Content Warning: This chapter alludes to infant death. Reader discretion is advised.253Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWRAMiEJISm
253Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwsvdwvRi7a
“Death?”
“Yes?”
“Where are you?”
“Here. Look down.”
Jane froze. Slowly, she took off the sunglasses Death had given her in the previous realm.
“Please, continue. What was that you were saying about cats?” Death said invitingly.
She shook her head, covering her mouth to hide her smile.
“What—oh. Right.” Death looked down at themselves and spread their free hand. “I’m sure you can guess.”
The Master of the Underworld, in all of their power and might, had grown skin and cherubic bodily features so smooth looking that they might have become a ken doll. Their cloak had lightened considerably in both color and countenance, looking more like a cheery poncho than a blanket of shadows. They also had shrunk to a mere six inches tall, and the wicked scythe in their hand had become a literal butterknife.
Jane lowered her hand and stood with both behind her back, trying to look professional, but her shoulders defied her with their trembling. “T-the Realm of Beginning. A place as far from you as possible. R-right?”
“Indeed.” Death frowned slightly, looking themselves over. “I admit its not my most dignified look—”
“N-no, you look great!” Jane said, straight-faced.
“We’re lucky I materialized at all in this place. In the past I’ve been little more than a ghost here.”
“Mmhm, mmhm.” Jane crouched down and offered her palm. “Would you like to ride on my shoulders, young man?”
“Why, yes I—” Death paused mid-step onto her hand and narrowed their eyes. “Why did you sound odd when you said that?”
“Only trying to look out for you, Boss.” Jane flashed her biggest, friendliest smile.
After a while, Death nodded, finishing the step. “Very good. Thank you, Jane.”
Jane lifted them onto her shoulder. “My pleasure.”
The Grim Reaper is standing on my shoulder, and they’re a cabbage-patch kid. She snorted.
“Are you well?” Death asked.
“I’m fine. Where should we begin?”
Death chuckled. “Humorous. Let us move to the nearest egg.”
“Egg?”
“It is where all life begins.”
Jane shrugged, waiting for Death to wave their scythe and teleport them to wherever this egg was. Instead, they tugged on her shirt and said, “Take a step.”
“Pardon?”
“Take a step in any direction.”
Curious, Jane stepped forward, only to immediately stumble back as a massive, perfectly spherical orb simply blinked into existence right in front of her.
Death chuckled. “I apologize for the shock, but it was rather amusing to watch your face.”
Jane shook her head, staring wide-eyed at the monolithic orb. A soft, diffuse light glowed from deep within, flickering as a multitude of shadows swam and danced just beneath its membrane. “I think I’m a bad influence on you,” she murmured. “You called this an egg?”
“Indeed. One of the Cradle’s many. Do not touch it.”
“I wasn’t planning on it,” Jane lied. “But if the souls of this realm are inside these eggs, then how are we supposed to get to them?”
“They will leave their shells when they are ready come to us. This is a realm of waiting; one of slow birth and death. It takes a long time to manifest and perish here.”
Jane stared at the seemingly empty nothingness that surrounded them. “I can’t imagine a lovelier place to stand around,” she remarked drily. “Can you please take us to where that’s already happening?”
“In a moment. I would like to explain the complexities of this plane first—I believe you will find it far more intricate than the others.” Death pointed their butterknife at the egg. “For the beings here, leaving their egg is to die. But it also means to live. Yet while they are inside, they are neither living nor dead—not a life one may find on any other plane, nor an unlife of the Underworld. It is a not-life, a building wave, an unknowable existence, a song composed by an ineffable hand. A state of being that slowly accumulates over time, sometimes millennia, until the conditions are right to live or die.”
“Schrodinger’s cat,” Jane said.
“Not entirely. You are correct that what lies within the eggs are both living and dying, but we know that Schrodinger’s cat is a cat. We do not know what the eggs contain, when such entities will emerge, or if they will emerge as living or dead. Not even I.”
Jane stared at Death. “You don’t know when something here will die?”
“One must live in order to die, and to leave an egg is to attain existence through the death of one’s non-existence. It is a confusing state of in-between that confounds my abilities.”
“Well at least the club’s not empty! If you have difficulty here then how do you expect us to do our jobs?”
Death craned their head. “We will have help.”
Jane followed their gaze. A ripple had appeared on the egg as though a raindrop of massive proportions had struck it, sending waves running swiftly across its surface. A single orb ejected itself from the point of impact, hovering in the air high above their heads for a moment before gently floating down as slow as a drifting feather to settle a short distance away.
“Take a step back please,” Death said.
“Why? From what—THE FUCK.”
Jane launched herself backwards as a flying creature far bigger than her descended from the sky far faster than it had any right to, making a mockery of the laws of velocity as it stopped just above the egg’s ejected orb. She froze in place as she took it in. It was a creature of nothing but wings and eyes, except the wings didn’t flap and the eyes were all fixated on the orb before it, scanning it with a thousand twitches and blinks. As she watched a golden ring of light appeared around the being, then the orb, each rotating rapidly.
“I wouldn’t be able to pronounce their real name for you in such a way that you would understand it, but you know them as angels. You ancestors got their visages right the first time,” Death remarked.
Jane slowly shook her head as the angel closed all its eyes and shot back into the air, taking the orb with it. She worked her jaw up and down for several moments before managing to say, “What just happened?”
“The angel deduced that whatever the orb contained was bound for life, and is taking it to its appropriate plane. Otherwise, it would have emitted a pulse as a signal for me, and left it here for retrieval.” Death tilted their head, smiling softly at the sky. “I am always happy to see an angel with a passenger. Reaping the soul of an infant is—”
“Death?”
Death blinked, turning to Jane. “Yes?”
“You’re drifting into waters I’d rather not touch.”
“Ah.”
They shifted awkwardly on her shoulder. Jane looked around, half-hoping an angel would pluck her from the sky herself. “So,” she said, “is that all there is to see?”
“I would say so.”
“The Realm of Possibility, then?”
“Yes, let’s.”
ns 18.68.41.146da2
