I didn't lose consciousness, although that might have been kinder. Nope, I had to stay awake and aware throughout the entire experience of… well, I guess, dying. Because what else do you call it when your heart suddenly shudders into echoing silence and no longer beats?

The stillness of sound, the absence of it, was more noticeable to me because I was trapped somewhere inside my own body. I saw, I experienced sensations — the blistering heat, the gray reddening of predawn light — but they came to me filtered, through a thick and muffled layer, as if someone else was using my eyes and in control of my body and I was just along for an unwilling ride.

My taken-over body was lying on the ground. The very hard, very hot scorching ground. Get up! I screamed. But whoever was in charge now ignored me and just reveled for a moment in simply being back. Her thoughts. Her words.

Whoever she was, she was in no hurry to move in case it was all just a dream. I called it more of a nightmare.

She gazed up at the sky, all she allowed me to take inventory of. But it was worthy of note, actually. It was a scarlet, fractured sky, like it had been broken apart and put back together. And the impression wasn't just from the uneven layers of red firmament that transitioned one piece into another abruptly, but the twin suns themselves, shaped like the Chinese yin and yang symbols. As if a giant hand had plucked down a single sun, torn it apart, and cast the broken pieces back into the sky.