White mist rose from the ground below me, while I flew between the long, skinny gray branches on the back of the little black dragon Deception. I leaned forward and pressed my face to his scales, as I had done so many times before, and basked in the warmth that radiated from them. My body had grown so cold during these last four hundred years, so I sought out warmth every opportunity I got. Above us, the moon hung bright and full.
We passed a lone soul sitting on one of the gray trees' limbs. It watched me pass with its hollow eyes. I lifted my hand and waved, and it returned the gesture before it slipped off the branch and into the swirling mist below.
I opened my mouth and spoke without speaking, since this was a place of silence. The dead rose from the mist in waves. Deception glided gracefully to the ground, and I let their icy fingers pull me from the saddle and touch my arms, my face, and my hair, while they whisper about the times they were alive. I sat for a time, listening and learning, before I finally pushed myself off the ground only to be pulled back down.
"Let me up," I told them gently in their silent language.
"Someone is knocking on the other side. You're going to leave us soon," one of them replied.
Deception raised his head and looked skywards. A moment later, a black hole exploded into existence, and something flickered across it, something I hadn't seen in so long, color.
I looked around at the souls around me, their pale faces stared sadly back at me.
I stood and walked over to Deception and climbed on his back.
Wait!" I heard three distinct voices cry, and three souls stepped forward. "Take us with you! If you are headed to war, you can use as as weapons."
"Are you sure?" I asked them, knowing fully well the weight of what they were willing to do, "It means you will never be able to be at peace.
"We are souls that take no comfort being at peace; we didn't earn that privilege in our mortal lives."
I shrugged my shoulders, "Alright if this is what you want," I said, and they evaporated into mist only to condense into a tight ball that hovered just above my shoulder.
Deception unfurled his wings, and his black feet lifted off the gray earth, and we were airborne. He barreled through the portal and into a world of color and sound.
The first thing I did was turn my face skyward towards the beautiful blue sky that we were flying through and let the hot light of a living sun hit my face. I gently guided Deception to a soft landing among the cluster of wonderfully colored tents. Once on the deep green grass, I excitedly took in the sight of living people, who were beginning to gather around me. There was something off about these people, though. They look scared and tense, like people who had just died, or people who thought they were going to die. Actually, the air here felt not very different from the air of the gray place. There had certainly been a lot of death here or a lot of death coming soon.
"Jason! Where are you?" Tears had begun to appear in the corners of her blue eyes. Magic had begun to leak out of her body as her emotions were taking over her...
"Daughter!" Neeva's face emerged from the crowd of faces.
"Neeva!" I cried back in the language of the dead and slid off Deception. From around me, there was a collective gasp, and there were suddenly three more feet between the people, and I gathered around us.
Neeva grabbed me and wrapped me in a tight hug and put his mouth next to my ear, "Daughter, you can't converse the language of the dead while the living is listening with their ears. When they hear it they get a flash of their own demise. Never speak it loudly in this world," he whispered to me in the language of the dead.
I nodded back and pulled away from Neeva, only to be further pulled away from him by a pair of strong arms. I was then turned around to look into two electric blue pools. I smiled at their brilliant colors.
Henry stared into my face with a look of concern, "Violet, are you okay?" he asked urgently. "Why do you look this bad!?" he said
I only smiled and reached my arms up and touched his face and smiled at him him and he frowned and turned his head away from me.
"What's wrong with her!" he shouted, turning his head towards Neeva, "Her skin is gray!" he yelled and held up my arm, and he was right. My skin was a dull gray color, just like the dull gray world I had been in for so long.
I looked over at Neeva too and saw him frown at Henry, "Relax, man, whom my daughter is so fond of. Her body is stuck between the whelm of the living in the dead. But once she consumes some food and enjoys some of the pleasures of being in the whelm of the living again, she'll return to her living appearance. I told you this. I also warned you that her appearance would be upsetting to most of the people who cared about her. That's why her mother and her friend chose to stay away until she returned to normalcy."
Henry looked back at me before he bent down and scooped me up," I hope for your sake you're right, and she returns to her 'normalcy". I didn't realize it would be this bad."
Neeva smiled, "Of course, I'm always right, and that's why I've also chosen to bring my daughter back on the day that will make her very glad to be alive, the day of her best friend's wedding ceremony!"
"EMILY IS GETTING MARRIED!?" I shouted and cringed at the strange vibrations that rattled through my throat. It felt strange to speak the language of the living after so long, and even stranger that I had spoken it so easily after so long.
They both stared at me, along with the rest of the people who were gathered. I put my hand to my throat and made a face.
"See," Neeva said triumphantly, "She's already talking, now go. You two lovers probably want some time alone after so long."
"I thought you said she wouldn't be able to speak again for at least three years? What happened to always being right? What else are you wrong about?"
"More than likely, it's because the estimate was a time I came out of Purgatory after 2,000 years, not 400. But why be sour about something joyous happening before its time? Unless you do not like to hear my daughter's voice?"
Henry didn't say anything; instead, he turned and began to carry me away through the crowd. I looked frantically behind me at Deception, who in turn stared at me, his eyes wide with alarm. I began to fight Henry's hold on me as he emerged from the crowd, and Deception began to growl at the people around him to move.
"Violet-" he began, and he dropped me. I began to scramble away frantically across the ground, and then I was on my feet, sprinting towards Deception. I shoved my way through the people and opened my arms and wrapped them around Deception's neck and clung to it frantically.
"Violet!" Henry barked, and I looked back at him. His expression was angry, but the moment we locked eyes, his expression softened.
"He and I stay together, we don't leave each other," I told him in the voice of the living that still felt strange and unnatural in my throat, "If he doesn't go, I don't go," I said firmly.
"Okay then, bring him over too," Henry said, and I nodded my head in agreement and grabbed Deception right under his jaw and gently pulled him forward through the crowd to where Henry stood somewhat patiently.
Once we reached him, I let go of Deception, and Henry looped his arm around me while Deception buried his snout in my upper back, and Henry walked me over to one of the tents. Deception contented himself with sticking his head and long neck through the flap of the tent behind us. Once he was done, he immediately rested his head on the ground and went to sleep.
My eyes widened at the massive amount of food spread out. The table was heaped with at least four different kinds of meats, ten different fruits, five different magic fruits, desserts, pastries, cheeses, and giant jugs of what looked like water. It was all so overwhelming, and it all looked so good, I didn't know if it was real or not.
In that gray world, I hadn't hungered for food because my body didn't need food. It had been hung in some sort of suspended animation. Even the clothes I had been wearing were in a similar state to when I had first put them on, four hundred years ago, apart from the fact that they were all gray.
"Your father prepared this in preparation for your return," Henry explained, "But first," he tightened his grip around my waist and pulled me close to his hard, muscular body, "I'm angry with you right now. So angry that the day I woke up from a coma that the doctors weren't sure I was going to come out of, was also the day you decided to go on a yearlong training session in the land of the dead. Not a place that any living being should be in if my eyes did not lie to me."
I opened my mouth to defend myself, but he began talking again before I could get anything out.
"But I'm going to pretend that I'm not because I've been wanting to do this all year," he said, and his mouth crashed against mine, and his hands buried themselves in my hair.
When he pulled away, I was breathless, and I stared deep into his eyes, "Well, if that's what you've been waiting to do all year," I whispered, "Can you imagine what I've been wanting to do to you for 400?" I asked.
I was starting to get used to the sensation of talking again, and I was ready to get used to other sensations I had been lacking.
He licked his lips and grinned down at me, "Show me," he said in a husky voice, and I jumped up and wrapped my legs around his middle, and he lowered us to the ground.
We stayed on the hard earth for a blissful time that might have made up for 400 years of not being around a single living human being when....
"VIOLET ELLEN SILVER!" a woman roared from not too far outside the tent, and I felt my blood go cold... well, colder than it already was.
Henry and I stopped when we were doing and stared at each other in horror, and immediately untangled ourselves from each other. I began to frantically put my clothes back on. They had been scattered around the tent, and Henry did, too.
"Your colors back," Henry said while he struggled to stick his legs back into his pants, and sure enough, when I looked down at myself to slip my shirt over my head, my skin was no longer gray but back to a healthy human color again.
"Yeah, great, at least she won't have the distraction of me looking like I'm a corpse to worry her enough to forget about this!" I said sarcastically.
"You better not be making the same mistake I made in that tent right now! You may think you're 417, but in my book, you're still 17 because you didn't age at all while you were over there, and as long as you're that old, I still control you!" she yelled, and Deception let out a noise of surprise and withdrew his head from the tent. He was soon replaced with the looming figure of my mother, who, the second she looked at me, let out a horrified scream so loud, well, it could've awoken the dead, no pun intended.
When she was finished screaming, she rushed over and picked me up off the ground. "I'm going to kill your father for letting you two alone, in a tent, I literally, I'm going to find a way to kill him!"