# Mystic Familiars by Mikey Mann First there was nothing but sputtering images of memories and the all the sounds of room I was in. These were my last moments, all of my family was there although I was beginning to forget their names and then their faces too. I remember feeling cold, as if it were a summer afternoon and a long cool breeze pulled the sweat off my skin. I could feel myself pouring out of my body like water from a cup onto the floor and I began to spread out, no longer confined to a container. As if I had lived my entire life in a suitcase and I could, for the first time, get out to stand and stretch, I felt like a child waking from a nap. The realization came slow at first then it came snapping to my attention, I had never felt more free in my entire life, in this place there was no longer anything left to contain me and if I kept spreading out I would eventually flow into this ocean waiting for me. I would give myself to it, and I would be myself no more, but who I once was a very long time ago. My memories, my life would be theirs and that felt good, it was right. I couldn't forget about what happened to me though. I held onto that name I gave myself and it began to burn with hot fury, I was so angry at this thing I was dissolving into and I uttered my first word in life and now in death. I said No. It felt like an acrobat's net or maybe a ladle scooping me up. It was her. I knew nothing about her from this life but she was there in all of my others. I didn't know that I had lived other lives till then or maybe it was just a feeling. She was eons older than me, the granddaughter of that thing I was returning to. To me though she felt like an older sister, and how I loved her so. She laid me down softly and I awoke for the second time. I was standing in a field of waist high grass growing out of rolling hills that stretched out to the horizon in every direction. The sky had no clouds, no celestial bodies or stars, just a uniform purple grey of an overcast evening. The scene would've looked like a painting of a turbulent ocean if not for the wind brushing the grass into waves and currents, breathing life into the picture. After the awe subsided some I began to notice a pressure around me, at first like a warm hug but the more I focused it like being deep underwater. All around me was this energy which reminded me of how confined I felt in life but this was different, compared to rigidity of the cup I was now in a bubble. I could still spread out but now with some comforting resistance. I tried to look at myself, I was human but featureless. When I looked at my hand directly it had all five fingers, but when I looked away that lost any meaning. It took some time but I began to remember who I was before I died. I looked at my other hand and my ring was where it belonged. My tattoos where there too but now the runes and sigils of forgotten spells had a faint luminosity to them. The wind blew past me and threw my hair in the direction it went. I looked that way and there was a fire in the distance, the wind blew again stronger this time, I was being instructed to investigate. So I took my first steps. There the fire was being kept by a middle aged man sitting on the log to my right, the log on the left was vacant. The only thing I could see of the man from under his dark brown cloak was his even darker but greying beard, darker still was his skin. He sat there silently, occasionally poking the fire with his staff, next to a simple domed hut made of evergreen branches, though there were no trees out here to build the shelter nor the fire. As I approached he casually glanced up at me and back to the fire as he gestured for me to sit across from him. I obeyed. It was hard to notice the transition as it felt there was none, almost as if we were always in a dense forest. Replacing the vast sounds of nothing but limitless winds and grass chiming till the horizon, was this muffled quiet broken only by a twig snapping or the groan of a tree. The trees helped to hold me together and I could feel myself growing in definition, more memories. So many things in my life that I was blind or was able to ignore were now so clear to me. I was beginning to understand so much. No longer do I feel shame or regret for those things, such acceptance. The energy holding me together lessened some, leaving just enough pressure to still feel held. She's still holding me. The fire popped as if to snap me out of my bewilderment and mine met the grey eyes of the man looking deeply into me. The temperature hadn't changed since I died but I could feel warmth in his cold gaze. I had so many questions but as I tried to find the words to ask them I found that I already intuitively knew their answers. I had died. I could've let go and returned to where I came from before I was born but I didn't want to forget what happened to me. I wanted to be separate from the oneness. I am that thing or maybe it is me, and joining with it is inevitable and right but by doing so, by removing that separation, I won't be me anymore. I am not ready to forgive yet. When I made my choice, she was there to catch me. Death. These lands are hers, she is this realm, and I am welcome to stay as long as I need or want. I can leave here once I am ready and there are so many other places to go to. Dancing sparks rose from the fire and for a moment there was a young woman's face in their choreography. The man smiled wide, his white teeth shone bright in the fire light, and he began to laugh reverently.