Not Alone

"Hey. You there. You still aware?" someone asked, breaking through the aching cold fog that was clogging my mind up.

I opened my eyes slowly and looked up at whoever it was, wondering if they were really talking to me, the dead girl. It was a guy, probably not much older than me, and he was looking right at me. He had bright green eyes that seemed to almost glow out from under his dark wool hat that had dark hair poking out from under it, pretty much his entire outfit dark. Except for his eyes, of course. A small, freezing part of my mind thought he looked fairly handsome, albeit strange talking to someone no one else could see.

"They took me away." I whispered hoarsely, my throat closed up tightly from crying and the cold. I felt like I could barely move an inch and even speaking was almost impossible.

His eyes seemed to flicker even brighter than before (if that was even possible), and he looked down the street in the direction the car had drove off in. Then he looked back at me. His bright eyes held a fair amount of pity, but also determination. "It's freezing out here and unless you want to die a second time then you should follow me." he said, and took a few steps in the opposite direction from the way the car went, turning to wait for me to move after him.

I didn't know what I wanted to do. What would dying again be like? Could I even do that? Would it hurt?

My legs, having decided long ago apparently that I wasn't worth listening to anymore, moved slowly but surely out of the pile of snow that had built up around me and after the boy with the glowing eyes. I closed my eyes briefly, trusting my legs to not lose the boy with me not watching, and tried to clear my head a little bit. It was hard and made me feel very weak, but at least I could think and feel a little bit more than before when I finally gave up and opened my eyes again.

We were now standing in front of a nice, cozy looking building with lights in its large windows promising heat and comfort. The boy with the glowing green eyes was standing at the door, watching me. He didn't look mad to be standing there in the cold waiting for me to get moving again, something that confused me a little bit. Any other guy, I figured, would be mad and irritable to have to be standing in such terrible weather.

The door opened behind him suddenly, very slowly, and a small light flickered in the doorway, bouncing around in the air like a bouncy-ball in slow motion. "She's really new, Jack. I don't think she even knows how to Deform. And the cold has probably gotten to her too much already." the small bouncing light whispered to the guy, and then, right before my tired, aching eyes, it turned into a glowing, slightly–see-through guy. He looked about Glowing Eyes' age, wearing plain light-colored clothes that made his shock of blond hair seem to glow around his head like a halo. His eyes, glowing almost as brightly as Glowing Eyes', were light blue.

"Come on. Just a few more steps." Glowing Eyes told me, sounding like he was trying to convince a puppy to come to him. He even bent down a little bit and motioned with his arm for me to come to him. To come to the door.

I couldn't. My legs, losing their will to move, were like blocks under me. I was still holding myself, my arms more like solid steel then flesh. I was as cold as the snow, and my sense of feeling was gone. Glowing Eyes' friend was right. The cold had gotten to me already.

I felt so bitter, so guilty for wasting Glowing Eyes' time, that a tear, warm and wet, ran down my cheek, giving me briefly a sense of feeling along its trail again before the snow stole it away. I wanted to just go away, to find my body, and to never go anywhere else again. I hated this coldness. I hated all of this.

I hated being dead.

I was so alone…

"What are you two waiting for? An invitation?" a gravely old male voice grumbled, a man who looked to be around his early 50s brushing by the two boys and coming down the steps of the house to stand in front of me. He was a little taller than me, but not by much. He gave off such a sense of power, though, that he could've been 20 feet tall. He had a thick blanket in his arms, and as he spreading open and went to toss it around my shoulders I felt like I was going to break.

I was going to shatter like the ice falling from the sky and finally be free from all of this coldness.

But I didn't.

The blanket touched me, immediately sending shots of heat through my back into my core. My legs, barely able to hold my own weight, crumpled under the weight of the blanket as well. The old man caught me, though, and with an ease that made me feel like I was as light as a feather scooped my up into his arms and started up the stairs to the house again.

"It's going to be perfectly alright, sweetheart. We just have to get some heat back into you." the old man murmured to me under his breath in a huffed tone, his breath brushing off a flake of snow that had clung to my lips.

I watched the flake of snow float around for a few seconds before the heat coming from the house killed it, and then I fell asleep.

I hadn't been asleep in such a long time…

When I opened my eyes I felt like I was air and heat was just constantly moving through me. It came out of my lungs as I breathed and echoed through my bones like drum beats. It took a while for my eyes to finally focus, and when they did I felt strangely comfortable. My sense of feeling eased back into being as if it was scared to be shoved away by the cold again and I felt the softness of a thick blanket wrapped around me, heating pads surrounding my feet which I was guessing faced the worst of the cold.

"It's good to see you awake again, sweetheart. Can you speak? Can you feel again? Your temperature has been brought back to normal again, which is good, but we aren't aware of the damage yet. Can you nod if you understand me?" the old man asked me, his slightly wrinkled face swimming into my line of sight.

I tried to remember what it felt like to nod and tried my best to do it, pleased to find that I was able to move a little bit again. He seemed just as happy as me at the improvement in me.

"Very good. Now, I'm going to remove the heating pads we had put on your feet so they don't burn, okay?" Once again, I nodded weakly that I understood. The blaring heat around my feet subsided and I sighed slightly from my nose, feeling a little bit better now that I wasn't afraid of catching on fire. "You can call me John, alright? You were found by Jack, one of my students. You might be aware of Max, but if not that's okay. He is currently keeping your mind together, but when you can do it on your own he will let go again, okay?" he told me, shifting the blankets around my body a little bit. I felt like I weighed a ton and a half, and wondered why I was even here still. Hadn't I broken?

Not yet, Miss. Don't ask me how you managed to convince yourself to stay relatively together long enough for me to catch all of your pieces, because I don't know. The voice, definitely not mine, seemed to echo through my mind from all directions. It sounded strangely familiar and not that scary, and after a while I stopped panicking and decided I needed to go back to sleep. I didn't think I had ever slept that much before.

Death is tiresome work. Trust me.