As she searched for the next set of eyes, the epiphany jolted Delia in an entirely different way. There was a plethora of micro-decisions she could have made that led her straight to the eternal darkness awaiting her. Yet in each of those, there were only two possibilities. There were the drawn out deaths where meeting her maker gave her hope, but where time allowed her to make sense of her life and accept what was to come. Then there were the quick deaths. They came with neither warning nor pain, but all ended abruptly, and the last conscious thoughts were inevitably those of shock and panic, perhaps with only a flash of the life that had and could have been. Delia knew instantly she wanted hers to be the former; hopeful, conciliatory, filled with acceptance.

She had always half-joked with her l...

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