There's a reason Izumi isn't dead.
Izumi sleeps.
It is the sleep of the unconscious, the half-dead, half-dreaming. Her body is weak, her heart is slowing, and her mind is broken, but her will shines even through the falling rain, to those with the eyes to see it, and her spirit is strong.
She dreams, and in her dreams she is running. A maze of thorny bushes grows before her, blocking the way with its forks, its twists and turns. She chooses path after path, and runs on, breathless, soundless. Her bare feet grow cold, then numb on the wet, stubble-like grass. Her shields and protections, coat, clothing, anger sarcasm, pain; each vanishes as she turns each corner until she is stripped bare and laid out plain as day for any chance passer-by to read as an open book.
She meets only one other. He stands on steps of grey stone at the maze's end, impossibly tall and cloaked in the simple brown robes of a hermit or monk. His face is hidden by the shadows of his hood, and he holds a thick, dusty, ancient book in his right hand. It is chained to his wrist.
He draws in breath to speak, and she feels it as if a soft wind were stirring the place around her. The old superstitions assail her as he breathes. Fears and beliefs she thought long dead fly to the forward of her mind, and she falls to her knees, bending her face to the stones, murmuring apologies and begging forgiveness and protection. She is a child again, under her mother's watchful eye, begging the gods for the things every little girl needs to be an acceptable woman: a husband who would endure her wickedness, children to carry on her husband's name, fortune to feed her children, and the like.
He hushes her, gently, and she obeys, though she will not face him.
"You should be dead," he speaks in a voice like the rustling of the dry pages in his ancient book.
"I deserve death," was all she could reply.
"Perhaps," he mutters, though she cannot help but hear him. "Perhaps not. But your task is not yet done."
She lifts her eyes finally, peers up at him and shakes her head. "I don't understand," she whispers, pleading silently with him to help her grasp the totality of her task.
"We have a limited amount of time so I must be brief," he continues. "Children will come to you, a pair of brothers, and they will ask for your care. They are motherless, and you are childless, so you will agree."
He says no more about the boys, and turns toward the east.
"You're life from this moment on will be nothing but pain and torment," he addresses her, though he is speaking toward to sky. "You will be forever reminded of what you lost and how you tried to regain it. Know this, woman: it is not for mortals to tempt Fate. You will spend the rest of your living years in agony as penance for this crime, and your only joy will be these children who will go as quickly from your arms as you will go from this world once they leave you."
She cries then, burying her face in her hands and weeping, and the robed man's voice seems to soften as he approaches her.
"Child, this life is not the last," he says. "It is not even the first. It simply is."
The surroundings grow dark, the maze behind and the columns before vanishing in the absence of light. Only the stairs remain, and even they grow misty around her.
"Our time is done," the man says, and turns away from her.
Izumi reaches out to him, rising, begging him to stay, to speak more of what will become of her and these children.
"You know what you need to," he says to her, never turning back. "And when you wake you will not remember even that. Resolve yourself now to do as I have said, or you will not know the boys when they come to you."
She makes her resolve, and casts it in stone on her memory: stone that is shattered into sand and washed away as she awakes to the thundering skies, the rain pouring down over her prone form. She lies for a moment and looks into the clouds, blinking through the water that falls in her eyes. Lightning crackles, and she rolls to her side as blood wells up in her throat, choking the air out of her lungs, leaving her to cough and curl around the ball of pain just below her stomach.
Pulling herself to her feet, half walking, half tripping, Izumi makes her way toward the shore, Destiny's words fading from her memory.
Satisfactory? I had fun writing Destiny.