prompt: inhale. exhale. now just breathe.

[actionreaction]

I'm having a brain-splodey kind of day. Did some housekeeping on a few different things, came up with a better idea for February's Less Than Three anthology (I had been thinking pen-pals, but I'm going with secret admirer instead. Still epistolary fiction though so yay), and actually had to force my brain to pick one thing to write so I wasn't all over the place. This is what I went with.

I still wasn't really used all of this. Yeah I got it, this was my gig now and I couldn't really get away from it, but it was still weird as hell and hard to accept. It was easy to tell who was alive and who wasn't even when the spirits themselves weren't sure. There was a fuzziness to them, like they couldn't really get full clarity since they were only half here. Even the ones who could manifest fully looked off to me. But seeing them was only one thing and not the reason I was here today. I'd been a psychopomp long enough, according to people who weren't me and it was time I became a reaper.

Naturally they handed me over to someone to train me up proper. Less expected was the fact that they didn't give me over to another reaper. They called in a necromancer, one who'd actually been trained by a death-dealer back in the day. That's how I met Sahir. I still don't know yet why they picked him of all people to train me. They barely trusted him, as far as I could tell, not to eventually follow in his master's footsteps.

"So you already know how to recognize spirits and you instinctively know where to take them. All well and good," Sahir said, his tone just this side of bored. "But a reaper needs to know how to recognize who is about to die. You need to know how to...shuffle off their mortal coil," he added, a slight smirk on his lips.

I frowned, crossing my arms. It was one thing to just ferry someone off to the afterlife - that's what psychopomps did. It was another thing to actively be the one knocking their soul loose, as it were.

"Don't give me that look. You want to just be a butler to the dead the rest of your afterlife or you want to move up the ranks?" Sahir flipped a silver coin between his fingers, eying me as he did. I watched it travel over his hand and didn't respond. "You're not killing them, you know," Sahir said quietly. "There's a difference in what you do. If the soul stays in the body after the body dies, the soul festers and rots. If we're lucky, that soul becomes a lost spirit. If we're not it could become a poltergeist, a wraith, a ghast, a-"

"I get it," I said quietly. He'd go on forever listing all the nasty and vengeful things spirits could become if they didn't cross over when they should. It helped though, just that little statement. "Tell me how to recognize the incoming then." Incoming. It was a term I preferred to use, one I'd actually coined myself and was starting to catch on.

Sahir's lips twitched like he was trying not to smile. He pushed himself off the wall and came over to me, his golden-brown eyes alight. I shivered slightly. No wonder they worried about him. He looked like he enjoyed this too much.

"Close your eyes," he said softly and I shivered again, but this time it had nothing to do with his slightly disturbing demeanor and everything to do with that deep husky voice of his. "Clear your mind and focus on your breathing. Inhale. Exhale. Just breathe."

I fought back the desire to argue, too entranced by his voice to do anything but listen. I did as he said and after I'd still myself into a pleasant calm, I noticed a strange buzzing along my skin. It was barely noticeable at first.

"Ah," he murmured. "You feel that? Try to figure out where it's coming from." His fingers ghosted over my shoulder and I tilted my head, not towards his touch, but towards the feeling of that buzzing. I started moving before I realized it, down the halls. I didn't stop to think, I didn't even open my eyes. The buzzing got more intense until I stopped where I was, and opened my eyes. I was at the foot of a bed in which lay a tired and frail older woman, someone's great-grandmother, maybe great-great-grandmother. She was ancient, like she should have passed on at least ten years ago, but had held on for some reasons. She was sleeping, and looked content. I looked at her, feeling a little sad, but at the same time knowing now what that buzzing meant. It was her time to go, finally.

"Do I have to..."

Sahir shook his head. "No, not you. This is someone else's reap."

I watched. I watched as a reaper named Lillian appeared, gliding through the walls like a spirit herself, the same way we had. She smiled at me and raised an eyebrow at Sahir, but said nothing. She turned to the old woman, spoke to her and even though she was sleeping, I could tell the old woman heard. There was a soft sighing sound and I watched her spirit rise from her body and take Lillian's hand. She was smiling, ready to go and leave the physical world behind. The afterlife would be good to her, I knew.

Afterwards, I sat with Sahir, thinking about it. Finally I asked the question that had been on my mind. "Why'd they assign you to me? I mean why not another reaper, like Lillian or someone else?"

Sahir took so long to respond that I swore he wasn't going to. "You think this is just about teaching you. It's not. This is about me too. I need to learn ... to work with others."

I squinted at him. "Is that all?" I had the feeling he was holding something back.

"They don't trust me. I guess this is a test or something. If I can train you, maybe they'll stop thinking that at any second I'll turn into a death-dealer like he was."

Sahir never spoke his former master's name out loud, but I could always tell who he meant, just by his tone. "You won't be like him," I said confidently. "I know you won't."

He turned the full power of those golden eyes on me. "If only everyone had that much faith in me."

Still not 100% sure of the direction of this, but then, I still haven't outlined it at all. Just a bunch of free-form writing and braindumps. I like the direction it's going in though.

Comments

[yabamena]

fdklsfjldsk I WANT MORE OF THIS, LIKE, YESTERDAY. I already love Sahir, okay?

[actionreaction]

I KNEW IT. I KNEW YOU WOULD and not just because his name wound up accidentally being a cross between Sadiq and Tahir's

As I wrote this I'm like omg Ai's gonna love him *___* The next bit I write, I'll focus on him and what he can do.

[yabamena]

Haaaaaaaaa, I didn't even notice that!

And yes! That! I want that!

[actionreaction]

Ahaha yeah I went looking for appropriate names, picked that one and went...wait.

:DD THEN I SHALL DO MY BEST TO DELIVER!