1 I refuse to end here...

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Everything couldn't have been better.

The girl- now a young woman- couldn't have been happier with how her life fared.

A typical loving family, a successful career, a dream job secured at a young age, a best friend – now turned lover- who absolutely meant the world to her… everything she wanted, she had achieved with some hard work and hell-bent perseverance.

A good, uneventful, yet happy life, one could ever hope to achieve.

Yes. Life treated her good.

Life was bliss.

Until it wasn't anymore…

She was stripped of it all within mere seconds.

Just like that. Without as much as a warning.

One moment she was happy, healthy.

The next she came down with the worst fever she had ever experienced.

Her usually sharp subconscious was now drifting in and out of the dark fog that clouded her mind and enabled her to think straight for more than a few minutes. Her thoughts constantly felt jumbled as she struggled to even process the things happening around her.

A bad case of "Valley fever", was what she had been told had struck her. Badly.

She had heard of it, but what she couldn't seem to comprehend was that it wasn't supposed to be deadly. Even though it was most probably incurable.

She thought she was strong enough to overcome it.

How sad that her body wasn't as strong as her mind was.

Unsurprisingly, things took a turn to the worst.

Her traitorous lungs ended up failing her, as the illness progressed into a vicious case of pneumonia. Her body wasn't keeping up well with the medication as her immune system was collapsing, failing her each new day more than the last.

Death came to her quickly. Almost painlessly.

But it didn't matter, right? She had lived well enough, one could say.

But in the end, she still felt bitter.

She felt grateful…yet selfish at the same time…awfully greedy even.

She had been given so much -so much more than many people ever had - but she somehow still wanted more.

She felt, deep inside her, that she could have done so much more. That she was fated to do more.

She was not resigned to die yet.

This couldn't have been the end for her?

After all, she still clung to life with all her might.

She still wanted so desperately to live, to feel, to achieve…

Her fire was still going strong, still burning fiercely with the desire – the pure longing for a second shot at life.

But what could she have done about it?

She was already dead.

In no time, her mind, just like her body, would fail her and cease to exist.

As if she had never …been.

Unknown to her, someone or maybe something had heard her plea, found it daring enough, and took up the challenge.

Could she truly, like she thought, achieve much more, a second time around?

Could this mere mortal, really be able to be the missing key to the jigsaw puzzle that no one could ever solve before?

After all, Death wasn't known to be merciful or generous.

But Death liked to play games.

Solving the hardest riddle in exchange for a second chance at life.

Wasn't that fair enough?

Yes.

The bets were on.