I used to assume, when I first began to study the lives of my sapient neighbours, that perhaps sleep would better prepare those species for death. Sleep sounds quite like death to me, a strange temporary death, complete with an afterlife of surreal visions. I have heard both a Human and an Aandrisk, on separate occasions, posit that death must feel like nothing more than a ‘dreamless sleep’. You would think, then, that these species are less fearful of the inevitable end. If one experiences oblivion daily – and for an enormous portion of the day, at that – should it not be familiar territory?
