Matthew’s POV

Matthew's life had come to a halt. Sudden bright lights flooded the front of his car, loud crashing noise and screaming filled the air around him. Blood, the smell of iron and petrol filled his nose as his vision slowly faded. As darkness slowly engulfed his vision all he could think of was his family. His wife, Alyssa, strong willed and caring, the love of his life even. His son and daughter, Jack and Alice, what would they think? They were young, he wanted to see them grow up, go to university, get married maybe. All that was gone now. Someone had screamed something, maybe it had been his name, a plea to God, or just a noise of terror. His head hurt, and he glanced over to his side only to find that there wasn’t a passenger seat next to him.

“Alice?” It had been her scream, hadn’t it? The voice had sounded like his daughter’s, shrill and panicked as he jerked the steering wheel in an effort to avoid the oncoming vehicle. He looked around, but his surroundings were dark, clouded with shadow. There was no broken glass, no steering wheel or back seat. He turned, startled by how it almost felt like he was floating more than standing. How had he gotten out of his seat? Had he been thrown out of the car? “Alice!”

Matthew could still hear the car alarm going off in the back of his head. It came at a constant flow, the blaring in synergy with his heartbeat. The noise came from almost in front of him, but he couldn’t see the origin. Beside him, the crumbling of glass. “Jack? Alice?” He tried again. No response. His mind flooded with panic. His kids. He had to find his kids. “Jack! Alice! C’mon honey, I need you to answer me.”

He fumbled to his right to wake his wife up. She had been sleeping when it had happened, the drive back home had been so, so long, and they had been taking turns. It had been her turn hours ago, but he hadn’t had the heart to wake her up, so he left her snoring in the passenger seat. She rarely slept anyways.

Alyssa had been right beside him, but when he swiped his hands through the shadow, he felt nothing but empty air. His heart dropped.

You’re not in the car. You have to find the car, he muttered to himself.

He had heard stories of people being flung through their windshields in crashes like these. Had they crashed? Matthew couldn’t remember the impact. He had been wearing his seatbelt, he always did. Alyssa would get onto him if he didn’t. But maybe it just hadn’t worked. Something was wrong with it, and he ended up outside of his car anyway.

It had been cold outside when they had stopped at the gas station. Now, Matthew felt nothing. The air was perfectly unnoticeable.

All he could do was weep for them. A flash of grey light flooded his vision, suddenly startling himself awake.

Matthew assumed it was another vehicle. The headlights were blinding, but with them came hope, and Matthew almost started shouting, calling out for help. He waved his arms anyway to get their attention.

The headlights got closer and closer until Matthew could only keep his eyes open at a half-squint. Then, he saw the form at the centre of the light, moving forward at a slow and steady pace.

Someone was coming to help them. He let his arms drop, forcing himself to catch a breath. They would be able to check on his kids and wake up Alyssa and get them all to a hospital, which they surely needed. He brought his hand to his forehead, saw blood smeared on the back of it, and wondered briefly why he didn’t feel any pain.

Adrenaline was a wonderful thing.

He looked back up in the shadow to find the figure just a heartbeat in front of him. The words died in his throat as he saw it.

. The feathers, somehow simultaneously soft yet sharp, illuminated the shadows with golden light. The owner of the wings’ face was obscured, except for two bright eyes. They twinkled like stars, but with a coldness that made Matthew feel like they were staring into his soul. He shivered under its gaze.

As it got closer, Matthew could see the details of its skin. Its body was humanoid and galaxy-spotted, swirling like an ever-changing map of the universe. Matthew saw everything across its cosmic skin and nothing when he looked into the darkness between the stars.

“There is no use calling them,” the angel said. Despite hearing the voice, Matthew could see no movement across the creature’s shadowed face. “They have already left.”

“What do you mean?” Matthew took a startled step back. “Who are you?”

A hand outstretched, possibly meant to placate him, and it almost did, except now, up

close, Matthew could see that it wasn’t stars, it wasn’t galaxies, it was eyes that freckled the creature’s body. They stared at him, they smiled at him without mouths, they glinted and shone and saw him.

“I am an angel, here to help guide you through the next few moments of your life. Or well, the next few moments of not-living,” the creature spoke, and Matthew thought he could see each eye moving in time with the speech.

“I’m dead,” Matthew spoke mostly to himself. “Oh god, I’m dead.”

The being nodded. The eyes blinked.

He felt a little sick, but the surprise didn’t come. He had always known, just not realising it until after the angel’s words. He had known the moment he had seen the headlights, the moment his daughter had screamed behind him. He had known when he had taken the wheel after their last rest stop, debating with himself as to whether he should wake his wife up or if he could keep going another couple of hours without sleep.

“But what about…?” He turned to look behind him. What about his family? If they were still alive, he had to do something. Even if he was dead, he was still here, wasn’t he?

They had been travelling to his mother-in-law's place. The kids had been in the back, singing along cheerily to the music on the radio. They were so, so excited. So excited to see their grandmother, so excited to experience another day. Matthew had felt it, the joy, the readiness to face the world.

He still felt it as the sun fell and they left the last town they would see for hours. He hadn’t even thought about how far they’d be from emergency services, how long it would take for an ambulance to arrive. And that was assuming Alyssa could get to her phone and there was service. He slipped his hand into his pocket. Nothing was there.

He felt nothing now.

He reached out for his kids, tried to feel them, and found nothing but shadow and cold.

“Do not fear, do not mourn,” the angel said with no real sympathy. Stars knew everything about life and death, but nothing about living. “Your death is not true. Frankly, it’s not really death. Just change. You have more life to live.”

“No,” Matthew’s voice broke. “Not without them. They’re my family! My kids! I can’t live on without them.”

For a brief moment, Matthew thought he could feel the cold air against his skin. Pain pulsed in the back of his skull. He could almost place where the glass shards were resting in his lap. Two separate images overlaid across his vision, one being of the angel and the other, his glaring dashboard.

“No!” He jolted upward. “Please don’t leave me here without them!”

The eyes laughed at him. “No, not here. Matthew's journey ends here, but there are plenty of other lives, plenty of other worlds where you are needed.”

“I don’t understand,” he said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please, just tell me what you want from me!”

The angel’s wings raised, primaries dipping into the shadow above. From between the arch of the wings, blue light emanated above the angel, forming a swirling ball that remained rotating, writhing. “More magic is needed to enter the world, and magic needs a vessel, you know. You,” the eyes grinned, “will be my vessel.”

“What? No!” Matthew stepped back again. “No, I can’t leave here! What about my kids? I can’t just leave them! I need to help them, I need to find them, I need…”

The angel’s head cocked, and Matthew found himself searching its eyes, its actual eyes, not the ones that rippled across its skin. He found himself staring at the night sky, looking for the answers to everything. The stars looked back, cold, distant, unknowing. For a moment, his mind went numb, and then his eyes were brought back to the swirling ball of blue light.

It began to eat itself, magic flowing into magic. Writhing tendrils of light were sucked into its core and magic pushed deeper and deeper into the centre of the ball until the blue light was compressed. It got smaller and brighter until it became a seed-shaped star, a fragment of pure universe in a tiny shard. The angel let it drop and fall into its hands.

Its tossed the seed around in its palms, and the eyes ruminated. “Yes,” the angel said to itself. “Yes, this will do.”

The seed was placed on the ground, a speck in the darkness, yet brighter than the sun. For a moment, it just sat there, and Matthew stared at it and then at the angel, waiting for the being’s next move.

Then, the seed pulled at the shadow around them, swallowing it, consuming it voraciously. Matthew tried to take a step back, but found himself rooted to the ground. He pulled, trying to sidestep the seed, but something had a hold on his feet and he could do nothing but try to stop himself from falling backward.

“Wait, what is this thing?!” He asked the angel.

When Matthew looked up for the celestial being, though, it was gone. Its wings flickered and dimmed, melding with the darkness around them until it was gone.

“Wait!” Matthew called after it, though he wasn’t sure why he did so. “Wait, you can’t just leave me here!”

The seed ate more and more, until it began tearing at him, too. Matthew made a noise of panic, doing everything he could to pull away as the light of his body, or his soul—it would have to be his soul, he was dead, his body was dead—melded with the light of the seed. He could feel himself tearing, watched flickering parts of his being disappearing into the seed, until there was nothing of him left.

What a strange way to die, he thought.

And then, blue light and emptiness. The last thing that Matthew was able to do was hear the car alarm, still blaring to the rhythm of his heart.

—

“Hey, wait up!” Matthew called out to his kids. They were racing down the trail, trying to get as far away as possible with their little legs. It wouldn’t have been hard for him to close the distance, but he feigned a slow pace in order to watch the two explore forest before them.

Both of his kids had a love for the outdoors, especially Alice. Matthew did everything he could to feed that love, taking the kids to the park when on his lunch break, spending his weekends scouting out trails that would be easy enough for them to hike.

The rail they were on right now was a little rockier than he had expected. It winded around the side of a steep hill face, though he supposed it was a little too tall to call a hill. More like something in the middle of a hill or mountain. Large, porous rocks were scattered along the trail, and Alice insisted on climbing each and every one, not shying away from the thorny vines that grew off of the stone.

She had found another one, and was now fighting with her brother as they both scrambled to the top. Alice pushed Jack as he arrived at the top of the rock, and he wobbled on the edge, almost falling over.

“Hey!” Matthew called out, running up to get closer. “Share the rock.”

Alice crossed her arms and pouted. She opened her mouth to say something, likely a complaint about Jack, but she was interrupted.

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“Look over there!” Jack jumped up and pointed.

Matthew leaned to the side to see what his son was pointing to. He studied the rocky face, and his eyes focused on a dark shadow in the stone. “Huh,” he said.

Before he could decide what to do, both Alice and Jack jumped off of the rock and ran into the brush to check it out.

“Guys, stay on the trail! There’s ticks and poison ivy out there,” Matthew huffed but the kids had already pushed their way through the line of plants and into the untouched woods. Cursing to himself, he followed in pursuit.

Thorny vines and shattered twigs that easily found their way into his sandals slowed him down, but eventually he pushed out of the woods and up to the face of the hill. There, his kids were studying the shadow that he now saw to be a cave.

“I’ve never seen a cave before,” Alice grinned.

Jack stuck his head in to get a look around. “Maybe there’s diamonds in here. Or gold!” His voice echoed.

“Careful, there might be bats in there,” Matthew warned. He got closer to study the cave himself. It seemed small, and rather wide. There was no movement from the inside.

Alice looked up at him. “Can we please go in? Please, please, please?”

Never able to refuse his daughter’s puppy-dog eyes, Matthew conceded. “Sure, we’ll go in together, but you have to stay close to me, okay?”

He pulled out his phone and turned on its flashlight. It was weak, but it was something, and it was enough to please his kids, who immediately entered the cave. The air got cooler immediately, now that they were out of the sun.

The cave itself was rather plain. Rough stone walls with dead leaves packed in every corner. His small flashlight swayed from wall to wall, but nothing caught the light. They walked further and further inside, and Matthew wondered just how big the tunnel might be.

Something shifted behind him and he turned around, waving his flashlight wildly to get a complete view. He didn’t see anything. The sound happened again, and Matthew jerked. The flashlight fell on a dead leaf on the ground.

“Phew, it’s just a leaf guys,” he shook his head and turned back to the front of the tunnel. He took a couple of steps forward. Matthew frowned. In the light, no neon orange or deep purple shirts revealed themselves. “Jack? Alice?”

Of course they went ahead without me, Matthew thought. Preparing a whole speech about listening to him when he told them to stay close, involving threats of no after-hike ice cream, Matthew sped up through the tunnel.

After a couple of minutes, panic began to set in. He should have caught up with them by now. Even if they were running, Matthew’s stride was a lot longer than theirs. He had never had trouble keeping up with them before.

“C’mon guys, come out.” Matthew hurried through the cave now. Stone and leaves blurred past him in flashes of light from the swaying of his flashlight.

A shrill scream echoed throughout the cavern, and Matthew stopped dead in his tracks. Vaguely, he could hear something akin to a car alarm blaring, but it was faint. “Alice!” He turned around and his phone fell out of his hands.

He heard it clatter, but it landed on its back and plunged him into darkness.

The car alarm slowly faded.

—

Matthew didn’t wake up. He had no eyes to open, no body to gradually push him into the day. Rather, he didn’t feel, and then all of a sudden, he felt.

And then he was feeling everything. He felt stone, and the humming of the earth, and the rustling of bats. He could feel water and sediment dripping from stalactites, and he could feel how each drop was slowly adding up, slowly towering as it had always had before. He felt a lizard scrambling across his skin, and he tried to flinch before realising he didn’t have skin at all. The stone melded with his soul, anchored itself to the seed that rested in the cave’s heart.

And then, Matthew could see. An entire cave system opened itself up before him. His vision weaved through stalagmites, bended in corners and crannies. He wanted to see where the bats were moving, and all of a sudden he saw them, huddled on the ceiling. Each time one of them shifted or adjusted their grip on the stone, he could feel their claws grasping onto him. Confused, determined to understand his surroundings, Matthew flung his vision across the entire cave, stone streaming past his vision so fast that it blurred into a river of dark grey. He saw crystal clear water, untouched caverns, and then he was diving deeper and deeper and deeper, determined to find the bottom.

He pushed and pushed and pushed until a sudden thought crossed his mind. A possibility of never returning, a deep anxiety from leaving the shard, leaving the seed that was his entirety. Matthew retreated, eventually settling himself into the stone above the glowing fragment.

Had he just been in this cave, exploring it with his kids?

No, that wasn’t possible. The scream, the car alarm. They had been a wreck. They weren’t in a cave, they were on a winding road on their way to his mother-in-law’s. There had been a person. An angel?

Matthew’s mind scattered across the cave. It was overwhelming, feeling and seeing everything, so he took it slow, trying to keep his focus within the cavern where the shard rested. He refused to let his mind wander anywhere else, to cars and shattered glass and blinding headlights. To screams and shadow and eyes. Instead, Matthew kept his mind on stone and bats and water.

The small cave flowed with him, and despite his confusion, Matthew found himself falling into the rhythmic hum of the cave, the motions of the creatures and stone and water.

A vibration rang out against the cave’s floor. A hesitant step. Nail against stone. Curious, Matthew’s eyes wandered toward the source of the contact.

A young deer, scrawny and thin, stood at the entrance of the cave. It’s head was raised, searching in the darkness. Its sides heaved as it panted, and in the moonlight, Matthew could make out a gash on its hind leg. When it took another step forward, Matthew realised it was more injured than he had thought. Its tail was torn, and its hind leg was hardly usable. There was another gash on its chest, and twigs and thorns caught in its fur. In its mouth, Matthew could make out a clump of grey fur.

There was something odd about the way that it stood, or maybe it was the look in its eyes. There was far too much white, which Matthew recognized as fear, but there was also an unnerving intelligence in them.

Creepy.

There was a howl, piercing. It echoed throughout the cave and Matthew could feel it reverberate around the walls. The stone shook and shuddered. The deer lifted its head, maimed tail shaking, before it limped with increased speed further into the cave. Matthew could feel its blood drip onto the floor, sinking into the rock.

The deer made it as far as it could into the cave, stopping in the cavern where the core lay. For a moment, Matthew felt a surge of protectiveness, the urge to keep the deer from coming inside. He thought about a wall collapsing, sealing of the seed, the core, so that it could remain safe, so that he could remain safe. The feeling dissipated when the deer collapsed onto the floor. Matthew could see the terror that flashed in the whites of its eyes. This creature was exhausted. This creature was dying.

The core pulsed sympathetically. The deer's head rolled to look at it. For a moment, they stared at each other.

It’s strong for a deer, Matthew noted. That’s fur in its teeth. It's been fighting something.

The deer shifted a little closer, before curling in on itself to rest. It continued to breathe heavy and fast, and blood still trickled from its wounds.

The core flashed again. A drop of blood ran down the stone, following a rivulet that led its way to the seed. The blood seeped into the seed, and Matthew felt warmth. The core pulsed brighter. It glowed, illuminating the cavern as it absorbed more and more blood. Matthew felt terror, but he knew it wasn’t his own. He felt pain, and he knew it wasn’t his own.

Is this supposed to be happening?

The deer’s form flickered for a brief moment, and Matthew was reminded of consumption, of how the seed had swallowed him whole. He tried to pull away. The deer raised its head, and panicked, it rose, jumping up to a stand. Blue tendrils of magic reached out to it, reigning it in.

The core began to float, despite Matthew’s best attempts to keep it down, to keep it from stealing the life from this deer. The deer stared at it, ready to bolt but too tired to move. It trembled as the core approached.

The stone fell away. Bats and stalactites and water and the humming of the earth all went still and silent. Matthew went blind.

And then, he felt fur and flesh and blood. There was a strange comfort to it, but that didn’t overshadow the foreignness of it all. Or the absurdity. He spent a brief moment mourning the loss of the cave and the loss of his body, though he truly didn’t know why he did so. Then, he could see again, and the initial panic he felt subsided into confusion. His vision was unlike anything he had ever experienced. The cavern’s ceiling fell away and he could see the entirety of his surroundings. The deer’s sides, though he supposed they were his now, or theirs, were visible out of the corner of his eye, and he could almost see the back wall of stone around him. In the shadow of the cave, the stone became clearer, more illuminated.

These definitely weren’t the eyes of a human.

He had just enough time to ask himself what was going on before his mind exploded with sound. The deer reared up.

Noise, a voice screeched in his head.

Matthew flinched, which caused the deer to flinch, and it began to run deeper into the cave. He tried to take control of the creature’s legs, and for a brief moment it worked, but that only caused the deer to panic more. The two of them wrestled for control, and they barrelled down the stone tunnel until the deer took a wrong turn and reached a dead end.

Hey, hey, calm down! Matthew tried telling it. The deer’s nostrils flared, but seeing that it was backed against a wall, it stopped running.

It’s okay, Matthew said, trying to placate the animal. He winced when he felt the wounds, now reopened from the dash. His leg ached, and the deer seconded the feeling. Look, I don’t know what is happening but we’re going to figure this out, okay? Can you even understand me?

The deer stilled, but Matthew didn’t receive a response. Panic and confusion flooded his mind. He tried to pause, get a moment to think, but the deer’s brain was moving far too fast for him to focus.

What happened to you?

Pain. Matthew felt grief and terror and anger, and before he could wonder why, he was remembering. It was dark, he could feel the brush up against his fur. He was surrounded by tall, graceful beings.

Family.

The stars glittered above them. The treetops barely shifted. There was a serenity, a normality so different from everything he had felt for the last couple of minutes.

And then there was a howl. And fur. And teeth.

They tore through the forest, sticking together to protect one another. He saw a singular deer break past the group, and a dark grey form jumped from the underbrush and dug its jaws into the deer’s spine. It screamed out, trying to kick at the wolf, but the creature had managed to scramble onto its back. Another one sprung from the shadows, but by then he had already run away, sticking with the wave of deer. They could not stall, not when they could hear paw pads against damp earth.

From in front of them, a wolf emerged, barking and snapping. The leading deer, an older doe, reared up, trying to scare the wolf off with the threat of a kick to the head. Bright blue light arced across her antlers. The wolf jumped up and was knocked to the ground. It rolled in the earth and leaves, but they had already been stalled. The herd was huddled together, and slowly, the pack emerged from the woods. Five, ten, thirty. Growls melded into one another. Gray broke through green. He saw one with jaws already bloody.

They pounced, and there were far too many bodies to get away. He was knocked into another deer and then a wolf, and then he felt teeth on his hind leg and he kicked as hard as he could. There were screams and barks and howls and he watched a dear hit the ground with a thud, braying a plea for help. His nostrils filled with the scent of burning magic. He grabbed a wolf with his teeth, trying to pull it off of another deer. Another bite to his side. He was pushed again, further out of the circle, and he backed up until he found that he was no longer colliding with wolves. He was out in the open air.

He watched the writhing mass of grey and brown fur. Of antlers and claws and white teeth. He saw more creatures coming from the shadows.

He ran, ignoring the pain in his leg, ignoring the pain in his heart. He ran and ran and ran.

And then he was back to looking at the cavern walls. His heart was racing, and he now felt the panic the deer felt. Howls and screams still echoed in his ears.

At a loss for words, Matthew guided the deer to a cavern with water, travelling closer to the entrance of the cave. It was reluctant to follow, and the animal’s shakiness made it hard to move manually.

They approached the cavern and Matthew realised that their body was illuminating the darkness as they travelled. Curious, he stared into the water, seeing a form both unfamiliar to him and the deer. Blue flame wrapped around the deer’s—their—body, circling the set of antlers upon their head. On their chest, just shy of the bleeding wound, the core rested, embedded in spin and fur. Dark tendrils travelled from the shard, rooting itself to the deer. And there was something in their eyes, something unreachable, something indescribable.

The deer pulled back in alarm. It sent a message into their shared head that felt like something along the line of ‘what happened’ and Matthew suppressed the urge to shrug, not quite sure how a deer would be able to do that.

I don’t know either, buddy, Matthew told it.

There was a howl, and the deer lifted its head. Matthew felt an unfamiliar buzzing in their bones.

They stood, and waited for the sound of claws on stone.