If someone had walked up to Darcy Bell and told her that; "Hey, today you're going to be tossed into your favourite fictional world with no hope of ever returning following your untimely death", she would have laughed in your face and proclaimed you an absolute quack. Which is, when you think of it, an understandable reaction. For you don't really believe that such a world really exists, do you? Darcy did not. Please note the "did". For her, it was just not a fictional one anymore. It was her personal hell, heaven and twisted version of the afterlife, a cruel jape some god had played on her, and if not; one hell of a coma-induced hallucination. Her story comes to an abrupt end and a start, a completely ordinary but extraordinary day in London, England.
It was one of those rare, perfect days people talk about weeks after they occur. London, so often haunted by rain, be it a light, powdery downpour or veritable lashings of heavy water, had been blessed with a sunny day. The sky was a splendid, electric blue colour without a cloud in sight, and it seemed like half of the population of central London was milling in the streets, the inhabitants without doubt glad to once in awhile be rid of the cumbersome umbrellas they usually carry. The various cafés and restaurants scattered about the metropol flourished, the lines of people waiting to buy a snack never dwindling. The mood was a great deal lighter than usual, too, Darcy noted as she strolled down a path in the park of Greenwich. The crowd parted around meeting individuals the way a stream of water gently moves around a stone in its way, instead of the hustle and bustle that usually would have occurred, for which she was grateful as she was balancing a four-scoop tall ice cream cone in her left hand while holding her soda in the other. The pile of gloriousness was sprinkled with the free topping of her choice the man in the ice cream stand so kindly had offered her. She was blissfully unaware that this would be the last ice cream she would ever eat, and was so engrossed in the task of eating it before it melted that she walked against a red light. It was not before a shriek of terror from an elderly woman reached her that she noticed the impending doom racing towards her at a breakneck speed. Like a deer in the headlights, she froze. Her hand crushed the remainder of the cone. The signal horn of the truck was honking wildly, notifying her that that is a really bad place to stand and I can't stop, movemoveMOVE! The information collected by the senses "vision", "sight", and "hearing" converged somewhere in her brain, coming to the conclusion that maybe it would indeed be a great idea to get the hell out of the way, and forwarded said message to the muscles, which were frozen in shock. The message came a bit too late though, and the panicked leap it resulted in was to no avail. The fender of the truck caught her in the ribs mid-air, and sent her propelling through the air several meters. Her head hit the curb with a nasty, resounding crack, with the rest of her limp, broken body soon following. As she laid there on the road like a broken toy, flaming red hair already soaked with crimson, she didn't have the time for any last thoughts before darkness claimed her.
And then she was flying.