Second Time Around

1. Oubliette

I thought death would be a little less black. All he could see was black. Like the inside of a cave. Couldn't see the ceiling, the ground, any walls. Nothing but black.

"Hello!" called a cheerful voice. "Sorry I'm late. Got a bit, um, stuck?" She giggled. "Like, if you, like, knew anything about this place, you'd, like, totally not believe me." She was a voice in the dark, bubbling and cheerful and almost completely incomprehensible. "And the Lord said 'Let there be light. And there was. And it was good!' Not that I, like, really, remember Sunday school." Upon the word 'light', there was. Wei WuXian found himself facing a woman, and immediately turned around, face and chest flaming red with embarrassment.

Her image was burned into his brain. Hair a yellow color somewhere between corn silk and gold held up in a ponytail by a mess of curly purple and white ribbons. The hair, too, was tightly curled; completely unlike anything he had ever seen before. Her eyelids, above blue eyes, were purple, as were her eyelashes and lips. And there was something glittery, like diamond dust highlighting her cheekbones. As unusual as that sight was, it was the rest of her body that.... She had a deep purple shirt, very tight fitting, no sleeves. It didn't even cover her shoulders! And left no details of her breasts to the imagination. There seemed to be a horse drawn on the front in white. And a good handspan of bare skin between the shirt and whatever it was she was wearing over her hips. It looked like a skirt that had been chopped off very high; there were at least two hands spans of bare skin between the bottom of the skirt and her knees. Her bare knees. Then bare shins down to tiny white boots that didn't even cover her ankles.

She didn't appear self conscious. "So a bunch of us were, like, playing Twister? And well... I was kinda stuck when I got notified you were here. So a bit late. Sorry." She cleared her throat. "Do you know what happened to you? Like, why you're here?"

Wei WuXian nodded his head at the darkness. "I blew myself up along with the Stygian Tiger Amulet."

She sighed. "Oh, good! I, like, completely hate it when dudes get here all like 'where am I?' and I'm like, 'Dude! You got pissed drunk and did some lines, and wrapped your vette around a telephone pole!'.

None of those words, other than drunk and pissed, made any sense. But courtesy should probably be held, even in death. "My name is Wei Ying, Wei WuXian."

"I'm Tiffany Waters. I'd say nice to meecha, but it kinda sucks being dead. And umm, do you mind? I hate talking to people's backs. It's, like, really rude."

Wei WuXian could feel a whole new flush running over his body. "You're not dressed; it's not appropriate for me to look at you."

"What the Hell do you mean I'm not dressed? I'm wearing my cheer uniform, you perv. Not my underwear. It's not like I'm showing anything!"

Wei WuXian managed to stifle a groan. "Please, it's not appropriate for me to look at you in that."

"Whatever, dude. Is this better?" He turned to see that she was now wearing a dress that covered her completely from neck to ground. The bodice was just as tight as the shirt she'd had on earlier, while the skirts bloomed out around her in a complete circle. The base of which appeared to be as wide as she was tall!

"No," he managed to squeak out without chewing off his tongue. "Do you really enjoy showing your," he waved his hands over his chest, "to strange men?"

"I can't tell if you're a prude or a perv. You're lucky the rules of the real world don't work here. Here." She appeared wearing a loose shirt and trousers underneath a heavy cotton robe. "Is this better?"

"Yes, thank you."

"Really? Wearing men's pajamas and a bathrobe is more appropriate than my cheer uniform? You are one strange dude. But whatever.