Special Edition Author's Note

GwF: Whew! Sorry for not updating in so long. I had a writer's block. Hopefully it's gone now.

Nudge: Hey, check out all the new reviewers, followers and favoriters! Welcome Meggie starxx , allyalexandra1999, TheDreamerOfFantasy, cptmurphy, and fanficfantasies! Gaia was Framed is our loyal author, and we are the characters who appear to her and drive her mad!

GwF: If you guys have made it this far, you deserve a medal. And lots of virtual cookies.

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"A bended bow is lifted in heaven…and the furrows of the whip/Descend to generations that in future times forget." ~William Blake, America: A Prophecy

ACT II / LEVEL ONE

XXVIII. Out of Thought and Time.

Speaker: Sarah.

Drowning always takes a long time in the movies, but in real life it's quite fast. By the time you figure out what's happening, you're already dead.

…..

I woke up dry, in clean comfortable clothing. I lay on a porch swing. Desert wind swept over me, warm and sandy. The sky was deep clean blue—too clean to be the skies over New York. These were the heavens of rural Arizona.

Sitting up I could see this was the porch swing of my old house. Hallelujah! I was home! Had the chaos and bloodshed, had my death, all been a mere dream?

And then over the wind came the sound of the world's biggest, best gospel choir.

If I stared narrow-eyed into the distance I could see the silhouettes of the Taj Mahal and the Eiffel Tower in between the familiar mesas.

So this is the afterlife, then. I like it.

I climbed off the porch and ran around the house.

My mother knelt in the vegetable garden, pulling weeds from between the tomato plants. She looked younger than she had this past year; when she died her hair had been streaked with silver, but now it was pure black like mine. Her copper skin glowed in the sunlight.

When she saw me approach, she stood up and flung her arms around me.

"Sarah! How I've missed you!"

"I missed you too, Mom," I snuffled.

She held me at arms' length and studied me. "I think you've grown."

"Yes, ma'am. Two full inches, and no signs of stopping!" In January I had been five-foot-eight, now I stood five-foot-ten. Also, despite my best efforts, puberty was beginning to work on me. My lanky form was slowly but surely starting to fill out. Soon people could no longer mistake me for a boy. I dreaded that day.

I wanted to savor this happy moment, but there were things I needed to ask. "Mom? Why did you and Dad never tell Ron and me the truth about your old job?"

She sighed. "We got three months' worth of Purgatory for that. I'm sorry, Sarah. We dragged our feet. We knew we'd have to tell you someday, but we…I guess we just didn't want you to think badly of us. It was wrong of us to withhold that information…" She squeezed my narrow shoulder. "Learn from our mistake: no matter what horrible things you may have done, tell your loved ones up front. Don't wait too long for the 'perfect moment'—you may die before it comes."

"Thanks, Mom. I'll remember that."

A small child ran out the back-door towards us. The kid had messy black hair and a deep tan. She wore a baggy t-shirt and denim overalls that were slightly too big—the same clothes I'd worn when I was that little.

The little girl came to a stop in front of me, and I saw that although she mostly took after Mom, she had Dad's eyes—huge and washed-out blue.

"Mom, did you tell Sarah about what she's in for when she goes back?"

I turned to Mom. "So I'm not dead for good, then?"

"No, honey. You're not even technically dead right now—though you are very close to being so. This is not Heaven proper, but an adjoining little realm where the spirits of the unconscious and nearly-dead might go if they are summoned. I designed it to look like our old home because I knew it would make you comfortable." She paused. "I take it you know your sister Naomi?"

"Of course I do!" I bent down and hugged the child. She'd only lived for six months, but it didn't take a rocket scientist to guess what she might have looked like older. "How are you, little sis?"

"I'm ok," she replied. "Not sure you will be for long."

"Why?" I released her. "What's going to happen to me?"

Mom wiped the sweat from her brow. "Well…your younger brother, it seems, has bitten off more than he can chew. He's going to need help getting out of his mess. I'm afraid that's your job."

I shook my head. "A big sister's work is never done. Where will I find him?"

She paused. "He's travelling at the moment. When he stops moving, I'll know where he is."

"But Mom!" Naomi exclaimed. "Sarah doesn't have time! She needs to go back now, or she'll drown after all."

"Right you are." Mom cupped my chin in her hands and looked me in the eye. "Understand this. Bad things are happening, but we cannot undo them; we can only hope to fix them. You, Ron and Amy are part of this war now, though you never asked for it. As long as you are part of it, you will never be safe. You will face the terrors of Hell, the apathy of the gifted, and any skeletons left in the family closet that you haven't yet discovered. You may well die—for real.

"Don't get too friendly with the Gifted Ones—the kids you've met over the past several months and those like them. They share a few goals with you, but they will not hesitate to kill you or worse if you are deemed no longer useful. Don't work with them at all if you can help it. You are more than capable of forging your own path. Be brave, be discerning, and be ever-watchful, like I know you are."

"Thanks, Mom. I won't let you down."

"And Sarah?"

"Yes?"

She hugged me again. "I was so proud of you yesterday. You were in a terrible situation, but you did not let the forces of evil intimidate you."

I hugged her back. I breathed in the scent of her patchouli shampoo, and wondered how soon it was before I would smell it again.

"Sarah!" she shouted as Naomi and I started to walk away.

"Yeah?"

"Remember Daphne."

…

Naomi walked me back to the house.

"So how do I return to the mortal world?" I asked her.

"Just lie down on the porch swing again and close your eyes. You'll wake up before you know it."

I could still hear the voices on the wind. "Where's the singing coming from?"

"That's the choir of angels, the music of the spheres. Duh."

"Ah. Silly me. Should've known."

They were singing:

Go down, Moses

Way down in Egypt land

Tell old Pharaoh to let my people go…

"But this song was born out of slavery, associated with suffering and oppression. Wouldn't they sing happy songs in Heaven?"

"They sing happy songs, sad songs, and songs that aren't either. The sad songs can't be forgotten. We can feel the suffering of our friends and families on Earth; this is how we pay tribute to them. Until there is no more strife, there will be sad songs in Paradise."

That thought was somber enough to strike us both silent for a while.

We reached the porch; I climbed on the swing and laid down.

"So, sis, why are you six years old? I thought everyone is kind of ageless in the afterlife."

"I am ageless. I just decided to appear as a six-year-old because that's how old I would be if I had lived. It might make you feel more at ease."

I stared at the wood-grain patterns of the porch roof above me. Already my surroundings seemed darker, my eyelids heavier. My spirit was getting pulled gradually back to Earth.

"Naomi, who's Daphne?"

She opened her mouth to tell me, then reconsidered. "Classified information, sis. You'll find out eventually."

Then she started giggling.

I put my elbows behind my head. "What's so funny, little sister?"

It took her a few deep breaths before she could speak again. "Mom didn't tell you the worst of what you're gonna find."

"How is that funny? What did she withhold from me?"

"Oh…heheheheheh…you're getting a jumbo serving of teen angst and drama. Clothing worries! Body insecurity! Friend problems! Boy trouble!"

At this point I was so sleepy and relaxed these words didn't even frighten me. "I don't believe you."

"You should! The souls of the righteous can't lie!"

I was asleep.

….

At light speed my spirit shot through corridors of light and color and dark, between atoms and galaxies.

I became aware that always ahead of me were twin points of emerald light. They were round, and started out very small, but as I rushed towards them they began to grow bigger.

…

I'm not sure how long the journey took, but I woke on a sidewalk. The color of the sunlight and feel of the air suggested it was early morning. I was wet, filthy and sore, as anyone might be if they had spent the better part of yesterday crawling about the New York sewer system and fighting before spending the night at the bottom of the East River.

There was someone leaning over me.

The emerald lights I had seen were the bright green eyes of Percy Jackson.

AN: I'm back! I apologize for my appalling tardiness. I will update more frequently in the future, I PROMISE. In my defense, I have A) been working real hard in school, and B) I hit a creative spurt with my other multichapter fan fic and decided to run with it.

Sorry if this chapter was a bit hard to follow. The rest will make more sense, I promise. The chapter title is adapted from a line in The Lord of the Rings, when Gandalf is explaining to Aragorn what he went through after slaying the Balrog: "Darkness took me, and I strayed out of thought and time…"

Is the world in this chapter the Greco-Roman afterlife, the Judeo-Christian afterlife, or something different than either? I don't know. Interpret it however you like.

While I'm here, I want to thank you guys for sticking with me, following, favoriting, reviewing, etc. There is a lot of snobbery and bad attitude in other fandoms. This little place where the PJO, MI and various other fandoms meet could not be more pleasant.

Thank you all, for being so incredibly NICE. ~GwF