"Afterlife"

"That's it, then?" Varghast asked. The husks of wildflower blooms gone to seed rustled softly in the breeze around where his ears used to be. The air was crisp in the hillside grassy thicket bed. They might have seen their breath turn to fog if either of them were still breathing. "That's all there is to it?" 

"That's all there is to it," Benson chuckled. "We just sit here and watch. Welcome to the afterlife." There was silence for a little while as the light turned from yellow to pink. Insects darted aimlessly--tiny backlit black sparks. In the distance, a row of peaks reared up hungrily to snatch the sun from the sky. Varghast's bones shifted impatiently in his cloak with a rattle. "But for how *long*?" he whispered. 

"Until the sun goes down," his companion replied, patting the former sorcerer's arm. "Why? Are you in a hurry? Got somewhere to be?" he asked, jabbing an elbow into Varghast's very accessible ribs. "I guess I've never waited for anything before," the necromancer admitted with a laugh. "I've always just...made things happen."

Benson smiled. "Oh don't I know it." His face was always smiling. It set the sky ablaze. "But did you ever make a night like this?" he asked, gesturing to the sinking sun with a wave of his bony hand. Benson's eye-sockets never left the horizon and were filled by its warm glow. It underscored the chiseled runic notches around the crown of his skull with shadows. Several lifetimes of magic had failed to produce a moment quite like this.

"No," Varghast relented. "I guess not." And though the concepts of hot and cold were suggestions rather than sensations for the undead, Varghast knew warm when he saw it. He put his arm around Benson and wriggled closer. Drowned out by the nightingale chorus and the thrum of cricket-song he murmured: "But you did."