Fanfic

"Um, I hate to be rude, but am I dead?" Kel asked, wincing at how pathetic she sounded. The field was cloud grey, the sky coal black with not a hint of a star. Black poppies somehow provided a light, Kel had no idea how. Then again, she no idea where or what she was anymore, either. After telling Dom I wouldn't get lost, she thought with morbid humour.
"No," Gainel said, his voice even, carrying whispers of dreams.
"Then why can I talk to you? You aren't allowed to talk to mortals, either of you, unless they're asleep or dead. I'm not asleep or dead. Numair told me I wasn't going to sleep."
Then the Black God spoke, and his voice also held the promise of rest, but it was the forever kind. "You are in a trance state, where your spirit is outside your body."
"That is enough of a, a technicality for us to help," Gainel explained.
"Help? So I'm not stuck here?"
The Black God clarified, his cowl flapping in a wind Kel couldn't feel, "We will return you to your body. But we have a task for you."
Gainel looked at Kel, then held out a hand covered in mist. The mist poured from his hand and solidified. Kel jumped back about ten feet, scrambling to get away. The Dream King had created images of a killing machine - with all of it's sharp edges in place, Blayce and Maggur. They looked life size and were very distracting. "They cannot hurt you, they are only images," the God of Sleep told her. Kel could not help but raise an eyebrow and glare at him, deity or no.
"It is polite to warn people before you do that!" she snapped. She could have sworn they laughed, as Gainel waved an arm and banished the images.
"This is your task. Something is manipulating these three to pervert the cycle of life and death," the Black God intoned, his voice a frost like whisper. Kel was stunned. Regaining her composure, she began to wonder something.
"How do you fit in here? I understand the Black God, but y-you." Kel asked Gainel.
"Sleep is the land linking life and death, I require the balance as much as any who live or die, because I am the between," he replied simply.
"We return you now," the Black God pronounced, and reached out. Falling into the folds of darkness, shrouded in sleep, she slipped out of life.

"There must be someth.," Dom, with a hand on Kel's wrist, stopped mid sentence. Had she.? No, she wasn't.? Dom paused, feeling for a pulse. Nothing.
Neal, seeing his face, dove across to Kel. He put two fingers at her neck. Everything froze for Dom. Please, he prayed. "Alanna! Numair!" Neal shouted. Dom looked at his cousin.
"Nothing," he whispered, his face bleaching to white.

The grass was green, not grey. Her feet were bare. She was walking up to a gate, one she recognized. Nana? The old women in the garden dropped her spade and screamed.
"Ilane, Piers, Inness! Get out here!" They came to the doorway, thunderstruck.
Her mother was wearing simple clothes and appeared to be in the middle of housework. Her father and brother were covered with sawdust, Inness dropped a hammer on their father's foot. The next thing, Kel was vaulting the gate and running to her mother, enclosed in a hug tighter than death, every thought vanishing in the ecstasy of seeing them again. Piers and Inness wrapped their arms around them both. Ilane pulled back to look at her daughter.
"What are you doing here? It's too soon, what happened?" Before Kel could answer, a wry voice interrupted,
"The wrong thing." Turning to see the God of Death standing on the little cottage path, the ultimate darkness surrounded by carnations, daffodils and tulips, Kel fought a manic urge to laugh.
"I'm afraid, little one, that I returned you to the wrong place. I made the mistake of following your mental image of home, which led me to these people," the Black God continued. "Say your goodbyes and I will return you to the mortal realm. This is not your time." Kel turned to her family.
"Are you happy here?" They nodded. "I never got a chance to say goodbye, I suppose this is it," Kel said, hugging them each in turn. They each asked her to carry messages to their loved ones - Inness wanted Lorie and his children to know he was at peace, not to worry.
"We'll always be with you, watching and praying," Ilane said, tweaking her nose. Grandma told her to behave herself with that 'handsome young knight - at least until you get a betrothal out of him.'
Kel blushed, then laughed when Inness put in, "He better behave, or I'll haunt him."
Ilane hugged her again, whispering, "He really does love you, you know."
Her father kissed her forehead, telling her he was proud of her, "And tell Anders he's doing a good job," the former Baron said.
"I love you, all of you," Kel finished. With that, Kel turned and walked down the path, into the arms of the black god once more, without looking back once.

Alanna and Neal had tried everything, even a direct jolt of magic to the heart. Nothing worked. Kel was dead. Dom sat shattered, looking at her pale face. Gods, he loved her - why was she dead? Numair couldn't explain it, the healer's couldn't. Neal broke into his thoughts, his emerald eyes red. "Dom, you have to get up." Dom stood up, still holding her hand. He leaned down and brushed his lips against her hair, wondering what he would do now.

They were walking out of the door when they heard a shuddering gasp. Turning around, staring in wonder, they watched colour bloom in Kel's cheeks, turning them from marble to their normal peach. Her lips parted, and she took a breath. Then another. Then her eyes opened, hazel flecked with green, vivid and alive.
After much hugging and crying, Dom somehow managed to ask her where whe had been. "Conversations with ghosts, gods and dead people," she said, a mischievous light in her eyes.