The first thing Lucia felt was softness, and her nostrils filled with the familiar, rich scent of grass. She had no idea what she was doing in the middle of a large field, but there she was. She rolled onto her back and looked up into the sky. The sky was as blue as a robin's egg, and large, pillowy clouds lazily waltzed across the sky. One cloud looked like Neptune, his trident pointed aggressively forward, as if he was about to angrily spear a cloud that looked a bit like a hobby horse. There was Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, locked in vicious combat with something that looked like a large snake. There was another cloud that looked like a Drago.
She sat up, surrounded by leagues upon leagues of neatly-trimmed field, unfurled before her over, gently rolling over sun-kissed hills. She stood up and started walking, not that it mattered which direction; everywhere looked the same. Just her, and her thoughts. Did I die? This did look a lot like how she thought the afterlife would look. She felt a bit...well, lonely, but she kinda liked the quiet. If this is what she had to look forward to for an eternity, then so be it.
"HELLO?" she yelled. No real echo since there wasn't really anything for the sound to bounce off of. Her yell just expanded outwards. Spooky, she thought. She started to run. Maybe she could see the rest of this space from the top of the knoll. Problem was, it was a lot farther to the top than it looked. She kept running, and running, and running, and...ran right off the edge, tumbling down the other side of knoll.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" she yelled as she fell flat on her face in the dirt. Amazingly, as she got up, she didn't feel herself in pain. Her dress was still immaculate, her hair was still great, her shoes still clean. She pinched herself. OW! So she still felt pain, so she wasn't a ghost, but she couldn't get hurt in this world. Fascinating.
She looked around at her new surroundings. Instead of a large, ever-expanding grassy field, she was now in a large field of sunflowers. Sunflowers? she thought. How exceptionally, cruelly beautiful.
BORK! came a familiar voice.
"BONEY?" she called out, searching for her friend.
BORK BORK!
She ran, looking for her dog. Shortly, she found him.
BORK BORK! he said, barking at something nearby. She looked at what he was barking at, and her heart nearly stopped.
It was her mother.
She pinched herself again. Yup, still here.
"Hello, Lucia," Hinawa said, smiling gently. "Walk with me, will you?"
She had to be dead. She was walking through a field of sunflowers, hand-in-hand with her mother, who she knew was absolutely dead. She'd seen her lifeless body, she'd seen her buried, she'd visited her grave, she'd cried over it, laid flowers on it. And yet, here she was, positively 'real'.
"How's my darling daughter?" she asked.
"How did you know my name?" Lucia responded.
"A question with a question. I can see everything, you know."
Lucia blushed. "So that means you saw..."
"I saw you go to the store, pick out clothes, try them on, be accepted by your family," Hinawa finished. "That was enough for me."
"Oh, they're not my..." She stopped. Yeah, they are, she admitted to herself. Her mom vocalized her thought. "Do they truly love and care for you?"
"Yeah, I think so."
"Then they're your family. Simple as that."
"But you're my family, Dad's my family, Claus..." Her voice haltered. "Claus is my family."
Hinawa's smile seemed to change, from warm and kindly to more...sympathetic, as if she knew some terrible truth that Lucia didn't. "Sure, honey, but you also have your found family. And Duster and Kumatora are very much your found family. You do everything together, you've suffered together, you've laughed together. They're just as much your family as our family..." She hesitated to use the word was. "...is."
"I...guess I never really thought of it that way."
"Well, that's why you have these talks with your mother," she said, laughing. Lucia had forgotten her mother's birdsong-like laugh, and immediately felt ashamed. "You're such a pretty girl, by the way."
"Oh, um," Lucia stammered, turning flush. "Thank you."
They kept walking through the field of sunflowers. Lucia decided to ask a question she'd been meaning to ask the whole time, but was too scared to.
"Hey, Mom?"
"Yes, dear?"
"Are we...alive right now?"
Hinawa thought for a minute. "Well, right now? Yes. This is certainly not the afterlife, although it'd be pretty great if it was. Just sunny days all the time, this whole field to yourself...it'd be pretty swell."
"But if we were to leave this realm..."
Hinawa gave her daughter that sickly, sympathetic smile again. "No, honey, I can't come back with you. Once our time here is over, you will return to your world, and me to mine. It is not time yet for us to reunite forever."
"When will that come?"
"Oh, trust me, Lucia. I'll tell you when it is."
Eventually, they emerged from the field and approached an edge that dropped off into soft, billowy clouds. "Is that...?"
"The end of our time here," Hinawa said sadly. "So it goes."
Lucia heart dropped. "But I've only just seen you again!"
"Yes, isn't it mean?" Hinawa said. "This is why the dead and living are not normally permitted to ever meet. It breeds sadness. Too much of it." She walked to the edge, looked back at her daughter and smiled.
"You've made me proud, Lucia. The gods gifted me with a truly blessed and special daughter. I will always, forever, love you."
And then she jumped.
Lucia couldn't hold it in, and screamed after her, bawling, stamping her feet, and chased after her, jumping the edge as well before realizing that she had.
She plummeted to Earth, tears streaming upwards.
"Lucia!" Kumatora said, startled to see her lying on the ground. "What are you doing there?" She noticed her face was red with tears. "Did you fall down?"
"Mommy," she bawled, "I want my Mommy back...I saw her, I held her hand..."
"Oh, sweetie," Kumatora said, holding her close. "I'm so sorry. Let it out. I'm here for you." She felt Lucia's small hands dig into her shoulders, afraid that if she let go, she'd fall again.