In your sleep, you dream. A white world opens up before you, you in your original body, floating through the bright nothing. The whiteness fades away slowly, dissolving like a mist into the air as fields of rolling green grass, spotted with large, lush trees. You float through the landscape, feeling completely different than before. Total weightlessness. You drift over the hills, and coast past trees idly, a cool breeze blowing at your back.You sail lazily, until you come to a large dip beyond a hill, where you see people at the bottom. Without even thinking of it, you lower towards them. The closer you get, the more you realize that the people are your friends and family. You don't even notice that they're all standing around a hole in the ground until you are right above it. No, that's not it, the hole wasn't there before.

You suddenly fall, your weightlessness gone. You feel a hard thump on your back as you hit a surface, and the hollow tone it produced alerts you that it's not wood. You turn your head to look, as you feel a chill throughout your body as you look at a casket. You realize that it's yours. You look up out of the hole, all your mourners looking down into it, their eyesockets empty. They silently stare at you, if you could even call it staring, for what feels like an eternity. You feel a light brushing on your hand, and look down to discover dirt on your hand. Before you can wonder where it came from, you feel another brush against your face, and look up to see tiny streams of dirt flowing from the empty eyesockets of your loved ones, all pouring into the grave. You try to stand up, but you can't seem to will yourself to move. The flow of dirt increases, to the point where dirt is flowing openly from the faces of everyone you knew, slowly burying you. You can't even scream, and before long darkness takes you as dirt piles over your head.

In the dark, and the fading noises of dirt pouring onto more dirt, you hear a sound. A voice, or an echo of one. It's unclear at first, but gradually becomes more clear with each repetition.

"Lost One."

Is that who you are supposed to be?

"How unfortunate you are, even when laid to rest you never truly sleep."

A candle lights in front of you, and a room is illuminated. You're laying on a rather exquisite leather sofa in a dark walled room. You were just buried underground, but what is this?

"You wander from body to body, seeking what was once yours but is now no more."

You realize the voice is feminine, and you realize that the candle before you is being held in place be a white gloved hand. Try as you might though, you can't turn your head to see who it is speaking.

"Wanted by the Courts of the Dead and pursued by a Daughter of Charon, you run into the unknown, but for what? Where could you be going with nowhere to turn? Your desperation leading you from the natural cycle, and for what? To save your life? The life that was already spent and taken from your body?"

The hand holding the candle begins to move. You find your head moving with it, your eyes locked on the flame. The candle is carried to a nearby table, where it is placed among several unlit candles in an elaborately carved candlebra. As soon as it is set, the hand withdraws, and you hear the distinctive pop of a match lighting, and the gloved hand slowly begins to light the rest of the candles.

"Nevertheless, you have reclaimed life, at the expense of anothers. Your wandering soul displaces your hostess, locking them deep within their own mind. You might be pleased to draw breath once again, to smell, to taste, but can you really truly fill the shoes of another? To live the life of a stranger? This isn't what you desire at all, or is it?"

You had never really considered why you had escaped. You had died, after all, was it too much to accept that? Was it the panic of realization that you acted desperately? You watch the flames of the candles, burning completely still. What was it you were really hoping to achieve running away? You had no idea what you were going to do, you just acted on impulse. Now it's true, you have found life again, but it's also true that you couldn't imagine living the life of a stranger.

No, there was a reason you ran. You weren't ready to die. You aren't ready to die. You had the chance, and you took it. As the result, you've found yourself switching between bodies. You've been given life again, but why, you still don't know.

"Why, that is the question indeed," the womans voice interrupts your thoughts. "Perhaps an unfulfilled desire? An unrealized dream? Spirits on both sides of the Great Border can become disturbances when suddenly wrenched from their bodies, especially when they have a strong will. Only souls with a goal of the utmost importance can retain their individuality. Your strong desire to live a life taken before it's time by a circumstance that was never truly meant to affect you. Collateral damage in the great wheel of life, such a tragedy."

Before your time? You weren't meant to die? Collateral damage?

"This is a mistake?" you say, your own voice surprising you. You've nearly forgotten what you used to sound like.