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Snippet #2482129

located in The Wheel of Life, a part of Apotheosis of the Condemned, one of the many universes on RPG.

The Wheel of Life

None

Setting

Characters Present

Character Portrait: Ephraim Solomon Character Portrait: Keira Mizuki
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Ephraim stood outside of the apartment complex, a frown etched over his face. There was no doubt that this had to be done, and as the shinigami in the area, it certainly fell to him to do it. Normally, such tasks were highly impersonal. Then again, normally he wasn’t tasked with transporting the soul of a friend’s mother to Chuno for weighing by the Arbiter. Still, unpleasant or not, he had no choice—he’d waited long enough. A week and a half had passed since the incident with the oni, during which he’d been rather busy killing the massive warlord of the clan, who’d foolishly gone seeking the strongest aura he could find. Well, he too was being weighed and measured on Kurogami’s scales, and probably found wanting, honestly.

It didn’t take him long to find the right door—he could sense the spirit beyond, and Keira as well. Usually he didn’t bother knocking, but he made an exception in this case, raising his fist to the door and rapping sharply four times before he dropped the hand and shoved both into the pockets of the dark duster coat he wore. He was not visibly armed, but then
 he never was. Why bother to be, when he could summon any blade he wanted from the Void?


Keira started at the knock. Her mother's spirit, too, turned towards the door, the look on her pale face almost...drawn. Not that Keira cared either way. She had utterly ignored the spectre since she had shown up again; Keira had long since put to rest the woman who had been her mother, and even considered her spirit to have passed over. She did not appreciate being wrong about that. Still, there was little she could do, and she did even less. It had been a week and a half since the battle, and Keira had yet to actually emerge from her apartment.

She'd stayed since Nerys and Virgil had brought her home, and had not left it since. She'd not gone to work, and had not seen anyone, either. Both Virgil and Nerys had tried, and while Keira knew very well that the kitsune could very well get in if he truly wanted to, apparently he respected her enough to not push it. Or perhaps he simply didn't care.

Her chest constricted at that thought, and she frowned sharply. Why should that bother her? She shook her head, and answered the door. She looked flatly at Ephraim, and then stepped aside. "I know why you're here. You didn't have to knock." She spoke flatly.


He didn’t really have much to say to that, and so he stepped over the threshold in silence as Keira moved aside to let him in. The spirit was right there in the living room, and it looked considerably more distressed than the living woman did. Then again, Keira wasn’t really the kind of person to become distraught unless the situation actually warranted it—and putting the dead back where they belonged, he thought, should not really warrant as much emotional reaction as it frequently got from both the spirits themselves and those still living who had known them, on the occasion that they were able to see what was happening. Mostly, it was the spirits though. Few people were ready for death, though it took most eventually.

He was always tempted to tell that that it wasn’t really dying, since they got to live again.

That much was something he would never receive.

But he didn’t. A darkened scarlet look flickered between ectoplasm and flesh, ethereal and solid, and he blinked. “Then if there is nothing you have left to say, I shall proceed.” The Gate he summoned into the home was far less grandiose than the others he’d thus far called in her presence, for it was only made to admit one. These were the only doors he could never pass through—for only souls could pass under their arches—souls which would immediately be stripped of any trace of the material worlds and ushered to the Arbiter. Ephraim had seen the judgement process countless times, but he’d entered Kurogami’s presence a different way. This was only a door for the dead. Its surface was a plain dark wood with an iron handle, but the stone archway over it bore the name of the deceased—Miami Mizuki. He directed his command to her.

“Enter.”


For several seconds, the spirit gazed at her daughter, as if she wanted to say something. There was a shadow across Keira's face, making it largely unreadable, but the muscle in her jaw tightened. In the end, Miami left, departing the realm of the living for the realm of the dead. Keira kept her eyes on the wall, refusing to look anywhere else until all traces of the Gate and her mother had vanished. When it did, she glanced over at Ephraim.

"You don't do that with the other spirits roaming around; at least, not all of them. Is there a reason for that?"


Ephraim looked at the place the door had vanished from for a moment, as if contemplating his answer. When at last he turned his gaze upon Keira, there was nothing particular about it—he might as well have been discussing the weather or something equally mundane. “Most of those have already been judged, and the form of a spirit is simply their next turn on the Wheel. Generally, those are contained to the Dark World, but many of them escape through Hollow Points. They interfere only minimally with other workings of the Wheel, and so they are allowed, for the most part, to remain here. Most cannot even perceive them. That one had not been judged yet, and further, she was interfering with the natural order of the life of someone still living it.” It was true that he had to put spirits back through Gates to Yoruno sometimes, but generally, those were the only ones who attempted to interfere with humanity.

The Arbiter was only minimally concerned with keeping creatures in the realm his pronouncements sentenced them to. If a spirit was inventive or lucky enough to escape the Dark World, that, too, was simply part of the karmic balance of its life. But to interfere with the delicate fabric of Fate by attempting to kill or subjugate humans or other mortal creatures was not the rightful place of such a spirit, and that was what Ephraim was for. Most shinigami were shepherds only, but he was more or less an extension of Kurogami in such matters as these. His hound, if one liked.

“There was nothing you wished to say to her.” It was less a question and more of a statement, but the inflection, little as there was, left it open for comment, if she so chose to explain. He would not demand such an accounting, however—there was no reason to.


Keira regarded Ephraim with a flat look, her face expressionless. She wasn't exactly sure how to explain, but perhaps just being straightforward; when was she not? was the easiest.

"My mother died when I was five, and when I was seven I lost my father. He was still around, but he was not a father as one should be. I was moved from doctor to doctor and medication to medication; I have lived my entire life without parents and with abilities most humans never dream of having. I wouldn't know what to say to her, so I said nothing."


Ephraim nodded. That was an explanation he accepted willingly enough. For every spirit he’d seen with a more-or-less functional family, there were two or three from broken homes of some kind. It made him wonder what value there was, in something that shattered so easily. Should one not pursue only the things that would last? Perhaps it was a reflection of a human need or desire that he did not share. At least, not to his knowledge. “Fair enough,” he said simply. He glanced around a moment—he could still smell faint traces of his brother in here, and Nerys. They were likely both frequent enough visitors, but they hadn’t been by since the incident with the oni, he supposed.

His gaze found its way back to Keira for a moment, and he blinked. “Nerys is worried about you,” he said. It wasn’t hard to tell, even for someone as bad with reading emotions as himself. “Should she be?” It was, perhaps, Ephraim’s own way of asking her if she was all right. Direct enough, but still not the exact words.


Keira sighed gently through her nose. She was well aware that Nerys was worried about her, and she did not miss the indirect question, either. All of them, it would seem, were worried about her in their own way. That alone...was something she was highly unaccustomed to, and as such, she wasn't sure how to handle it.

It hit her then, something she'd read long ago. Over her years of solitude, she'd done quite a bit of reading, and poetry had been something she'd enjoyed quite a bit. She hadn't even realized she'd been speaking before the words tumbled out of her mouth.

"What though the radiance which was once so bright, be now for ever taken from my sight; Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind."

Her eyes narrowed then, and she pulled out the blue hair ribbon, tying her hair back. She glanced around the room, a contemplative look on her face. Finally, she locked eyes with Ephraim. "One thing I've learned is Nerys tends to worry about things overmuch. While I cannot say that she did not have reason to worry, I can assure you that she doesn't have reason to now." There was a slight smile on her face, and she grabbed her keys from the hook. "I assume you can let yourself out? I...have a few things I need to pick up."


Ephraim paused for a moment, and then: “In the primal sympathy, which having been must ever be; in the soothing thoughts that spring out of human suffering; in the faith that looks through death, in years that bring the philosophic mind.” he finished in a murmur. Nodding, he turned and left. What she’d said was fair enough, and beyond it, things were none of his business anyway.