There are no working clocks in the Underworld. They all run backwards, or forwards at the wrong speed, or are stuck at odd times like thirteen minutes past five. Alain sighed. There was no way to tell how long he had been standing here, waiting on that goddamn ferryman. But here he was, same as every day. Or was it everyday? Maybe it was several times a day. Maybe it was once a century. It didn't really matter, he decided. He had to wait for… What was her name?
He froze in his idle pacing along the riverbank. He couldn't have forgotten her name. It was I… E… Ygraine! That was it. Ygraine. And he had to wait for her to come home, because she couldn't possibly be dead. It just couldn't have happened. He couldn't have been the only one to survive. He was closest to the blast. Wait… He shook his head. No. He had been the only one not to survive. That was it. Ygraine was alive. He wasn't. Which was odd, because being dead, as far as he could tell was exactly the same as being alive, just in a different place.
He was still corporeal. Still ate, although this he regretted. Most of the food was terrible. Was still mind-numbingly bored, without his friends …Ygraine…, or his spellbooks. Still slept, although, again, this he did as little as possible. He wasn't sure how much pain the dead could feel, but he didn't want to find out on the receiving end of some of the more creative pranks pulled in the Underworld. Still wore his glasses and now slightly singed robes. Oh what he wouldn't give for a clock that worked! Even an hourglass!
By now Alain wished he hadn't been so abrupt when turning down some of the other kids …Or could they really be called kids?… who were going to some sort of party. It had to be better than standing on the banks of this fucking river for the rest of eternity. The ferryman was never coming. Ygraine was never coming. Nothing would, nothing could happen in this place, this place without time. Alain didn't even notice the sluggish waves swirling around his ankles. He had no memory of the murmured incantation that made its way to his lips. "Nido to aenu hito ni basho ni, Mado wo akeru…" A wall of black and purple flames rose out of the river to surround him. He would come back to check another time.