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It's cold.
It's so, so cold.
All Eurydice can feel is the cold of the storm, of the snow she's currently laying in.
She doesn't know when she collapsed, or how long it's been since. All she knows is that she was trying to get back home, back to Orpheus.
Orpheus, who's song she believed would shelter and harbour her.
Her jacket and bag have long since by carried away by the storm, no matter how desperatley she'd clung onto them. All they had, and it's gone.
It's so cold, and Eurydice is so tired and so, so hungry.
She closes her eyes for a moment, seeing if she can fall asleep and disappear.
When she reopens them, there's someone staring down at her. Her vision is slightly blury, but the face seems familiar. A young man's face. Messy brown hair and big brown eyes.
"Orpheus?"
The name comes out of her mouth weakly but with a small smile. He's found her. He's heard her call, even in the storm. She's going to be okay.
"You can see me?"
The voice that comes out of the young man's mouth isn't Orpheus. The accent is different, not the one Eurydice teasingly imidated when they'd first met.
Eurydice's vision clears ever so slightly, and she realises the boy looks just a bit younger than her and Orpheus. Only by a few years, but still younger. He's also dressed differently, in a light grey jacket rather than Orpheus suspenders, and no red kneck tie in sight.
The boy is still staring at her. Eurydice should probably say something.
"Who are you?" she asks, making an attempt to sit up. It's still so freezing cold.
The boy blinks, seeming to think about it. "Gabriel,' he eventually replies. "I'm pretty sure it's Gabriel, anyways."
"What do you mean, you're 'pretty sure'?"
"No one really says my name. Not anymore, anyways."
"No one? Not even your family?"
Gabriel looks away, and Eurydice realises her mistake.
"Oh, um, is your family..."
"They're alive," Gabriel clarifies. "I'm not."
Eurydice stares at him for a while. Trying to process what he just said. How she could possibly be seeing a dead man.
"I mean, I like to say I am, sometimes," Gabriel continues, though whether that's because of or despite Eurydice's shocked expression is unclear. "But in the literal sense of it, I've been dead for a long time."
Eurydice tries to take a deep breathe, but it comes out shallow. "How long have you been dead for?"
"17 years."
"And how did you..."
"Something called an intestinal obstruction. Though I don't really know what that is. I was eight months old."
"You look a little old for someone who died as a baby," Eurydice remarks, forrowing her brow. She can't imagine how his parents must have felt, loosing their son.
Gabriel simply shrugs. "My Mom imagines me older, so I look like this."
"Right." Eurydice doesn't know if she fully believes him. If she can fully believe she's talking to a ghost.
Gabriel looks at her again, and a melenchonic expression forms on his face.
"You don't look so well yourself," he says, his voice soft. "You look cold."
Eurydice wants to be annoyed at him for stating the obvious, but she really is cold. Cold and hungry and so, so tired. She wishes he hadn't reminded her.
"I am," she admits.
"I can take you somewhere you won't be," Gabriel offers, a small smile on his face. "It's a place where all your pain will go away."
Eurydice considers this. Gabriel is a strange boy, a dead boy, and he's making a very strange offer. And yet, Eurydice feels tempted to see what it is, if taking it could mean lying down forever and never waking up.
"What do you mean by that?" she asks, deciding it couldn't hurt to know more.
"There's this beautiful world I know where the sun is always shining. You'll be happy there."
Eurydice could resist, could say no, but nothing is as it was anymore. She wonders where Orpheus is. If he's still working on his song. Wasn't it going to be the two of them? Weren't they bird of a feather?
Gabriel holds out his hand to her.
"Come with me. You'll love it, I promise. "
He sounds so earnest. Eurydice feels Iike she believes him. Like he'll truly keep his promise. She wishes Orpheus could have done the same.
She's hungry.
Her heart aches to stay, but her flesh is desperate to be realsed from the cold and hunger and exhaustion. She might as well already be gone.
"Come with me," Gabriel repeats. Not demanding, but hopeful. Slightly pleading.
Eurydice takes the young boy's hand.
She's gone.