Alexa fiddles with the paper in her hands before answering. "It is difficult to answer that question, as I have not yet been dead and thus lack the proper comparison."

She immediately regrets the attempt at the joke. Sure, remind the girl that her entire life's been a life. Somebody smite her and get her out of this!

"That is to say," she continues hurriedly, "I am not sure that I [i]am[/i] alive, either? I recognize that there was a time when I did not exist, there will be a time when I no longer exist, and that I am conscious right now. But I was not born and the end of my existence will be less a death than a deconstruction. Does a tool, scrapped for parts, die?"

It's cold and logical. It's what she was told her whole life--she was created for a purpose, and when that purpose is fulfilled, then what use in her continued existence? And yet, it feels like a lie, staining her lips with its passage.

"I do not..." She falters, eyes on the floor again. "I do not know, Isty." She's scared to know. "But if this is the afterlife, there is much that we must revise in the rituals of Hades."