Re: first class ; baths
Oh, how silly humans were. Half-caught in death and still the boy spoke as though he was something to be fought against, as though Death himself was the enemy and those marked were brave warriors, heroes of their tale, meant to slay the monster. And so he became the beast because they needed, in their pain, something to hate.
"Everyone dies," he repeated. "When it is their time, they must die, or someone else will die in their place. A life for a life. A fighting chance, you say, but why?" Truly, it perplexed him. To live forever, he thought, would be a lonely thing. Death was not alive nor was he dead but he had existed for so long that he had begun to tire of it, of the task which would never cease until the end of days itself. Perhaps once he could even have found it in himself to pity the boy. "Yes, look at where it left you. Not yet dead, but not fully alive, unable to find peace. You cannot return to their world, boy," he said, raising a cloaked arm to gesture up, up, where the living dwelt. "There is only one path left to you, even if you deny it."
The lack of fear was, truth be told, refreshing. And so, with this knowledge tucked away in his ribcage where his heart still hung, caged, rotten now, Death did something strange.
He sat beside the boy.
In less time than it took to blink he was seated at the pool's edge, though the water parted for his boots and did not touch him. His scythe lay in his lap, the blade away from the boy, and a flash of pale white and deathly blue was visible beneath his hood as it rustled. "But you feared me once. You ran. You did not come."