What if...?

Meredith wakes up or maybe she blinks though neither action really describes what's happened. She looks up, has the sky always been so bright? She didn't hurt anymore, she felt so light, as if she could float away. She reaches up to brush her hair out of her face. Wait, I  have hair?! What? How? She turns around only to stop and stare at the ground. Oh… Wow. That's me. She'd recognize herself anywhere; she'd  been looking at her bald, boney body for a little less than a year now. Meredith couldn't tear her eyes away from the sight of her unmoving body. The cloudy eyes, the stillness, you never really mistake death for anything else.

Sister…

She jerks around to see a tall red headed woman. She was radiant in an otherworldly way, dressed in elegant emerald layers of chiffon, her eyes were sparkling sapphire rimmed red from tears.  This was without a doubt the most beautiful creature Meredith had ever seen in the entirety of her life. 

Hahaha… Thank you, Sister, you are quite lovely yourself.

How was she doing that? Was she a mind reader like that guy from the circus her daddy had taken to as a child? 

No no no we're not circus performers! Her body shook in silent laughter.

Oh, tis a pleasure every time I'm  chosen to teach a new Sister! We speak to each others minds, dear girl. When we use our voices we unleash power. She gestures at herself.

My name is Aoibheann and I died 1649 in Drogheda, Ireland much the same as you did; In pain, anguished for my birth sister, her children, and mine.  Her eyes took on a fiercely proud look.

My family, my town, my country took a stand against the English. The Lord-Lieutenant Cromwell came and demolished our wall. My husband and I fell in the first wave fighting for our freedom. The moment I fell, I Awakened as something new, just as you have my Sister. She reached her hands out to take Meredith's hands. 

What are we? Meredith asked of this spectral beauty.

We are Banshee! And I sensed that you needed me so I came. I am here teach you about this life. She gently led Meredith  a few yards away from her body. 

I came into this new existence by my birth sisters side, along with my Teacher. The English were battering the door of the church where my family took refuge. My teacher land her hand on my shoulder. Aoibheann placed her hand on the other woman's shoulder to demonstrate and raised her other hand to her mouth.

She told me to follow her lead, opened her mouth and a sound that I've heard all my life but not really heard till then came from her mouth. Now you will follow my lead.

The hand she had raised gestured to Meredith's body. Aoibheann released a sound that pierced her being as primal anguish. It flooded her body until the same instinctual sound came from her own mouth. The earth itself moved to cradle her corpse into an eternal hiding place. It swirled and slithered until Meredith was swallowed up; forever hidden deep below the surface. 

This is called keening, it's an expression of anguish. In my homeland women would do this at funeral to herald the deceased to the heavens. But for us it's a release of tidal waves of power. When my Teacher showed it to me the humans understood that they needed to hide. My birth sister gathered the children and what mothers could fit into the cellar with our family. Wounded soilders hid the entrance while our keen slowly set fire to the English. Aoibheann looked Meredith in the eye, her expression hard as stone.

We cannot stop death from taking our loved ones we can only warn them and deliver  justice  if we're  too late. Meredith jerked away from the other woman. She heard a baby crying. Her baby. Desperately, she turned back to, Aoibheann.

Peter! My son! I can hear him crying! How do I get back to him?! If anyone knew how to travel such a distance, surely, it would be this woman whose eyes shined with hundreds of years of wisdom would know. 

You must follow the cry. You need only keen, my dear. Aoibheann smiled brightly. Safe travels, Sister, should you need me, call my name.

Ok. Meredith could do this, she just helped bury her body, of course she could do it. She took a deep breath in and began to keen. Slowly at first as she began to rise up into the sky, beginning to shriek as she traveled faster than she ever had before, she saw beautiful things: stardust delicately draping the rings of Saturn, planets she didn't know the name of, colonies dusting the surface of some. Than she saw the most beautiful and terrible of sight, Peter, her only child in the center of an incibator so advanced she couldn't describe it. Hooked up to so many tubes and wires but he was alive. That's what mattered right now. He was alive. Meredith looked around the room and saw the blue man from earlier. Peter's new father and another scrawny man with a Mohawk speaking with what she assumed was a doctor.

" You did the right thing coming to us as quickly as you did. Had you waited any longer, little Peter,  might not have made it another day. He'll spend some weeks yet in the incubator but his readings are getting better by the day. He'll  live, I have no doubts." Her heart soared with happiness as she placed her new hands on the case. 

Ooo child…Things are gonna get easier…

Ooh child…Things'll get brighter