

“He thought he might be able to get out if I died, but that didn’t work. He came here with me instead.”

Snowman breathed deeply. “You’ll have to try other things then. It must be hard sharing your head space with someone like him.”

“No, not really.”

Snowman was shocked. “I can’t imagine it. Mortal enemies in one body.”

“Mortal enemies?”

He took his time before continuing by saying, “Again, I would rather not influence you. My Donner, as you call him, is diametrically opposed to me and I to her. Certain things between us can never be reconciled.” Another smile for her. “I guess you’re a blank slate though and he seems to be, too. I don’t know what that might do for your relationship. You don’t seem to mind him.”

“He doesn’t like me,” she said. “But I think the one he's mad at is himself. If he hadn’t died, how ever that happened, he wouldn’t be stuck in my brain. It’s not my fault at all.”

“No, it doesn’t sound like it is.”

That was when Donner returned, striding forward and toward the exit, such as it was. The place through which they entered was a tunnel, she realized as she examined it. Foggy and swirling, wavering because it was a place barely held together. He was determined to leave without her, she could see that, and she thought it might work, but when she snapped back to the bedroom sans bag, Ant and the man who must be Ungle standing over her looking horrified, and Donner immediately demanding that she, “Tell them you were playing,” she knew it was a flop.

“I was playing.”

They must have believed her and Donner grumbled in the back of her mind about something or other, but he wasn’t talking to her, and Ant and Ungle were too loud about never doing a thing like that again for her to pay attention to him. In the end, they took the bag away entirely and didn’t put another one in the little metal can so that option was out, which was fine since she hadn’t liked it.

When the adults calmed, she was properly introduced to Ungle and they adjourned to the first floor where Georgia was snobbishly completing homework which consisted of connecting uppercase and lowercase letters on either side of a paper with lines and coloring in pictures.

If anyone was her mortal enemy it was Georgia. At first sight.

The television was left on in the background when dinner came, potatoes au gratin with spinach and a chocolate protein drink because the Gold’s, that was their last name Luna learned after Georgia insisted on showing off her handwriting, were vegetarians and Ant said they would ease Luna into it but she said she didn’t mind.

There weren’t many things that she minded.

Except Georgia. She minded Georgia a lot.

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