Pale blue, like chimes in the winter, that's all I remember about her eyes. She knelt down in the mud, breathing easily. Putting a long-fingered hand on my forehead, she told me I'd worked hard but failed the test. I panted and stared, looking into those eyes like the last seconds of my life. Then, she rose her head to the sky and I died.

For years I looked for her, wandering like a wave of energy between the motes of existence. Once, I thought I caught her voice on a breeze, but it turned out to be the soft hum of crystalline beetles near the edge of an ocean. So many of the universe's beautiful things reminded me of her. All of them fell short and I whispered my way into eternity, lonely, still feeling her fingers on my long decayed skin.

Once, upon a planet crowded with spirits like myself, I found a seer sleeping in the yard. An open book lay on her breast and her breaths came in quick little gasps. As I drew near she woke and, for the first time since my death, I was seen.

"Oh," she whispered, the book sliding down onto her plump belly. "I felt you in my dream and here you are." It was only later that I understood her language, but in the corridors between alive and death there is little room for mistranslation. The woman reached out a hand and understood my searching. If I could, I would have cried the tears she cried, but even in life, I was not built like she and crying is something I've only seen. Only sorrow is universal.

For a few of her days we sat, sending images and ideas back and forth to each other. She showed me pictures of her children, far away now, but loved and loving. I sent her sensations of all the places I visited across the universe and glowed a little brighter when she gasped at its wonders.

On the last day I sent her an image of her with the pale, blue eyes. The woman shivered and waited. For the first time I could sense a shield before her thoughts that normally rushed around her head like a belt of newborn stars. The woman communed with herself, away from my presence. She went into her house and the sky drew dark before she returned.

It was a flat representation she held, though I couldn't sense it properly. She let down her guard and the feeling of the image burst forth into me. There was no mistaking the blue eyes, no mistaking the long fingers. Nothing else in the universe felt as exactly the same, close, but not the same. I flared and nearly burned the woman's mind.

"My mother," she said.

"My mother," she said again, holding the object close to herself. "When I go to her grave, I can feel her presence. I always thought it was her waiting for me." 

The full weight of the woman's love and disappointment pierced me. "Perhaps, you can follow?"

It was then I noticed the woman's eyes, like her mother's, chimes in the winter.