Dark Orchidmature

Softly, the world began to drip, like a luminescent dream, a fading, perhaps of reality. Rose wasn't sure what to make of it, but she knew damn well she was falling in love with the textures of emotion, the smell of erosion, and the sheer sight of chaos.

Stars bled into one another like a cacophonous rapture, the sun spit of God shining on the edge of the galaxy like an unfolding rose, dappled in the morning's dew. Strangely this place was familiar, it was a place of creation, of beginnings.

On the edge of reality she stood, weeping her joy, the chaos diminished and to a steady full stop the crazy world came. Purple haze wilted in ghostly leaves from a tree of no origin, the city it clothed was miles away, a Ghost city, a place of no name and no time. No indicators of human life were offered, just a sight, and a thought.

Here in the strangeness, the world decayed, and blossomed once more in hues unknown. Here just a strange shade would define the good from evil, the sea from shore, the world from space. Yet stars shined here, and forever would they be placed.

Rose walked forward. Her non-cloven toe nudging soft, skin, presence. She peered down to find a body in anti-orchid, pale and soft, something of reality, not far from death hidden here in the short grass, the shrubs of death decay.

Dog Tags marked him, Jack Clandice. A strange name, not of this populace, a dark and abysmal reckoning of the over plain, the stern, hard truth of reality. He lived upstate New York, a real man.

Rose hadn't crossed the path of the living before, she was born here, bred in the Ghost Line, like very few others, they were a rare breed, a dark race of empty ghosts, filled with the dreams of living...

She knelt down in the field of neverflowers, a shroud of mist concave, spread upon the body of life, of living, of dreammatter. Rose was cautious, but curious, no one had told her of the before life, not in detail, she was intrigued by what it could bring here, so many had experienced it, so many had trusted it, had faith in their belongings, their purpose.

Disappointment struck many, faith clung to more. Considering it a transcendence, most valued this Ghost Line as a segue between the here and there, the life and after life... No one knew if there was more. Rose couldn't fathom the beginning possibilities to the ultimate suggestions.

Rose studied the body... his eyes, were hers. His nose, shared the same button particular. His hair was chestnut, a mild hue difference in shade from hers. Something came across in his sleep, his passing that offered itself to her with cleanliness... she witnessed his birth into this new age... this world of hers... shimmering of gold and lilac.

He rubbed his eyes and inquired "where... where am I?"