text: It was the last minute of the final day of the year 2020 when I stood out there alone. The very last moment of a life now gone. The world was dead when I stood in that yard facing the street with my head turned up to the moon. No cars sped alog the main street that was just 100 yards away from me, no lights showing through any windows and no nobody awake but instead they laid resting in their beds with high hopes for the coming day. As I stood surrounded by the silence and the darknesss the emptiness that consumed the world was broken with a soft and saddened hello. When I looked down to see who was standing in front of me my eyes were met with a woman clad in ebon cloak and hood. She stood with her face pointed down to the ground and her body loose like an ashamed child. Then she spoke and with her first word raised her head to look at me. She spoke in the most quiet tone you could without being silent aand said that she had come to kill me. She said that certain people had to die at specific times for creation to continue to function as planned. She explained to me that unfortanetely I was one of these poeple and she was the one who had to make sure that these poeple died. The whole while she spoke I looked her over.Her hair was a beautiful silver that shimmered in the moonlight as it spilled ou t from her hood and over her chest. Her eyes were such a lustrous blue that they seemed to glow. I tried to make out her face but was unable to see anything for that shadow cast on her visage from her hood so I looked down to her right hand where she loosely held a spear at her wasit with seemingly no conviction in her grasp. I looked over this spear with a rod made of a beutifully etched wood that was longer than her and at its tip rested the pointed silver head with ornate carvings along the dagger like blade. As my eyes ran across her weapon with her final whispered word of my death the head of her spear lit with a soft blue glow that dissipated just as she finished the word. I looked back up to meet her eyes which seemed to now be filled with tears I said that I would stand and not cause any difficulty for her. I was slightly saddened that my life was going to end but I wasn't scared of death and whatever would come after. I told her that I was ready and she raised her spear up with a hand still loose. She told me that I would feel no pain as I died and would stay calm due to an affect of her spear. As she raised her spear to its zenith she whispered I'm sorry and swung. As her spear came down it shined with an incredibly bright blue light. It cut diagonally through my left arm and torso; seperating my arm at the bicep and cleaving my body in two. Just as she had said I felt no pain and I didn't become startled or frightened for even an instant. As I fel to the ground I felt cold but only for a oment as I began to become quickly warmed by the blanket of blood that was pooling around me. With the only strength that I could muster I looked to her and asked her to stay with me as I was never afraid to die but had always been terrified of dying alone. She knelt down beside me and rested my head on her lap. As I looked up to her I asked if she would remove her hood so that I could see her face. She took down her hood and her hair spilled over her shoulders and framed her face with a kind simple elegance. As I looked over I was taken aback with her beauty. Her skin was soft and pale like freashly fallen snow that buried the earth beneath. Her eyes now bathed in tears were a more bright glowing blue than anything I'd ever seen and her hair now in full view was wavy and smooth in a perfect lack of forced style. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, the most pale untouched skin and the most lustrous blue eyes I'd ever borne witness to. As I looked up to her with her tears dripping off her chin and on to my face my vision blurred and I saw the moon lock itself into the very middle of the peak of the sky. She looked up and then back down to me and with the most pain and sadness in the world on her face and in her voice she said happy new year and placed a gentle kiss on my lips. Among the cold I was warm and I was calm. Then I closed my eyes and I was gone.