I woke up and felt dizzy.

I blinked open my eyes. I was met with a cold sky staring back down at me, devoid of any sun and streaked with gray. My lungs felt thick with dense, foggy air when I inhaled.

I sat up, and the world spun. I rubbed my head. I tried to remember where I was, how I had gotten here, the last moment before I fell asleep. I tried to remember anything. But it was as if my mind had been wiped clean with an old dish towel, rendering it blurry and wet.

I glanced around. I seemed to be in some sort of desolate moorland. Rolling hills and fields stretched out in front of me— or at least, what were likely once fields. Now the ground was the color of smoke, and hard and dusty to the touch. A few blackened bushes were scattered throughout the moorlands, and in the distance I could see the silhouettes of scraggly dead trees. A murky river snaked somewhere out near the horizon.

“Greetings.”

I nearly jumped out of my skin. “Who’s there?” I demanded, whirling around. I wasn’t very brave, but I could pretend to be.

“Relax, child,” said the voice. “I’m here to help you.”

Slowly, I looked up. Hovering in midair above me was a being, a beautiful demon. She was wearing many long black shawls that were layered and tattered, like a prophet’s, and face was pale and gaunt. Long dark hair cascaded down her shoulders. Her wings were wide and midnight-blue, ending at a sharp points on either side of her slender frame like a bat’s.

And then there were her eyes. Those eyes were dark and murky, deep and mysterious as the moorlands, as if she were hiding the all the secrets of my soul within them.

“W-who are you?” I demanded, sounding braver than I felt.

“I,” she said, alighting herself in front of me, “am your guardian angel.”

I stumbled. “My what?”

She chuckled. Her murky eyes sparkled when she did. “You don’t believe me?”

“Of… of course I don’t believe you! I’m dreaming. I must be. I mean, guardian angels don’t exist.”

She spread out her wings to their full length, and I suddenly realized how little power I had here. Even if I was dreaming.

She walked towards me and laid a hand on my shoulder. Her skin was warm against my thin T-shirt. It was comforting, but I still had my suspicions. “Let’s see, child,” she said thoughtfully. “What can I do to make you believe me?”

“I don’t know. Aren’t guardian angels supposed to, you know, know things? About their charges? They always do in the storybooks, anyway.”

She nodded. “Alright, let’s see. Your name is Echo Martinez. You have three sisters and two fathers. Your favorite color is sapphire. You love apple tarts. You excel at English, but are awful at mathematics— you failed geometry last year. You’re a poetry writer, but are too afraid to show anyone your work. And secretly, you are very much in love with the boy you grew up with, but you don’t want to tell him how you feel because you don’t want to ruin your friendship.”

Dreaming. I was definitely dreaming. Or dead.

“Am I dead?” I asked.

I thought she would laugh at this, or at least smile with that playful glimmer in her eye. I hoped to the gods she would. But she didn’t. She just stared at me with those piercing eyes of hers and said, very blatantly, “Yes, Echo. You are dead.”

“Am I… I am dead?”

“Yes, child. You are dead.”

I rubbed the sides of my arms with my hands. I ran my fingers through my short-cropped blonde hair with the fading streaks of purple in it. I opened and closed my jaw. “I don’t really feel dead,” I told her. “Are you sure I’m dead?”

“Well,” she said plainly, “Considering you are currently here in the Fields of the Unjudged Souls, and I was told by the Council of Deities to come and take you to your Judgement, so that the Fates may determine where exactly you’re going to reside in the afterlife, then yes. Yes, I’d say you’re quite dead.”

“Oh.” I glanced around. “So I can’t just… chill here for the rest of eternity?”

There was that playful smile again. She stretched her bat-like wings and extended a hand. “Come along, child.”