Short Stories

Mourir De Corovi

I have swept across the lands more times than any being can ever count, and have been here in the light and the shadows of all things for all of time since the first thing that ever was- was real. 

Into that soft night and sown with fire and and suffering, quick and devastating, slow and ethereal. I have filled the masses with miasma of a palpable scent and have wrought a somber end to the unjustly pained. 
So many fear me for so long, and my visage, though unseen wreaks a havoc on the minds of millions. I am that slow eternal that comforts few, and stills the hands of all. 

I am not preventable, nor inescapable. For when I come unto thee, I bring the warm shadow of silence along my side. 

I do not seek the burden I am bestowed, I do not cause the affliction that grows, and I know- oh, how I know the suffering of those with bile in their throats and frosted air in their lungs. 
I merely come to collect when I am told, and I have been made to watch as the ones you call your safety blow out the torches to let me beseech. 
There were many a time where I have been made to oblige, even if it were not my will. Homes of those who were not more than children to the earth made to suffer as property to others with the same bones as the creatures who called themselves an owner. 
Crashing and burning into the quiet night when the trills of war cared not for my opinion. 

Trenches and hiding holes where even the smallest of you begged to escape the flames of an unjust, a rash and cruel world with rash and cruel ideas. I have seen you many a time, and I will see all of you eventually. 

Just as it were when the vulture headed priests did not know how their populous was torn asunder, while the golden headed inbred sat on its pompous seat, high above the not sodom but suffering below. I saw him early in his years and I took him down to the dark and silence where he belonged. 

Just as it were when the small ones stopped breathing from the leprosy of their conditions, just as it were when I brought the old, and young and new to their quiet places free from bleeding breaths. 

Just as it were, I do so now.

Things have changed in such a way that my duty has become lazy, my strife has not ended, I reap every day, but time has slowed the state of decay so that I once thought I might one day rest. 
I know now how terrible and wrong I am. 

Is it such an unfortunate thing, though? Should I not relish in reliving my glory once again? 

There is no absolute for me like there is for you. No dirge, no rite, I will always be. 

But there is for you, and I have seen how golden heads and bejeweled crowns infect the wearer in no shortage of cruelty. how simple it could have been not for mercy from me. 

I am the only mercy in this time despite the suffering that prolongs my inevitable arrival. 
I know how little you are to trust me, I know how cruel you think I am. That I must be a jealous thing to steal away the ones you so dearly love and cherish and adore. 

I know my thoughts on this, nor my feelings will ever change this. 

I am not preventable. I am not avoidable, but for once, there was a time where I could have been. 

There was once a time where I could have been made available to no one if all the golden headed nobles in their colorful towers avoiding my masque. Had once. If only, acknowledged my presence. 

so weep as you may for the ones whom took my hands, clasped in theirs, weep your unfortunate times and I will once again sweep my fingers across your faces and forever close those eyes.

I am eternal, and I am so very sorry that you are not. And I will hang on every solemn word you have to speak at the column above their casket. I will walk among you in quiet understanding and in sorrowful embrace. I do not wish to steal away the ones you hold dear. 
I never have wanted but to endure the duty I am made to have. 
I am with you- not as abstinence, or obstacle or the enemy you may think. 

I did not sound the coronet, nor the trumpet that leads you all unwilling unto my domain and my grasp.

I am as unwilling as you. But my condolences are sincere. 

I will be here always, not as a foe, and not as a fiend, but a dear and loving friend- a companion that only wishes to bring you all, one day, into the same loving embrace that the all world deserves. 

We will have peace eventually. I am so very sorry that it is not now. 

-Authors note-

I wrote this because I wanted to make a sympathetic character out of an abstract concept, and who better than Death? Especially in a time like this one.
I don't imagine death to be ruthless or unforgiving or uncaring in the slightest.
Personally, I view death as something that is understanding and sympathetic and almost unwilling in its nature. This particular little narrative is Death commenting about how it is most often perceived by the living, especially humans and how it isn't able to placate that malaise. Death is somber and unrelenting and knows this, so it knows it is futile in trying to persuade any loving thing otherwise. I doesn't want to be the thing people most fear, it doesn't want to be eternal- of course death has no choice in its immortality, just as we don't have any choice in our mortality.

So instead of trying to convince people otherwise of its inherent nature, death instead offers perspective and condolences to the people who it has brought with them both willing and unwillingly.

Some events in particular are in regards to slave trade and the brutalization of minorities, war casualties and genocides, and plagues including tuberculosis, polio, bubonic, and deaths caused by leprosy, measles and mumps. Later death comments on the avoidance of these preventable deaths or slightly avoidable ones by monarchs, and even now by the current government structures.

And finally, death tells us that they may be the one taking people away- the root cause of the issue is not solely theirs and there could have been measures taken that could have saved millions, and for that, death has nothing left to say but a somber and heartfelt condolence to all who have been affected. Hope you like my breakdown, my ~fancy~ stuff is a little harder to understand.