rio collects a soul; an excerpt from "and those we can't remember"
The room was so dark when Rio opened her eyes hours later to a familiar and unwanted tug. Beside her, Agatha snored, and it brought a small smile to her lips as she leaned over to kiss her temple.
“I’ll be back,” she whispered. Agatha murmured her acknowledgement, then promptly went back to snoring.
Rio closed her eyes and gave herself to the shadows, dissolving into them, letting them bring her to where her soul was being called.
It was a bedroom, quiet and lifeless.
She was in her Death form, but her face was human, soft and gentle and warm. This, she realized with a cold fist around her heart, was her least favorite form. It was the one that did not belong, halfway between Death and human, and for one purpose only –
When a soul needed gentleness.
These moments were the ones that haunted her most, made her understand that she was not ever meant for much more than destruction and death. She took, and took, and took, and never left anything behind but a body.
Just like with Nicky , she tried so hard not to think.
The boy sat up in his bed, rubbing at his eyes tiredly. Rio stood in the doorway, smiling invitingly at him. She reached out a hand, beckoned him forth.
He yawned. “I don’t want to get out of bed,” he told her. “It’s so warm and comfortable.”
Her heart was already breaking. How many times was it possible for a heart to break and mend and break and mend and break and mend before there was nothing left to put back together?
“I know a place that is warmer,” she told him, “and much more comfortable. I can take you there.” It was so hard for her to speak, even though for the first time that night, all of her words were true, true, true.
This enticed the boy to throw his blanket back and swing his legs over the side of the bed, but then he paused. “Will my mom and dad be there?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered without hesitation.
He got up and walked across the room to stand just in front of her, his eyes big and wondrous as he looked up at her. “You’re so pretty,” he said.
She let out a noise that was half a cry and half a laugh. “Thank you,” she managed.
His eyebrows furrowed as he thought for a moment. “Do you promise that my mom and dad will be there?”
Rio knelt down to look him in the eyes. One hand went to her waist, to touch the blade of her knife, and the other she lifted for the boy to take. “I promise,” she said, and it was true. Any reservations he had dropped away. He reached out, placing his little hand into hers –
And then he was gone, if only in one way; because in the morning, he would still be there, in the other way, in that heartbreaking way his parents had to learn.
Rio walked over to the side of his bed, gently tucking the blanket around his cold body. Her hand touched his forehead, and then she collapsed to her knees, and she sobbed. She sobbed, and sobbed, and sobbed.
But the house remained quiet, silent –
None heard when Death wept.
Still she did, every time she was called upon. Quiet, and alone, like a horrible birthright, an imprint on her very soul she was never meant to escape. She thought back to the last time she spoke to Charonides, the words she had proclaimed: I am Death.
Not a birthright. A curse. This was a curse, perhaps the oldest, the very first.
Because where, in all the world, could Death possibly escape itself? Where could Death have hidden, when none could hide from Death?
(And why did Rio feel like she was being swallowed whole by the overwhelming desire to do either?)
Then, a very small, very quiet, and very pleading voice, way at the back of her mind, whispered urgently her answer: Home .
Where could Death run to? Where could Death hide?
Well…where can any of us?
Home, of course – whether a person, or a place, or a feeling - we can always run home.
She buried herself beneath the blankets in their bed, smothered Agatha in a tight hug that briefly woke her only so she could then wrap her own arms around Rio. She inhaled deeply the scent of Agatha’s hair, of their laundry detergent on the pillowcases.
She nestled herself within the feelings of safety and calm and warmth, within the arms of the woman she loved, within all these things she called home.
This was where Death hid;
this is where we hide from Death.
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