A Chilled Night
There was clear tension within the air as they walked. The soft moment between them was left hours behind as they slowly stepped through the rough rocks and dust. It was quiet, heavy, and the air was getting colder. Even with the lack of a sun in such a hollow landscape, you could still tell that the day was coming to an end, even within a faultless night and with no way to tell the passage of time, Raphael's circadian rhythm was somehow unfazed. "We need to stop for now, I may not have to sleep but you are still a person, you will still need to rest to be able to walk, even when time doesn't truly exist here." Said the devil as she stopped in her tracks. With only a waved hand in front of Raphael's face, there was a small tent, barely large enough to fit a single person, let alone the two of them.
"Is there even enough space in there for two people?" Raphael said confusedly, raising a fatigued arm to scratch his head. "Like I said I don't require sleep, you'll fit in there alone. For the night I will disappear and leave you. "Alright, then, but I don't feel tired, what if I can't sleep?" Said Raphael as he walked towards the tent. For a majority of his life, the overload of stress had led him to develop insomnia, he would stay up for hours past what his body should do, doing nothing but listening to music or staring into the blank ceiling of his room. Even if he did fall asleep he would wake up with no energy and rely on coffee to stay functioning.
"You're going to have to just try, I tried not to watch you whilst you slept because it's frowned upon by the people on the living plain that come here. You aren't going to be able to continue without rest, the longer you stay in purgatory, the heavier your body becomes." She said, walking into the black fields, disappearing behind a mixture of tall black grass and endless dark gray fog above, clouding her completely in only a few feet from the gravel road. "So even when I'm not alive, I still can get tired, wonderful." He said as leered into the sky. The color was no different than when he had gotten there but at the same time the jet black air felt darker, as if a hollow sun had just set into nothingness and left the air with an endless dark void.
The entrance of the tent revealed only a mat, and a small blanket with a thin pillow. His body almost instantly collapsed into the small mat and pillow below him. He was genuinely tired, but he felt unsafe. He didn't have this rushing energy from his brain but he didn't have the sanctity of walls to close himself off. It may have been the tent, it may have been the walking, he wasn't sure but his body was heavier than it had ever been before, he felt like a stone was against his back, weighing him into the soft mat, pressing him into the dirt with all the physical and nonphysical weight of the "day".
His mind wandered, eyes shut with no intent of opening, he almost immediately dropped into a deep sleep, a still body in an empty field, his heavy heart lightened and left to wander in his imagination. It was a silent and soft sleep until finally, with one gun shot, he was awake. He wasn't alive, but he couldn't be farther in death, A dream? It felt like he was living, he could feel everything, the hot sun against his body, the wet grass beneath his feet, the cool breeze against his shirt. He felt real, in the overwhelming serenity of the landscape he began to walk unconsciously. His body began to wander without him, it began to wander into the grass ahead and didn't want to stop.