Clay sighed. He was lying in one of the upper branches of The Great Tree, staring at the stars through a gap in the leaves. The sounds of the others celebrating their new chance at life drifted up from below. The weekly celebrations were fun (especially the energetic dancing) but there was nobody else here that had personally known him before he had come to The Lost Forest. And for that, he was always lonely.
Clay missed his dad, his coworkers, his mentor…but above all, he missed his best friend, whom he had known since middle school. They used to talk for hours, about school, constellations, law, whatever they could think of. Clay was usually the one talking, but neither of them minded. But now he had nobody to talk to. Sure, he had Karleena…but it just wasn’t the same.
Clay had heard that one of the first thing the newly-ressurected would do was seek out comfort from people they were familiar with. Clay had done so when he was revived, but he couldn’t find anybody he had known before he died before a large elk-like creature found him wandering through the streets and took him to The Lost Forest (which, in hindsight, was probably for the best), so he had settled for getting a hug from a photographer he had heard of (with her permission, of course) that he had happened to encounter. She apparently hadn’t heard about his death.
He still hadn’t received much comfort from anybody living in The Great Tree, which probably exacerbated his loneliness. Clay sighed again, closing his eyes and wondering how his childhood friend was doing without him. “I miss you…” he whispered.