Re: first class ; baths
Bone scraped against itself, softened only by what might have been a thin, haphazard layer of dead flesh, as Death smiled. It was not visible in the depths of his hood though he could have pulled it back if he chose, could have fashioned himself a visage of youth and beauty rather than that which would cause the living to recoil in horror. But he did not. His illusions were lies and he was no Lucifer; he did not deal in falsehoods and manipulations. "Few do," he said, of deserving redemption. "It is not my place to pass judgment, but He is merciful." Perhaps God did not bid him, but he acknowledged him all the same. Some souls lingered, caught in between, but those were few and far between and they were beyond even his reach then. Most moved on, for better or for worse.
Hope was beautiful, like shattered ice crystals shimmering beneath the light or like the stars themselves. Even when it was broken and in pieces, it was still craved, held close to still-beating hearts, as though it could somehow he pieced back together. "Life is cruel." An acknowledgement. Cruel, yes, but this was worse, to be neither living nor dead but cursed to existence until the very end of days, perhaps even beyond that. Did he feel? He contemplated denial, but this boy, this dead-yet-living boy, would not laugh. He felt that in his very bones, in the core of his being, whatever that might be, and his sigh was like a thousand winds rising and falling in the air. "Yes." The 's' carried like the hiss of a snake, though there was no thread in it. "I am not meant to feel," he repeated. "I do not bleed. I cannot die." Death paused. "I am pain. It was not meant to be so, but their pain is mine. Death is the absence of all. It is peace. Where does their sorrow go? Their heartache, their loss?" He took it upon himself, a secret as still as the waters had once been, and he should have cut out the boy's tongue, should have stitched his lips together, to ensure that he would not tell it.
But he did not.
Death knew goodbyes. He had heard millions, goodbyes spoken between lips and goodbyes cried to the empty air. The blade of his scythe flashed, burned blue, and a cacophony of voices filled the watery air as though the mention of goodbyes had stirred memories to life. He ran his fingers over sharpened silver like a parent shushing their child, gentle, and the sound stopped, the brightness faded until the scythe was just a scythe once more.
"I will wait," he said. He stood, then, the movement completed in the second of a blink, between seeing and unseeing. "If you wish to say goodbye, I will wait. When you are ready, I will find you." The boy was going nowhere, after all. There was no place Death could not reach.