Page 19 of At The End There Was You

“Then what?”

“After giving goodbyes to his parents and animals, he returned to Asphodel, already with an answer to the three headed serpents.”

“What was his answer?”

“He didn’t know what he’d been, what he was and what he would be, because he’d been everything.”

“Did he go to heaven?”

“He’d wandered back for far too long and his soul had detached from his physical body and remained back in the land of living. His soul probably still roams this realm even now.”

“B-but why?”

“He’d been warned by Death that he’d lose something, and he did. There is a cost to every little action a man does.”

“That is just…unfair.”

He tilted his head to the side. “Did you change your mind? Do you still think him to be a tolerating God, kind despite his nature?”

He expected disappointment, but she looked frustrated, if anything. “What you told me never even made me doubt it for a second. Now I’m even more sure of it. I’m certain there was nothing he could do and that is why he couldn’t let the man’s soul back in Asphodel. It has to be. I mean, magic is tricky and all.”

“He is a God. Maybe he could've just let him through. Broken rules he made himself. How hard can that be?”

“I make it a rule to not dip my biscuits in tea because I almost choked to death on the little bits when I was around eight, but I still break it. I cave and I dip my silly biscuits every so often. And every so often, I still choke on the bits. We make rules as a consequence of something. Sure, it can’t be hard to break them. On the contrary, rules are so tempting and enticing to break. We break them all the time, or try to,” she went on, barely stopping for a breath. “But there is a consequence. Like the man faced, he would, too. How do we know Death won’t face consequences? A God like him would make rules to things with detrimental consequence, it is no dipping biscuits in tea with him.”

He threw an elbow over the chair rest and lifted a hand to his face to hide his smile. “I don’t know, Winter, that in itself is a pretty severe consequence.”

“Besides,” she said, her gaze dropping to the pages of the book she’d underlined. “How many times can he break his own rule before it is no longer the exception but the default? You said he makes no decisions, and that he is only a keeper. I’m sure he keeps himself in that position for a reason. It is easy to be partial in opinion. It is difficult to remain impartial. To be a bystander. How many times must he have wanted to say or do something but refrained from. I think I am right. He feels things like we do and cannot rely on what he feels just like we don’t.”

Azriel did not like that. Not pity, not sympathy, something far worse. “Don’t humanise him.”

“Why would that be such a bad thing?”

“Because there is nothing human about him.”

“Anger is human.”

“Assuming you are right.”

“I assume correct,” she said, pushing her nose up in the air, picking up her book and pen, and strutting towards the library corridor. “I’d like a moment alone. I’m not thinking many kind thoughts about you at the moment, and I don't wish to damage any Sanctum property when I throw them at you.”

When she returned, Winter had changed her seat since they’d begun this morning. She’d started by shifting a seat closer to him when he’d indulged her curiosity with more tales of Death as a means to get her to start talking and looking at him again. A few moments later, she’d gone to fetch him a book he’d asked her to find as a distraction while he tried to calm and compose himself appropriately from the strangeness of all he was thinking. And when she’d returned, her seat was only a foot away from him. Azriel had noted her last move an hour ago, and his eyes had started shifting to her every two minutes or so, contemplating her next move towards him.

Her chair squeaked and groaned against the tiles as she pushed back and stood towards the corridors on the upper second floor, and he bit down a smile as he watched her pace back and forth, searching for her next conquest.

Unlike he’d predicted, Winter sat back on her previous seat when she returned, still standing a foot away from him. When she caught him glaring, she glared back.

His foot began tapping fast against the floor as he struggled to focus on the words before him. All but five minutes later, he stood and dropped on the seat right next to hers. He’d surprised himself more than her. For reasons still unbeknownst to him, he seeked her closeness.

She craned her neck in the direction of his book, her auburn hair spilling over his arm and grazing his hand. He couldn’t help but feel the strands between his fingers, marvelling on the softness and the vibrance of colour against his skin. When he turned his head slightly to his left, his nose brushed against the crown of her head and his lungs filled with that soft scent of flowers again.

Whatever spell she’d cast on him broke when she asked, “Inventions of the humankind? That would help us against Death?” The way she said his name had always intrigued Azriel. His name came out as a whisper out of her lips, as if she didn’t want him to hear her call out to him.

“No,” he said sincerely. “It wouldn’t. And considering what I’ve read so far, it would make it even worse.”

“How?”

“I’m only halfway through it and yet not one single invention has been to aid the human kind, only destroy it. If you already want to kill each other, why is what he is doing any different?”