The Reaper's Curse

To Kill a Love That Burns Through Heaven

"Did something happen between you and your father?" is the first thing the reaper asks Lilith. When Lilith sits there, stunned, without replying, she continues. "That night, in Adhalis, you looked sad."

"Why are we talking about me right now?" Lilith blurts. Heat rises to her cheeks. "Have you seen yourself? Are you even lucid right now?"

The reaper laughs. The sound hurts Lilith. "This is nothing. I will heal. In time, I suppose."

This is nothing. I will heal.

She sounds so disconnected, so uninterested. So unfazed. 

"I was under the impression that you can't be hurt. That all your wounds heal in an instant." Lilith's voice sounds whiny even to her own ears. She swallows and clears her throat. She's not concerned. She's just curious. That's all there is to it. 

"Just let it go, princess."

Lilith lets out a noise of disbelief. "I can't simply let it go if you won't tell me anything!" she bursts out. She fights the urge to take the reaper's hand and examine her wounds. She fights the urge to see the monster sitting across from her as a helpless girl.  

"Is this why you willingly sought me out? Because you couldn't contain your curiosity?" The reaper sighs. "...What is it that you wish to know?"

Lilith leans forward in her seat. "I want to know..." What happened to her...Why she's bloody and bruised... "What makes you suffer so?" She tries to ignore the look of shock that flashes across the reaper's face for a brief moment. "You know everything about me already. But I have no way of knowing anything about you. If you do not tell me, I cannot know how you came to be so hurt, or the reason why you have such sorrow seeping from your eyes."

The reaper is silent. She has turned her gaze away. 

When she speaks again, her voice carries a different tone. "Do you mortals believe in God?"

"Not many in Erimere, but I do." 

The reaper purses her lips. "No. Allow me to rephrase. Do you believe God to be a tangible being, or do you believe Him to be merely the form of a higher being, the one who inhabits the spaces you mortals cannot come to comprehend, the entity representing the forces of creation and destruction?"

"I...I don't know," Lilith says, her voice trailing off. And it's true. She doesn't know. 

The reaper smiles, one with too much teeth. "God is, simply, God. He doesn't possess different forms. He's not the earth, or the ocean, or the sky. Those were created from his body." Her gaze shifts to the horizon. With the dawn light stretching across her face, her eyes glow a deep red. "And then there are the deities, the children of God, born solely from his mind. They possess the bodies of mortals yet they are anything but mortals. Ophelia is one of them. She is the one who saved you from death by exploiting a weakness of mine." She reaches her arm out in front of her, her fingers splayed open. "The one who did this to me is a deity that works for her. Deanna."

"Deanna?" Lilith echoes. 

"The deity of punishments. All of this," the reaper gestures to herself, "is what she does to me in the name of punishment for my sins." Her lips have melted into a bitter smile. "But the worst part of her punishment is having to watch the people I care about pass by in a blur of black and white while I can only stand there and watch. Living has certainly become a chore."

She's baring herself, Lilith realises. The pain has made her so much more...human.

"What exactly did you do to deserve such punishment? It must have been a grave sin."