Change of Scenery
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In time, the warmth fades. The fingers cease their combing through his hair and he drifts, heedless of where he is anymore. His surroundings lose their wet, muffling quality, but still he floats. Either his eyes are closed or everything has become black; he cares not. There is honeysuckle in the air, a faint sweetness that is liquid on his tongue.
Beneath his hands, he eventually feels softness, as if his fingers are being dragged through flower petals. He reaches to prolong the sensation, unwilling to go back to the nothingness even if it is numbing.
As if borne by the gentlest spring breeze, he eventually comes to rest in the petals, which now feel like powdery sand along his entire body.
Like a signal to noise, there is sound again, a dry hiss of wind across the desert, unobstructed and ceaseless. It is the susurration of tiny crystals sliding across one another for miles. The air is neither warm nor cool, and the wind brings only the sensation of movement. The taste of honeysuckle has gone, only to be replaced by the stale odor of dust, mold…
…graves.
There is death here.
He opens his eyes to a landscape painted in brown and gray tones. No white, no black, no blue or green. The sky arching overheard is a myriad of grays, swirling lazily without a hint of sunlight breaking through them. The ground he lies on is sand, powdery and fine like flour. The barren landscape stretches for miles in every direction, broken only by hillocks of stones and the odd desiccated corpse of a tree, its broken fingers forever reaching for a sun that doesn't exist.
It is lonely here.
Nothing moves in front of him. He looks to both sides, then all around him, and sees nothing alive.
He has traded one limbo, one waiting place, for another, but this one is far worse than the first. At least the other one was foggy so he couldn't see that there was nothing and no one around him. The vastness of this empty space mocks him.
He stands, his footing hard to find when the ground shifts beneath him. Each step costs him effort as he slides backward for every step he takes forward.
Where is he going?
Does it even matter when there is no concept of direction? There are no landmarks, no sun, and no stars. He walks for hours and the sky does not change. He turns around and sees that his footsteps are vanishing behind him, the powdery sand swallowing the prints marking his existence, his passage here.
He turns around, wondering if he is going in the same direction still, and keeps moving forward. He can't control his feet; they are moving whether or not he wants them to. At least he isn't tired. He could walk all day like this.
The monotony gives him time to think, which he doesn't want as clarity returns to him. He is more aware than ever of what he does not have. He is no longer at the docks he created on the edge of the River Styx, his concept of the place bridging the gap between the worlds. In this barren place, he knows he will not see any more people he knew in life. He forsook them by not taking the ferry, by not accepting Matt's invitation to join him, by refusing the lifelines offered him in a futile wait for someone who was never coming for him.
There is sand in his eyes and it hurts.
He is fated to walk these sands in this realm of death forever, apparently. Perhaps this is what awaits all of those who don't choose to move on. This is his punishment for being indecisive, for entertaining foolish hopes.
He looks up to see that there is something before him. It is only a larger collection of rocks, but it is something different and therefore special. He moves toward it, fighting the pull of the sand against him. The powder changes to granules that allow him better purchase with his toes, and he stops sliding back so frequently.
The rock pile grows in size as he approaches. There is nothing remarkable on this side of it, but as he circles it, he sees something that makes his heart leap.
There is someone- no, something sitting there. He stops walking to stare at it, his thumb going to his mouth as he studies it. It has a bull's skull on its head, complete with worn horns and even the creature's spine running down its back. It sits hunched, shrouded in the semi-darkness created by the rock pile as well as a tattered black robe. It is staring into a hole partially underneath the pile, and there are glints of light inside this hole.
"What are you doing?" he asks out of curiosity, and the sound of his own voice almost makes him jump in the relative silence. The creature startles as well, dropping something it is holding as it screeches like a raven.
It rises to its feet before L realizes that it is not wearing a skull, but rather the skull is its head. Tiny yellow lights shine in the void eye sockets and no tongue lolls in that empty mouth as the thing shakes a bony fist, a slim length of yellowed bone or pale wood clenched in its fingers. The sounds coming from it are dry and rasping, but they form words if he listens very closely.
"Are you going to laugh at me for working too hard, like all the others?" The thing asks in mild irritation. It is not upset at him, but he seems to have asked a stupid question. Then the thing leans toward him, the lights in its skull growing brighter as it peers at him.
"What are you doing here? You don't look or smell like all the rest," it continues.
He backs away slightly from the confused creature, which follows him as if to satisfy its curiosity.
"Where is here?" he asks, but before he can clarify his question, his loose jeans catch on a rock half-buried in the sand before he steps on it. The sharp edge bites into the soft flesh of his arch and he falls, biting back a groan of pain.
From his new vantage point at ground level, he sees an object behind the creature, the one it initially dropped when he startled it. After his eyes focus on it through the pain in his foot, he feels the blood flee his face when he recognizes it.
A simple black notebook, the cover blowing open in the ever-present breeze to show pages scrawled with names in various languages.
A Death Note.
"You must be new," the thing's voice grates. "This is the shinigami realm, of course."
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A/N - I'm trying to get back into the whole story-writing thing again versus script-writing, hence the short chapters.