And found herself in a room. It was a rather nice room, with beautiful marble walls decorated in a complicated mosaic that extended down the pillars which supported the roof. Benches rested between these pillars and upon these sat a mixed group of Furrae.
As she paused, somewhat confused, a very clearly deliberate cough drew her attention to a marble desk slightly off to one side. At it, half hidden behind an enormous ball of paper, sat the most absurd looking morphic-being Kataryna had ever seen.
The giant Scarab Beetle peered at her over cone-shaped glasses and tapped one foreleg on her desk. Or at least Kataryna assumed it was a "she", her knowledge on the gender-identifiers of scarab beetles was scant, to say the least. But the fake wig and lipstick were a good tip-off.
"I understand you will be a little confused and disorientated," the Scarab Beetle secretary remarked. Her voice had a disturbing chittering quality. "That is understandable. I'm afraid we have a bit of an influx of the recently deceased currently - some sort of tragedy at a rock concert, I understand, but Anubis will be with you shortly to interview you and weigh your soul. Please, while you're waiting, take the time to fill in a form, for our records." And she rolled the ball of paper across her desk with her middle pair of hands and plucked a piece of paper from it with a foreleg. This she presented to Kataryna with a small pamphlet entitled; "Now that you are Deceased."
Kataryna automatically accepted both offerings and made her way to one of the benches. She had not undergone all this nonsense when she actually had died, something like this would definitely stick in her memory. The gates… the gates she remembered, but then there had just been Anubis.
Well, maybe it had been a quiet night, that night.
She took a seat on an empty bench and glanced over the form. Name, it asked for and Last Address and there was a place to list the names of deceased friends and family. Cause of Death was an interesting one. After a moment of thought she wrote down "just visiting". Let them work that one out.
"Excuse me, is this seat taken?" A soft and accented male voice disturbed her from her pointless task. She glanced up and for a moment her heart leapt for it was a Wolf.
But his fur was pure white and he was not Daniel.
And then her heart leapt further, as she recognised him. "Khristian? Khristian Johansson?" She ventured.
He frowned at her. A gold and orange bird had been painted on his forehead and it flexed with the emotion. "Do I know you?"
"No, I don't think so," she replied, "I'm just a big fan of your band, that's all. Sit, please sit."
He sat and unleashed a long, despairing sigh, resting his painted head in his hands. "You and too many other people here," he said glumly, "let me guess, you were at the concert too?"
"No," she said. "I wanted to go, but I was ill."
"Probably a good thing you didn't," he replied, "it was something of a tragedy." Then he remembered where they were. "Not that it made much of a difference in the long run."
"Oh," Kataryna said, as she remembered too. "I'm sorry you're …. dead."
"Me too, please accept my similar sentiments."
"Oh," said Kat, "I'm not really dead, well, actually I was but that's not why I'm here, I'm here to," she faltered, realising she sounded not only in denial but slightly insane as well, "meet someone," she added, weakly and then with relief saw that Khristian was not listening anyhow.
She had always dreamed of meeting the musicians she admired, and it was something of a thrill to meet Khristian Johansson, Aeternity's guitarist, in flesh - so to speak, but the location left something to be desired. She was the only one who had entered by the doorway - the others here had come by a more traditional route.
Khristian was staring at his hands again. "So much blood," he muttered, "so much terror and smoke and why… why would anyone do that?" He ran one hand through his golden hair. "How could anyone do that?" He didn't appear to be talking to her - or anyone in particular. "The screaming, the flames, the stench of burning fur… and then I realised it was me. Me screaming, me burning." A tear trickled down his muzzle to land on the form and Kataryna saw that under "Cause of Death" he had written "chargrilled". He crumpled up the paper and flung it at the pillar. "And now I have to fill in these stupid forms!" He exclaimed.
Kataryna patted him on the shoulder in reassurance. "Didna fret," she said, quoting one of Daniel's phrases, "it could be worse." She couldn't really think of a way it could be worse, but it sounded helpful.
"You're right," he admitted with a sigh, "better to die and find myself whole once more then live out the rest of my life as the crippled, furless freak. It doesn't grow back you know, fur doesn't, not after that sort of extensive burning. Poor Julius," he shook his head glumly.
He was interrupted by two girls, one wearing an oversized "Aeternity" t-shirt decorated with a phoenix flying over a picture of the world, and the other wearing little more then a bra and a see-through overshirt.
"Hi," they said in unison and tittered nervously, "we couldn't help noticing… can we have your autograph please?" And one of them waved her pamphlet at him. There was no printing on the back page.
Khristian sighed and rolled his eyes. "Do you know what's happened to ask?" He asked.
"Yup," the other girl replied, "we're dead, isn't that cool?"
"No," he said flatly, "not really."
"No, I suppose not," she admitted. He signed the back of her pamphlet anyway.
"So what happened to Julius," Kataryna asked.
"Well, you have to understand, I was somewhat distracted at the time, being that I was on fire and all, but I believe I saw one of the metal girders falling towards him. The rest is, well, something of a haze really, but I guess he survived it because otherwise he would be here too." "I think Corrigan made it out okay," he added.
"Well, that's something," she replied.