Green eyes, their attention completely focused on me. Who knew being dead would be so tiring? But my train of thought was quickly interrupted by Meril asking “Hey mister, what’s your name? I told you mine so it’s only fair…”

I sighed, really how could this little girl be so debonair and so shy at the same time? But I kept such thoughts to myself as I answered “my name is… uhhh”

My stomach sank, what was my name? How could I not remember my name?! I remember everything from my life don’t I? My mind raced seeking gaps in my memory, but to no avail. My memories seemed to flow from one to the next with no gaps, yet somehow I couldn’t remember my own name. As I was having my identity crisis a tiny smile crossed Meril’s face before she spoke up, “Calm down mister, it’s OK, you must be a free soul, free souls never remember their name!”

Wondering how she could be so calm and matter of fact about this was completely beyond me, but since she obviously had heard of this happening before I asked, “What’s a free soul?”

“It’s what happens when a sentient inhabitant of a world fulfills certain criteria, when they die they become a free soul… though no one really knows what the criteria are…”

While what she said explained my after death experiences to some extent, something was bothering me. it took me a couple moments to pinpoint just what was bothering me until I realized she had been talking as if free souls were something wholly unconnected to her, something she’d read about or something like that, so I asked, “Are you not a free soul?”

Meril unsuccessfully stifled some giggles before replying “No, silly! I’m a god, all this is my world”

Stunned silence, I couldn’t believe that this unnaturally beautiful young woman was a god. Gods are supposed to be wise figures, maybe an old bearded man or a grandma with some wrinkles from smiling knowingly for the last ten million years, not a girl who looked 15 at best! She must be exaggerating, I mean all I see is white, hardly what I call a world, maybe she has an imaginary world in her head that she’s referring to, or maybe she was just straight lying to impress me. But if she wasn’t lying or exaggerating then… “So were each of the white dots I saw when I was falling a world?”

Meril, still smiling “of course, jeez you just realized?”

Ignoring her remark I asked “so why was your world falling like I was while all the other ones seem to be going up?”

Deathly quiet, Meril’s little red lips trembled ever so slightly as her smile faltered. The uncomfortable silence persisted for an interminable amount of time before she took a shaky breath and said, “There are some monsters and demons in my world that are causing it to fall…”

She looked like she wanted to say more so I waited for her to collect herself. After another long pause she blurted out, “PleasehelpmeifmyworldfallsmuchfartherI’lldie”

Not entirely sure what she said I asked her to repeat herself. She took a second to steady herself, a deep breath then, in the smallest voice I have ever heard, she repeated “Please help, if my world falls much more… I’ll… die…”

As she spoke her voice got even smaller until I could barely make out what she was saying. But the moment the last word left her mouth a memory flashed before my eyes, grass crunching under my feet, white stone died crimson and sense of helplessness, an inky blackness. A wave of regret washed over me, and here in front of me… I had promised myself that I wouldn’t let anything like that happen again. While I still wasn't entirely sure why she had told me, or even if she was telling the truth I decided I would help her, and if it turned out she was lying then I'd deal with that then. I looked at Meril who was looking at the floor sniffling, “How would I be able to help?”

She raised her eyes, her expression visibly brightened and said excitedly “There’s really two, no three things that would help a lot. First I want you to be my ally! Then I can let you into my world, secondly kill a lot of evil monsters, and lastly it would really help me if you got suupppeerrr strong.”

She spoke rapidly, as if she were concerned that if she took too long to explain, I would disappear. It was cute but she spoke so fast that she was out of breath so I gave her a second to recover before telling her “I’d be happy to be your ally and all that but I don’t know how good of a warrior I’d be”

She tilted her head a bit as she looked at me, confusion written all over her face, “all free souls have the potential to be powerful, isn’t that common sense?”

Before I could answer her rhetoric question she continued “First things first! The ally contract!”

Her hands glowed and a small scroll appeared in her hands. Whatever I was going to say was completely lost in my amazement, I mean I know she said she was a god and all but that scroll just appeared out of NOWHERE! It made me wonder: did her world have magic? If it did and I went into her world would I be able to use magic? I was roused from my thoughts by Meril saying, rather loudly, “Your turn!”

I looked down in confusion to see Meril holding the now unrolled scroll and a feather pen, which she must have materialized, out to me. I took the scroll and pen and began reading the scroll which, luckily, was in English. The scroll had some legal sounding jargon on it that talked about how alliance would allow for both parties powers to be combined when world buoyancy blah blah blah some stuff about 3+ person alliances and how the strongest member can kick other members. A short description of an ally messaging feature with a rather large number below it, and a short clause about how allies can’t deal damage to each other. In short, nothing about it looked particularly suspicious and her signature already sat at the bottom, so I took up the pen and set it on the paper when I realized… I don’t know my name. So I brought this up with Meril, she barely paused for a moment before a huge grin plastered itself on her face and she suggested, “Why don’t I give you a name?”

While I was a little hesitant to agree to this outright, I had heard some the names some young girls had given things before, but I agreed to hear what she came up with. After at least an hour of her going over names which included some things like ‘Mister rainbow’ and ‘schmoosle’ I had finally made her come up with a few reasonable names, eventually narrowing down the list to: Thern, Reaveros, Shayne, Aylo and Byron. Meril was pouting (she had ‘really liked’ the name bunnybuttons) so I decided to let her pick which one of the five acceptable names she liked best. She immediately brightened up and began deliberating. After ten minutes of Meril muttering things under her breath she seemed to have decided on a name. She struck a pose probably intended to make her look important, but I decided to keep quiet about how ridiculous she looked with her head held way too high. With her air of self-importance she proclaimed, “You will from this be forth be named Aylo! Be grateful that the great and gloi- owwww”

She seemed to be warming up for a filibuster luckily she bit her tongue. Not wanting to give her a chance to continue her speech I put pen to paper and my hand moved automatically. My signature seemed to have nothing to do with the name that Meril had given me. I looked at Meril confused, she just looked incredibly happy as she told me in, what I suppose was supposed to be an apologetic tone “sorry Aylo, you actually sign that with your soul mark, I just wanted to name you”

At first I was mad, after all, she had tricked me! I felt a bit betrayed but after a second or two of reflection I realized she hadn’t done any real harm. I was going to need a name anyway and this was as good a way as any to get one. It did worry me that she had lied as it called her other words into doubt… while this was troubling I had already decided to help her and I wasn’t one to go back on my word because of a childish prank, I really couldn’t see her as a god.

My musings more or less finished I started wondering what a soul mark was. However I figured that my soul mark was probably something like my fingerprint or DNA. I continued my musings while contemplating this strange little girl. Small tears were visible at the corners of her eyes as she pouted about the pain. To be honest it was pretty comical and a bit cute, purely in a little-sisterly way. I waited patiently as she recovered and dried her eyes. Once she had sufficiently recuperated I asked her what was next. Instead of replying she held out her hand, a ball of deep blue light radiated from her palm, gesturing for me to touch it. I reached out to touch the light, as my hand approached the light it started to float and gently drift towards my palm. They collided and I felt a feint warmness as the blue faded into my skin. Meril had a strange look on her face as she opened her mouth and said, “That should help you get strong. Most lost souls are reincarnated as babies so they have time to build up their power and learn, but I’m just going to let you enter my world so you’re going to need all the advantages you can get”

Her voice was strangely serious and most of what she said seemed to be her thinking out-loud. The whole thing seemed a bit out of character for the excitable little goddess. A minute passed and the serious expression passed with it. Excitedly Meril explained that the blue light would help me grow in power, she said it was something called siphon but she didn’t explain much about what it actually did, mostly just said how I’d become ‘suuppperrr’ strong. Eventually she exclaimed, “Now you’re ready to take on the monsters and save the world!”

I let out an uncomfortable laugh. I’d love to save the world but even with all her excited jabber I could say from experience, saving things isn’t as easy as it sounds. I didn’t tell her though, she probably would just reassure me that I would be able to do it, besides even if she did believe me it would just ruin her good mood.

Meril opened a strange portal seemingly composed of gently floating black particles that condensed swirled creating strange vortex of darkness that starkly contrasted the blinding white of the rest of the world. A barely visible light danced around the middle of the portal. “Good luck Aylo!!!!!!!” was the last thing I heard as I stepped into the portal.