“That we are.” It is difficult not to sound fond of them when my thoughts often drift to him as I watch humanity go about their lives. Would they like Annabelle with her pretty black hair, or Richard with his no-nonsense attitude and rigidity for rules? I can never truly tell which they favour for they treat all of those little lives the same - they are each as precious as the last and I hope that one of them shall make them smile. They come back to me with their slates wiped clean and, even now, I hope to find a little hint of something in their souls. Is it selfish to wish that they left something for me to discover? I want to know if they miss me like I miss them - so hard that it hurts when I watch lovers with twined fingers and tender kisses stolen.

I thought I would be able to wait millennia for them like each century that passes only brings me closer to the next catastrophe that would bring them right back to my arms. It is not right that those I nurture must suffer so I must be happy but I am learning with each time we face each other in the wake of destruction that I am so impossibly selfish that I find myself waiting in eager anticipation for the next disaster. I wonder if we would love each other the same were we to meet in a mortal life or would he find me utterly vile?

I will give you them all, Death, if it pleases you even just a little.

“You are correct. I could easily find myself as lost as a sailor on unfamiliar seas.”I lift a hand to stifle and smother my laughter, though I know that my shoulders shake with the effort of trying to contain it. I am unchanged but every time we meet I find something new about them. I do not know if that is because of their absence or if my eye grows sharper in time. “I remain unchanged as I hold dear to me that one time I rendered you speechless as I am now. I am tired of ever-changing surprises.”

My fingers brush idly against the soft fabric of my skirts, tailored in the style of my favourite era - old and archaic to any who might see me and more often than not the few with a gift thought of me as a lost soul of a scorned bride and I do little to persuade them otherwise. More often than not they find themselves trying to shoo me from the bedside of the dying as I watch on, calling me the angel of death like I have come to claim the soul of sick with my presence alone. “A comfort, indeed, but absence I fear makes my heart heavy and the loneliness unbearable.” 

I have grown bitter over the years and I am certain they can see it well enough in the hardness of my eyes and the purse of my lips. “Time between our meetings grows ever longer or perhaps it is the anticipation at being able to look upon you once more that makes it feel like an eternity.”

It’s the closest I have come to admitting that I miss them, and it hurts more than any wound on the flesh of this form ever could. Forever, a piece of me missing until we come together again. 

       I cannot help but to watch the passing expression on their features with the confessions that fall from their lips. Time and time again, we have come together and time and time again such a concept had changed us both. It is through many forms that the living should know my face, and it is many forms that I find myself taking as I walk the plane of this realm and the next. It is a habit that I cannot help, it is something that I had done since the first time that I had opened my eyes. Since the first song that was sung in my ear by a beautiful voice of purity; of Life themselves. Now, I find that I hold one steady face, one steady form, and it is one admittedly that was commented a time or two back in the memory that was mentioned.

      “I seem to recall that with my words, you oft commented on this form as well. Handsome, I believe was the word you used.” I lift the cane and use the handle to tip it the brim up. A salute made with a smile a playful smile at my lips and the set of it back along my brow. “There is naught a day where you shall not render me without words, my dearest.” Even now, as we speak, I am taking the utmost care to trace the lines of her face with every meet of our eyes and every trade of our words. The distance set between us only leaves me wanting, only leaves me longing; and it is only relief that I feel when my steps bring me back into their arms. Would it be so cruel to stay among them? To be able to sink against them as many lovers do in their final moments of living? 

       To fade away in the warmth of Life, as so many do when they come into my arms. What a blessing that might be, a blessing to complete the longing that is reflected in the way Life looks to me as I to them. The lives of these lovers are the most cherished gifts from them, a testament to mutual affection between two so separated, and yet joined, by both time and purgatory. And it is in that is a secret blessing; to come together in the end. Would it be selfish of me that I would demand more gifts here of them, just to stay a bit longer before I would have to continue onward?

        Nothing would please me more than looking upon you, and if it is a means to collect all of them to do so...

       And it is with their speak of their longing that I feel a low rumble within my chest, would this be the ache that is heartbreak? Of a need that is so cumbersome that it pulls on my very shoulders? With their words, I can only find silence. And it is a brief one of contemplation as I hold their eye, for every second I spent looking upon their face is cherished and I dare not look away and lose a single one. For it is only another age before I shall look upon such pristine features again; before duty pulls us both away to a task that binds our very existence on this long walk.

       “When I am out there-.. With mine own company to keep. I find that-...When I look at it all. This place, this realm, this plane. It is only with longing that my eyes search the very fabrics of every shadow and light.”

      Because, to Death, they are saying it in order of the names she takes. Beauchamp, Randall, and then Fraser. The and, is for the influx of time. She is not born yet, yet she is here, and yet she is also there. Claire is all three, and yet none of them, and yet one - all at the same time. And Death recognizes this.

Where once I found myself in the company of strangers (wisps, nothing more, nothing left - the corpses and the suggestions of what they once were), I find myself surprised. I had waited patiently by the dead in the childlike hope of seeing them once again yet time and time again I had found my hopes dashed in lieu of the lives around me clinging pitifully to my skirts. I hold onto them, hundreds and hundreds dancing around me like ash in the wind. Little gifts, I think, as a thank you for the briefness of their company all those years ago. 

I grieve now because I do not know any better. I offer to them the gift of life and in a blink of an eye I find that it is such a frail and fragile thing - the best gifts often are. My lower lip quivers and my heart weeps for those lost upon this battlefield, left behind by those eager to escape the reek of blood and the rancidity of the smoke. Then I hear them, the sift of sand between toes and the softness of their voice. They do not come to me a lion, but in the visage of a woman.

I turn to face them and for a moment, my surprise cuts through my grief. My eyes are still dewy and my laughter is shaking. “I had almost thought you had forgotten me.” I admit that easier than it is to breathe, though I have no reason to do either. “I believe I have a gift or several for you. As a thank you from the time when we were but Lion and Dove.”

    I find that my stride has never waned nor slowed in an ever settled pace. These beasts have always been ones so eager to put each other into my arms, and what did not find their time at the end of a violent blunder of crimson, faced me in sickness, and others at the hands of their enemy and friend. Though, there is little difference when both would know such a being on such intimate tiers. It might be some time before the beasts that name themselves man above their peers, realize such a concept. Through no matter their title, all will know me in time.

      It brings me a sort of peace that I am not aware that I needed, as I step up to settle my presence before my friend, not until I was faced with them again. I was searching, thought I knew naught what I sought, until I had found the very one that distance was made between us. I felt the edge of a smile tug at my lips. “I am most oft renowned for my silence.” I respond with a meet of their eye, there was a time when they had danced happily around me. And it was such a feeling of bliss I had not known for quite some time. One often forgets in the wanderings of labor. “But it does not make me blunder. My stride is far, and my memory is long.”

claire, wiping away a tear: i'll put it in my favourite vase and plant more like it in my garden

      What better than a healer? One who would know me, as they know them. A companion to both Life, and to I. For such a craft allows this woman to walk the line teetering between us both, and for that it is only natural that I arrive here. With heavy steps thooming along each of the descending stairway into her space. And so I settle here, looking upon her face, with the settle of both palms along the pommel of the cane. Quiet, and observing. And little else.

i showed u my feathers pls respond

 Those are some fine feathers, my friend. I have nothing as graceful, but I do have the sharpest teeth, come and see~