The Aspiring Archivist

This time, nothing happened at all. "Well, this is quite sad, isn't it?" Erin's melancholy smile soon became lost in the light.

Light rose from their body like smoke. "Looks like I didn't quite heal, after all."

They stared right back. "You're welcome. I did mean it." They smiled... and then froze. A faint glow appeared beneath their skin, and they looked down. "Oh. I guess it was too good to be true."

"That's alright. You're... pretty handsome yourself." They went even redder, then buried their face in their hands. "Sorry! That slipped out. I'm kind of disoriented still."

Erin looked surprised, and went red themself. "I... oh."

"I guess I did do that, didn't I?" They paused. "What do I look like? My appearance has been indistinct for years now."

They held on for minutes before eventually letting go. "Sorry, that was probably awkward. I just haven't hugged anyone in... a while."

"Yes." They paused for a moment, then returned his embrace. "Thank you."

"I don't have a life to live." They look him in the eyes, their emerald eyes positively striking. "I'll go with you, and I can prove that you're wrong about yourself."

"You're wrong about that. Anyway, even if something did happen, what would I lose? Until a few minutes ago, I thought I was bound to die in a matter of days." It was a relatively long path. They didn't encounter anyone for minutes.

"Yes." "Over that way, I think." He pointed to a path out of town.

A man at a tavern caught them. "You two looking for that young lad?"

They gestured at their no longer light-smoking body. "You saw me. I've been living with my condition for the past decade. It had just reached it's apex. There was about a one in a hundred change I'd make it past tomorrow. More like one in a million to make it another week." @Experience

"I was going to die tomorrow."

"Well, yes and no. You saved me. And now I don't know what to do."

Eventually their breathing slowed down, and they wiped tears from their eyes, looking up at Mike. "I'm... Erin."

They began to hyperventilate.

"I can't tell you that. They said... they said..." They seemed rather distressed.

"You healed me. I... I was dead. Or I might as well have been. It was irreversible."

They sat up, and looked at their hands, then up at Mike. "What... That's not possible."

Suddenly, existential dread!

The light faded completely, and left behind a person, eyes open, expression lost. Whether they were a man or a woman was strangely impossible to discern. They could have been either, or perhaps neither. They had medium length black hair and deep, emerald green eyes. All in all, they were rather stunning, though it was difficult to describe why.

They were. And, strangely, the glow began to fade, the smoke waning.

The person collapsed.

In response, Mike felt a powerful surge of force against him. It was pure chaos and suffering. It felt like it ate away at his being with relative ease. Mike might have assumed that he was just completely annihilated, reduced to atoms. And then... it stopped. Mike was standing there, holding the person's wrist, unmoved. The experience seemed to fade in his mind like a dream. He was unable to properly remember or understand what had just happened. He only had the faintest impression of the pure horror it had been, and the sense that remembering much more would have broken him completely. The robed figure did not appear to have changed.