Re: first class ; baths
Death was not meant to provide comfort nor advice, and he knew nothing of unrequited love and the pain it caused. He reaped, he collected, and he passed souls from life to death, and what came after, but it was not true that redemption was out of reach and living or not, he could not hold his tongue. "I do not give or take redemption. You may find it still." There he paused, watching the tiny crystals rise and fall, wishing he could capture the beauty somehow. But the icy shards would only turn black in his palm, he knew. Some said there was beauty in death and perhaps there was, in the cool alabaster curve or a cheek and the serenity of closed eyes but that was before the coffin lid closed, before rot and decay. "There is no affection in your life that is returned?" A pitiful thing for him to tear himself from death for, to live as such, one caused pain rather than to soothe it.
No one had ever cared enough to question what he did or did not feel. He was the monster in the dark, the boogeyman, not a thing capable of loneliness or the ache that came with feeling as though his insides had been carved out, as though he'd been emptied and left that way for an eternity. "I am not meant to feel." His voice had gone hoarse and dry, the words wooden in his mouth. He was not meant for a great number of things but perhaps, somewhere, a wire was faulty and he no longer was as he was meant to be.
There was no choice in it, should the boy ask. Death could not deny one willing to pass on-- no, he could, but he would not. Not if it was asked of him willingly. "Yes. I would take you." He paused. "Do you intend to ask me?"