[TWWM] Polaris Prompt 4: Flash

CW: death, loss

The breath left my body with a shudder, and I felt as my muscles twitched a last time, and I fell limp. Then, there was a nothingness. A long, dark tunnel, and I was trapped inside it. The darkness absorbed me, pulling me in, and so I sat, soundlessly, twisting unfamiliar legs below myself to settle in comfortably. The silence and stillness were comforting in a morbid way. I no longer cared about anything. I had left everything behind in the body dead under the moonlit window, rotten as the rotting house around it.
The warmth of the inky blackness around me pressed around my new body, gentle and caring as hands holding an infant. I was struck with a sudden memory – the crib. The blanket, the baby – and it was gone, a fishy flash of phrase disappearing. I slowly stretched, new length of my body unknown, long tail swishing behind as I continued down. A blue light flickered, and images began playing along the curved walls of the cylinder, with no end in sight.
The image I passed first showed a small boy and girl running along oceanside cliffs. I paused to watch a moment, taken in by the pictures as the duo sat, passing dried berries and nuts back and forth once they had tired of their chase. It faded out, and a crackling screech called my attention, causing me to apathetically turn my head. Blue light sparkled once again, and the walls played a vision that I watched with morbid fascination.
Two adults gathered around a table, talking in quiet tones as the same toddler from before played on the floor. Her raven black hair was streaked through with a greying white and tied in a bun. I bent my head down, peering closer as she stacked blocks on top of one another. Then I looked up, a sound catching me. The adults were sobbing, holding each other, and clinging on for dear life. I tilted my head, wondering just what was wrong.
It continued, on and on like this, for who knows how long. All I know is that I didn’t care – what was the reason to? Simply watching another creature live their life in this strange half-life of mine meant nothing. I watched for entertainment as the small toddler grew into a strong woman, tying her hair back for the first time with the white ribbon her mother had given her, to follow her father’s profession. She built coffins like him and made healing salves and brews like her mother.
The first image to catch at a part of me that could still feel was rain streaked, hazy. The woman stood, lone tree in the dark shower, in front of two graves. She had built, dug, and blessed them herself, I sensed. It pulled at me, indescribable, almost like I knew her pain. But that is impossible. Right?
The flashes of blue light and screaming scratching cracklings began to blur together, causing me to lose track of time and focus as I continued walking, heavy plodding footsteps leading me further into my tunnel of darkness, without an end. Suddenly, all the images cut out, and the cyan blue light flashed towards me. I faced it, and it blinked – once, twice – and I seated myself at what seemed like such a clear command.
The strobing stopped, and instead kept a clear blue pierce, right into my eyes. The images beamed forth into my head, dizzying me, but I was held still by the sheer force of the knowledge. I saw a kindly woman, hair springy and tinted a strawberry red. Her eyes sparked like jewels under a hot sun, and she was laughing. She held hands with a fuzzy figure just out of frame, the only glimpse of them their skin. The woman laughed uncontrollably, spilling the blanket she was sewing in her lap onto the floor.
It was covered in moths and roses, simple twining branches and lanterns, moons and stars and forests with eyes peeking through the trees. Delicate deer pranced along the borders, being chased after by lean wolves, silvered fur highlighted by the fire that burned in the grate. The image shifted, and a blurry figure welcomed the red-haired woman into their home, doorframe engulfing the small woman, the nighttime spitting her out and into the light. Her hair was disheveled and matted with blood and mud, clothes covered in twigs, grasses patterning her cloak. Her eyes were large, scared, and I felt something in my chest twinge, wanting to reach out to her, hold her.
The light stopped, and I collapsed onto my knees, held up only by sheer will. I had to keep going. There was more, and there was something calling me. I staggered up, and kept treading down the soft darkness, when a gentle whine of sound came through. I lifted my weary head high, to see above me the red-haired woman. She emanated such a warmth that I felt I could fall into this image, and into her, and finally be at peace. She hummed to herself, flipping slabs of meat over a sparking stove, while a fuzzed-out figure set the table with two settings.
It fazed out, and the new image was of the blurry figure and the red-haired woman cuddled together in the winter. Snow sprinkled down above them, and the woman woke the figure, excitedly pointing and jumping at the snow. The figure seemed to…smile? It was an expression, as far as I could tell.
The images stopped again, as suddenly as they had started, and the cyan light came back to bathe me in all its glory. I fell back, curled into the fetal position, and simply let it absorb me and wash my sense of self away. The darkness fell away, and I was left, cold, alone.
I remembered it all, and I fell, collapsing again, with the grief that had consumed my entire being before I had died. It was back, and the only difference was my new being.