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He’s shivering, shaking, fingers knotting in his hair and lungs heaving. There are no clerics here and the only angels he meets are those of the cold water and they don’t listen to his pleas. They’re trying to turn him into one of them, a ghost in white, clean and cruel. He will not let them. He doesn’t count the minutes until hypothermia sets in, doesn’t monitor his pulse or the way it slows, the only thought he has is cold. The room spins and sometimes he rocks with it. The circles feel better if he moves with them. It’s like twirling in a field but it’s louder here, the people are scared and angry and altogether unlike the gently swaying stalks of wheat. It is also cold. So cold. His teeth chatter and he talks back to them in his head. Hello, he says, until they answer back, Hello, we weren’t expecting you so soon.
It’s blinding white when he wakes up. Has he woken up? There’s hands on his chin, hands on his back, and then he is flying. He is not flying. His arms are at his sides and he rattles as he floats through the hallway. What a poor bird he makes. The hands set him back, propped against the wall, like nothing has happened and maybe it hasn’t. He can’t trust his mind anymore. Everything around him is grey but he doesn’t miss the white, not at all. Voices shift around him, a technicolor swirl he cannot parse. He thinks only in grayscale.