Blurred Lines

A Day of Eternity

The world is full of many small miracles, most often too small to be noticed by the gaze of a human, whose life, generation after generation, tends to speed up, pushing life after life faster through the cycle, as if it were a race to be run. But where the finish line is, and who will win in the end, remains a secret even to the Universe.

The reader should keep in mind that the Universe does not believe in good and evil, it has no labels created by humans and made to define humans. The Universe is, and that is all.

Our story takes place on an early winter morning. The nurses had been calling it the morning of death, as they had been losing patients for most of it. The doctors were perplexed, as healthy patients ready to be discharged crashed and could not be revived, and sick patients were found still, monitors recording their death in one long, continuous bell.

Only little Stella, no more than five, could see the path of the Grim Reapers as they entered and exited each room, entering alone and leaving with the company of souls. "Hello, sir," she greeted one such Reaper, knowing no better, and gave her name. "What are you doing?"

The figure cloaked in black and shrouded in shadow paused, and with rightful surprise. It had been a long time since one of them had been seen by a living, even a living child. "Why do you ask, child?" The voice was rusty, like machinery that had sat for years unused, cranking back to work.

"Because I think you are here to take me away, and I cannot leave yet." The oxygen mask did little to supplement her air when she talked, so she merely breathed for a while, and the Grim Reaper, knowing death would soon come without their help, drew up a chair to watch.

"There are many people who cannot leave yet, and still it is their time to go." Grim Reapers were not known for the kindness of half-truths or lies. They were known for their honesty. "A child is still a life, still a soul inside a cage."

"So you have come to set me free?" A rattling breath flowed through the child's lungs, and caught, leaving her to spend the next few moments coughing. The nurses, busy with the chaos of other patients, did not notice the fading child. The Grim Reaper shut the door; the child deserved some peace in her last moments. "Where will we go?"

"Forward. On. Above. There is no final destination or direction."

"There are many things I have not been able to live." Approaching death seemed to age the child a bit. "Places I have not been able to go, things I have not been able to do, because of the life I was given."

"Death does not discriminate," there were many canned phrases that the Grim Reapers used to soothe the cages of the souls, to allow them to surrender.

"Doesn't it though?" An old woman, who the girl would have become had there been a cure for her illness, sat where the child had before, her wrinkled face telling of stories interwoven in stories, of a life lived the proper way, whatever that may be. Each line a memory, both bad and good. "Does it not hover around those who are born closer to it? Does it not sip coffee with those who live with sadness? Does it not room with those cast out from society? Death does discriminate, in so many ways that it's so much easier to say that it does not. Do not fool me Reaper. I may be a child, but standing in the face of death I can see what my future would have been, I know what I would have learned, and grew to who I would become."

"That is the fate of the Reaper. To see the life we are taking, though we have no say in who stays and who goes. We are merely pawns to be moved on a chessboard. White will always move first, but whether or not black or white wins comes down to cunning and luck. For you, my dear, I am afraid that I must checkmate you."

"I must go?" The hooded figure nodded and stood, holding out a milky white hand. Stella was once more a child, and she nodded slowly, removing her oxygen mask and sliding down from the bed. Her feet did not touch the floor as she sat, and so the Reaper caught her first, and then allowed her to take their hand. "I will go to the place with no destination. But first..." she motioned the Grim Reaper to bend down, so she could whisper her wish in their ear.

It was against the rule. There was only one rule, one line to never cross, and here the reaper was, nodding. And so the child took his hand, and left the cage on the bed, still with an oxygen mask breathing for a child with no heartbeat. The nurses rushed in, and the Reaper and the Soul left unnoticed, slipping through the white halls, first walking, and then sprinting, the child shrieking at the joy of feeling her legs move, faster and faster. She had never run during her life; her lungs had not allowed it. The Reaper too, got sucked into her childish joy as they ran next to her, a black streak of rippling fabric.

It was a day that lasted an eternity. They went to the park, where she played on the playground for hours under a sun that did not move. And then to a water park, where she played until her hands had become prunes. The sun still did not move, and the Soul danced across the world as she grew older in a world that had stopped aging. They travelled to countries with no name, and to times of no record. She had tea with Cleopatra and ran shrieking from dinosaurs that saw only a light dancing between leaves. The Reaper's hood never moved, but if it had, the Soul would have seen a smile that ached with beauty and pain. Reapers did not have reason to smile, so it was a precious thing when they did. And for that day of eternity, the smile did not leave the Reaper's face.

Eventually, the pair returned to where they had first met, and the Soul that bore the face of a child now bore the face of an elder. Nothing had changed in the hospital, time had not passed even as the people moved and flowed through space. None were aware of the life that had been lived by the Soul, or the Reaper.

"Whenever you're ready," the Reaper reminded the Soul softly, and she bowed her head and smiled.

"An eternity in a day, and somehow it was still not enough." But she took the step that separated them, and took the Reaper's outstretched hand.

"It never is."

***

"Was it worth the cost?" The Soul had been delivered to where she was needed, and in her next life she would not remember how she had ended this one. The Reaper sat before a Committee, all Reapers, faces cloaked by hoods that swallowed the light in the room.

The Reaper knew what came next, and yet they could not bring themselves to regret any of it. Reapers were not human. They were not born. They did not live. But that day...that day the Reaper lived. They could not bring themselves to regret that.

"Yes."