I was halfway home from school when the sound split the air.
A horn—too loud, too close—followed by a scream of metal that didn't belong on an ordinary street. I turned just in time to see it: a sixteen-wheeler, overturned, sliding wildly across the pavement. The world tilted with it. People shouted. Someone dropped something. Everything moved too fast and not fast enough all at once.
I didn't run.
I don't know why. Maybe there wasn't time. Maybe I already knew.
All I remember doing was thinking of my family—my mother's voice, my father's steady presence, my sister's laugh—and sending out a prayer so quick and desperate it barely had words.
Then the truck hit.
There was no pain. No impact. Just an abrupt, merciful darkness, like a door closing before I could finish the thought.
After that, I was somewhere else.
Warm. Weightless. Safe in a way I hadn't known was possible. It felt like drifting, like being held just beneath the surface of sleep. I might have stayed there forever if not for the feeling beside me—another presence, familiar and unmistakable.
Not alone.
Never alone.
That was the last thought I had before sleep claimed me again.