Then she heard a sigh, and out of the darkness saw the figure of a woman taking shape.

“I’m so sorry, Lucy. I’m afraid there’s been a mistake.”

A mistake?

Lucy wondered what exactly that meant, as a ghostly version of her human body coalesced, floating in a black void that stretched into the infinite horizon.

As far as she could tell, the last day or so had been nothing but mistakes.

She raised her pale, translucent, human hand and stared through it. It turned the void into a kind of hazy grey that reminded her of storm clouds. As she thought it, a tiny little bolt of lighting zapped into existence in the palm of her hand and buzzed energetically for a few seconds before dissipating.

Okay, strange. But not the weirdest thing she’d seen today. Not by far.

As she watched, the blank darkness of the void around her began to fill in, like a pointillist painting slowly filling up with dots of color until an image was formed. Verdant greens, earthy shades of brown. Sunlight yellow. An image of…

Paradise, she thought with wonder, as a garden grew into being where void had been.

Lush, leafy trees full of fruit rose serenely with the rolling hills, all surrounded by a sea of grass that blew in the warm wind with a sound that reminded her distinctly of her mother sighing. The place was comfort itself, and Lucy felt herself relax as her body, too, became physical.

As she saw the color return to her skin, she felt a wave of emotion. Relief, mostly.

I’m human again. She let out a sigh, savoring the feel of the air in her lungs.

“Oh,” she said softly. She’d never realized how good it felt just to breathe. Just to speak. Tears began to well up in the corners of her eyes, and she treasured even that embarrassing sensation.

She saw that a black-haired woman was standing in front of her. A very beautiful, very naked woman. Lucy was sure she hadn’t been there a second before.

“Oh!” Lucy yelped. She was naked too, she realized. Her hands flew to cover herself.

The woman laughed and waved her hand, and rich, flowing robes of white fabric appeared over both of them. “Sorry,” the woman said with a smile. Her voice was faceted and flowing, deep like the convergence of rivers.

“And…” suddenly the woman looked uncomfortable. “Sorry about the…well, you know.” She made a throat-being-cut motion with a finger, and for a moment the bright paradise around them turned red in Lucy’s mind, steeped in blood and…

“I…died, right?” Lucy asked. The woman nodded.

“You did, but, well…”

Suddenly the woman sat down with a heaving sigh, collapsing cross-legged onto the soft grass. Lucy found herself sitting as well, and felt the warmth of the ground below her, like the sun had been shining on it all day.

What is this place?

“Listen, Lucy, I really must apologize. I made a mistake. Well, Jim made a mistake, but I hired him, so here we are. The point is, that was never supposed to happen to you.” The woman’s eyes stared deeply into her, and her warm hands enveloped Lucy’s own.

A sound like a voice calling from far away filled the air, until the woman gestured with a hand to cut it off, still looking Lucy in the eyes.

“Err…okay?” Lucy said. She was starting to think this woman was some sort of God, which, on the one hand, was very cool. On the other, it was very…frightening. The woman seemed to sense Lucy’s discomfort and let go of Lucy’s hands, patting her on the knee like a kindly grandma.

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“Don’t worry, you don’t have to do or say a thing. I just wanted to give my apologies in person.” The woman rose, and Lucy scrambled to her feet as well.

“Wait, at least tell me what happened! I mean, was that just a dream, or…”

“Not a dream, I’m afraid.” The woman looked like she was considering whether or not she wanted to tell something to Lucy, who waited, not daring to speak. “It was supposed to be a Vision of the evolution of life. An experience to uplift and reinvigorate you, a reward for your hard work.”

“Oh. Then…thank you, I guess. What’s—what’s going to happen to me now?” she asked, trying to keep the tremor out of her voice. It was difficult, even in this wondrous place. Maybe the woman was only apologizing in person because there was nothing she could do. Lucy had died after all, so what if this was just a quick stop before the burning fires of damnation, or the eternal cold and icy nothingness of—

“You’re going home, Lucy.” The woman smiled at her, radiant and warm.

Suddenly a man’s voice rang high in the air, and she gave an aggrieved sigh.

“She’s going home, to the place where she belongs, where love has always been enough for—”

The god-woman’s smile grew strained and rigid as she snapped her fingers and the voice cut off.

A wave of immense relief crashed into Lucy, and she let her body relax until she was laying on her back and staring up at the sky, where she saw tiny birds flitting around from tree to tree and clouds in the open sky.

Home. She could go home.

She closed her eyes, and basked in the pure, unadulterated relaxation of someone who has just looked death in the face and flipped it the bird. For some reason she’d been sure the god-lady was still just going to give her a pat on the back and send her down to hell.

As a human, Lucy had not been on the best terms with God, even before she’d stopped believing.

She stared at the worms in the soil for a few moments, remembering the feeling of being so small and powerless that almost literally anything could kill her. A worm could have squished her dead or swallowed her up without even realizing it. Lucy had never felt that kind of powerlessness before, had never even imagined what it could be like.

“Not today, Satan!” she murmured to the sky. Something nagged at her, but she wasn’t quite sure what. Maybe it was just the lingering trauma of getting killed, but the more she thought about returning to her regular life, the more the nagging feeling grew.

Then the man’s voice came back, and Lucy saw a head poke up from the leaves of a tree in the distance. “‘Satan’ is not the preferred nomenclature, actually, and—”

The leaves rustled, and the voice went silent again.

“What was it you were saying, Lucy?” the woman asked quickly.

“Just…thank God.” She winced. “Which…is you, right?”

The woman smiled. “Something like that.”

Lucy nodded dumbly. Sure. She’d already been turned into a cell, so perhaps meeting a God wasn’t so strange.

She heard the disembodied voice call for the woman’s attention again, this time muffled and coming from…underground?

No, it’s definitely still strange.

As relieved as she was to be going back to her regular life, Lucy couldn’t help but feel something pestering her from the back of her mind. Some small, hidden feeling that she was making a terrible mistake.

She pushed it away. She was going home.

“Can I ask you something?” She needed to stall. Something still wasn’t right. She knew she wanted to return to her regular life, but at the same time…

The Goddess nodded serenely and held up a finger.

“One question.”

Shit. Lucy was not prepared for this. She had just been killed, and now she needed to decide if she wanted to return to her boring-ass life or…or…

“What’s your name?” Lucy blurted.

Fuck! Why didn’t she ask for the meaning of life?

Suddenly the muffled voice from below became crystal clear, and a handsome, black-haired man’s head shoved up through the dirt, sending pieces of it flying in every direction.

“Jade! Listen, please. This is so important that it’s fine for me to interrupt. I heard about—”

This time, the Goddess—Jade, apparently, got to her feet and stomped her foot hard to silence the voice, sending the man’s head plunging back underground in a flurry of dirt. Then she helped Lucy up and ushered her away from the area.

“Well,” she said with a bright and brittle smile, “you are one of the few humans who owe that man a genuine thank you. Please, ask another question before you go, since my…since Simon answered the last one for you.”

She had started to say the word ‘friend,’ but stopped halfway through in disgust, unable to get it out even for the sake of appearances.

Lucy wasn’t going to mess this up again.

You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow! This opportunity comes once in a lifetime…

Lucy licked her suddenly dry lips. This was it. Unless she was having some sort of hallucination, she was talking to God or at least a god right now. Hell, even if it was a hallucination, it might give her some kind of insight.

Lucy looked at the woman in flowing white robes standing before her.

“What’s—if you don’t mind, that is…would you mind telling me the meaning of life?”