"Where am I?"
Aric had seen death before, more than once, but even then—this was different.
He stood in a field, and around him in every direction, flowers of dull purple seemed to stretch endlessly. In fact, the only thing interrupting the stretch was a single cliff, jagged and daunting.
It rose in the far distance, as though in defiance of what had already been.
The third thing Aric noticed was that he could see, and this surprised him, as the field was bright—not from the presence of light, but by some conceptual abnormality: the absence of darkness.
Aric then noticed the final thing—silence. One so perfect it felt almost defiling to disrupt it. Perhaps that was why the wind blew, yet did so quietly and the flowers rustled in kind, but they, too, did so quietly.
Not a single sound was made, and the silence continued to prevail.
