In the Pursuit of Death| ONC 2024

Epilogue

3, 067 years into the Ruin

Death comes always. And when she does, we are ready. She leaves behind flowers. And the world becomes a little greener.

*

AIDAN KNEW DEATH awaited him, long before he heard the scrape of palm fronds being laid before his door. The villagers carved a path from his hut to the dried-up shore that had once framed a mighty ocean, having been raised in the old ways.

He leaned against his bed posts, staring out the window. The hut was on a hill, giving him an unencumbered view of the dying world. In his youth, he'd felt like a king, staring out at his kingdom below. He imagined the Shallows full of water that glistened blue-green beneath the sky. That boats triple the size of huts rode those waves, and tossed anchors into his bay. King Aidan, he was, in his pretend, presiding over a sprawling kingdom that never knew hunger, that never knew misery, that had kept death from calling.

The sky was gray, and the shallows beige and filled with the bones of the sea creatures that had called it home, and the people who had succumbed to the ruin while plundering what they could to survive.

The fire he had prepared, reflected in his face, and he saw in the window pane, the sunkenness of his cheeks, the sagginess of a once sharp jawline. He made out each wrinkle that had chiseled away at his handsomeness. He had grown tired, and soon he would rest.

Death did not knock. Instead, she walked straight into Aidan's hut. Palm fronds had crunched beneath her boots. She wore black, her long, dark hair twisted into tiny braids that fell to her back.

Her skin carried a golden hue and when she looked down at Aidan, he saw something solemn in her gaze. She came to his bed, and kneeled. In all his years, Aidan had never glimpsed such beauty.

"There's a chair over there," he said, breaking eye contact with his visitor. His voice was raspy, and he tasted blood on his tongue. "If you prefer to sit."

She smiled. "This is fine, Aidan." And when she spoke his name, her voice was beautiful and serene. He felt like a babe on the precipice of a wonderful night's sleep.

Cheeks burning, Aidan turned his gaze upon other things. "My door," he croaked. The woman's eyebrows raised slightly. "I hadn't realized I kept it unlocked."

Gentle laughter flowed from the woman's lips. Aidan's blush worsened. He felt foolish. An old man in his sixties with rotting lungs, and here he was feeling as shy and nervous as he had been in his youth. "Locks can't keep me out."

He fidgeted with his hands, and frowned when he saw the flesh there thin, and veined, and spotted with age.

"I would have visited you tonight, regardless," she said.

"I know." Aidan pointed at his chest. "I could feel it, getting worse. For a long time, it was like a beast slumbering, but it's been awake for a while now, and it's claws are doing a fine job slashing up my insides."

The woman simply nodded.

"Do you--" He glanced up at her face. "Do you have a name or do I just call you--"

"I'm Eris," she said and Aidan remembered. That name, whispered in the Deadlands long ago. A wanderer who brought the gift of death. Who fed corpses to the sands, in honor of good lives lived. In the Ash lands, they had known her too, but by another name - E'limei Edmyth. 

Gentle Death. 

He smiled, glad she was there. Then his smile crumbled, as another coughing fit took hold. Fire ravaged his lungs, and boiled his spit, and red smeared his mouth. Aidan's eyes watered, from pain and sadness alike.

"So that's that, huh?" He felt the tears slip over his cheeks. "I'm—" The words caught in his throat. Aidan had known death would come, but he had expected it would be swift, eager to claim him, not so slow and so agonizingly sweet.

"Forgive me, Eris," he said, voice trembling, as he tried to damn the flow of tears. He made to sit up, but the pressure in his chest cast him back down. His vision blurred. Instead, he pointed from where he laid. "I brewed some tea earlier. Ought to still be warm." He nodded at his mama's kettle, the dented metal the only thing he had of hers. Everything else had rotted. Given enough time, everything always rotted. He supposed his body would be the same. "There's a jar of sap in that drawer there, if you prefer your tea sweet."

Eris's eyes drifted between the kettle and Aidan, and he felt both small yet seen under her gaze. "I don't need anything, but thank you."

The hut succumbed to silence, and in it, Aidan's thoughts steeped. He remembered a childhood, spent at his father's feet, enrapt as his father told stories about the world. When it had been alive. When forests were green and filled with bird song. When beasts hunted men, and men returned the favor. When cities rose up with towers so big, they speared the sky. Aidan knew magic existed, had met a few god-blessed in his lifetime, saw them call forth rain, sprout trees from the ground, move mountains, but to him, his father's stories were the real magic. Reminders of what the world had been, of what the world, one day, might be again.

His father had told him about Death. About the old ways to meet it, and how it was not something to fear. For it was the end of suffering, always.

Aidan slapped his forehead, frowning.

"What is it, Aidan?"

He chuckled to himself. "I just remembered," he raised his gaze to rest upon her face. The gold around her irises had grown bolder. "I'm supposed to offer you flowers, not tea."

"Flowers are a rarity," she said, and Aidan agreed.

"Do they exist?" he asked, suddenly. "Flowers? In the Greenworld?"

Eris grinned. "They're everywhere."

"Ah." He leaned back and glanced out his window. "And what about a sea? My father used to tell me the Shallows had been filled once. Water as far as the horizon, before it all dried up."

She stood, her robes fluttering to the ground. They were as black as her hair, but had a golden sheen, not dissimilar from the one dancing on her skin. "Is that what you wish for?"

From what his father had told him, the sea was so vast, so great, it covered half the world. He hadn't the imagination to conjure such a thing to mind. But that it might still exist and in the Greenworld no less, a world of flowers and oceans, could it be, truly?

"You can wish for anything."

"If it as you say," he glanced up, at the rotting beams holding up his little hut of palms fronds, dirt and sap. It'd been his father's hut, and his grandfather's before. His entire family had lived and died beneath those beams. "Then yes, I'd like for there to be a sea."

She smiled. "It is as you wish, then." 

Reaching into her robes, Eris pulled out a handful of seeds and let them fall onto the ground. Between the hut's creaky floorboards, they split open, green stems extending skyward.

 A gust of wind blew through the hut, though the door was closed, and the windows shut. It was warm and humid. Aidan smelled salt. He got up, and found his movements were easier, less cumbersome. His breathing pains had eased too. "Is-is this?" 

Unfamiliar sounds found his ears. Small gurgles. Mighty crashes. It all rushed over him. His skin tasted sunlight, and it prickled beneath an invisible heat. He heard a squawk, and his mouth fell open. "That a bird?" His eyes widened.

Still smiling down at him, Eris extended her hand. "In peace we are delivered."

"In peace we find the Greenworld." Aidan took her hand and gripped it tight.

*

The villagers found him come daybreak, and they mourned and celebrated. Three yellow daisies had grown between the hut's floorboards and the air carried the faintest hint of salt. 

Author's Note: That's it. The end of Eris's journey. Would love to hear your thoughts :)