A Finger on the Scale

Coming Into Existence

An existence is much different from a life. An existence is defined as the 'fact or state of living or having objective reality' while life is defined as 'the existence of an individual human being or animal'. The major difference is that a life ends with death while an existence continues on beyond death. An existence doesn't have an inevitable expiration date like humanity. With humanity you know that you will die at some point between your birth and the next hundred years, it's a sure fact, but with an existence you can go on for centuries, millenniums without the thought of death as a possibility. For most like God and Death and other primordial beings dying isn't a concern, only something to worry about when brought to your end and your existence is brought to a different realm.

My existence began before the flood, while God had Noah building an ark and was planning to rid the earth of the humans that he had deemed defective, he rose Death, my father, from his coffin. Before the flood Death was alone, the only bringer of death. All life went through him to the beyond, whether it be taken to heaven, hell, purgatory, or the empty. With his temporary reprieve from his confinement my father took a page out of God's book and created me, the first reaper. I was to be his earthly presence, I would reap the souls, go to them instead of the souls going to Death.

Coming into existence is not like how a human comes to life. There is no drawn out process of conception, growth and birth. It's not loud or messy, there isn't even a moment of awakening. My coming into existence was simple, one moment there was nothing, no thoughts, no sight, no concept of anything and then I existed, much like most would picture the big bang. One second there's nothing and the next there's a fully formed entity. At first it was quiet, nothing but dead air around me and then Death appeared before me.

"You shall be my daughter, my earthly presence. You shall stay here when God deems my task complete and continue my duties. I shall call you Thana." My early existence was not about learning and being told what to do, but merely knowing and being supervised.

"I have created you as my equal. You contain all of my abilities and shall foresee all that may come and all that will pass. I create you to bring a balance, as I am locked away, you shall be free. As God creates life, then you shall take it. Where God and his angels seek light and life, you shall seek darkness and death. Do you understand, my daughter?"

"Yes Father, I understand completely."

I aided Death in reaping the souls of the defective humans that had come to control the earth. The task was great and before God sent Death back to his coffin to remain with his brothers till he wished to call upon him again, he allowed Death to create more, more like me, and he named us reapers. The ones that came after me were not the same, Death had created me as an equal while those created after were created to be inferior and left under my command.

Much like God created a system for bringing life, I created a system for bringing death. As there was a Kingdom of Heaven, there was a Kingdom of the Veil. As God wrote the beginning to every life, I wrote the end. For everything that was good, there was something tragic. The universe contained a balance that had been missing, a balance that had been disrupted when God and his archangels locked away the Darkness. God was not happy with Death's creations, but he knew better than to act against us. God learned from his mistakes and allowed myself and the others to exist because unlike the Darkness we didn't threaten to destroy his petri-dish, just sought to keep the balance.

Also unlike the Darkness I found the humans intriguing and through that God and I were able to find an almost friendship as we worked together to write the stories of each soul that he brought into his world. Through him I learned the value of the free will he bestowed on his human experiments, but also saw the downfall as some chose wrong time and time again. Their emotions were what intrigued me the most. Reapers were capable of emotion, I knew that first hand as I had experienced the disappointment and sadness of my father being locked away once again, but we also understood that our work allowed no place for emotions as we understood that our task had to be done no matter the pleading or wrongfulness of a soul's death.