Lilian is nineteen when she realizes she is going to die. Her name isn’t Lilian yet, of course. That comes later, when she finds herself alive in a new world and in the rush of joy at finding herself still existing decides this is a perfect opportunity to do what she’s always wanted and get rid of her boring old name and pick up an interesting new one.

Before all of that, Lilian is nineteen when she realizes she is going to die. It shouldn’t have been a thing she needed to realize, really. It’s not like the doctors hadn’t been telling her it was terminal. But, somehow, it never quite felt real, even as her body shed its old comfortable shape until she was an emaciated skeleton of who she’d once been, unable to find any way to get comfortable on the mass of bony protrusions her body had become. Surely, she wasn’t allowed to die. Not in real life. Not for real.

Somehow, she’d be okay. Somehow, she’d make it.

But, suddenly, one afternoon resting in the sun with her family, her mother and father reading their own separate books next to her, she realizes the truth.

It isn’t all going to be okay.

She’s allowed to die for real.

The universe is a colder place, all of a sudden.