This Is Your Death

[inthebone]

It was supposed to all be over. Her Grandfather was back, and there wasn't any more need for Susan to be...in the family business, as it were. She could go back to being normal, and doing normal human things that didn't have anything to do with skulls or ravens or anything like that.

And if she still sometimes forgot that she was meant to be normal, and walked through a door, well...that was just a momentary lapse. She was normal most of the time, and if she just concentrated a little bit harder she was sure that she could manage to be normal all of the time as well, thank you very much.

So naturally, just when she was doing so well, it all had to go and get ruined.

OH, NO, she said with dismay, when she'd felt it settling on her as she walked out of the privy. The Duty. She wasn't supposed to be doing with! Not anymore, not with her Grandfather back! What on the Disc was her Grandfather doing, that she was getting pulled in again?

"If he's decided to...to take a day off I will...I will..." she started, before realising that following that sentence up with 'kill him' wasn't really possibly in this case. "I will tell him how disappointed I am, that's what I'll do!"

By the time she'd reached outside and called for Binky, her dreary school uniform had already transformed into the black dress she'd worn last time. And she found that suddenly, without her even realising it, there was a scythe in her arms.

"Can you take me to him?" she asked Binky, but he whinnied at her and butted his head at her pocked. She reached inside, and there was an hourglass. "Alright, alright, I'll do it. But you'd better take me to him straight after."

She looked at the hourglass. There was a name at the base - the name of someone who would soon have an appointment with Death. Or Susan Death, anyway.

[[ooc: Alright, so the idea here is that your character is dead, or about to die, and Susan has to come and reap them.]]

Comments

[roadstotheriver]

The Binder bell's heavy, powerful echoes resound through the river of Death, and Lirael, the Abhorsen who just rang it and still holds it by its handle above her head, commands to the spirit returned from beyond the Fourth Gate: "Begone, do not stop or tarry until you cross beyond the final Gate. Go!"

It jerks, growling angry curses at her, but turns and flees back through the First Gate, and Lirael sags tiredly. That was more work than she'd hoped, and she still has the spirit of the young woman that particular one of the Dead had tried to devour standing beside her in the shallow water, looking only vaguely unsettled at the prospect of almost being wiped from existence.

"You can continue on now, too, you know," Lirael tells her, unaware that they have an audience in the form of an actual Death incarna at the moment, ready to reap that particular soul, as well. At least, she will be until she turns around. A necromancer, even a good one, would probably not be included in whatever keeps Death from being visible by non-dying.

[inthebone]

She's never seen the river before in her life, and yet it's...familiar. Like it's always been a part of her, in a way. Like how death has always been a part of her, in the bone.

She looks at the hourglass in her hand, when Binky settles down on the ground. There's a name there, but...she's left with the distinct feeling that she's possibly not supposed to be here.

And yet she has the hourglass, and there's a name on it. "Uh," she says. Then, "I MEAN...ARE YOU CELIA? she asks the spirit.

wow that took forever I'm sorry!

[roadstotheriver]

Lirael actually jumps at the sound, making a sluggish sort of splash in the river, and claps her handless wrist into the bell before it can sound again. The spirit looks not at all surprised, and says, "That was my name in Life."

"Who are you?" Lirael demands, since the spirit isn't going to ask. The dead generally don't ask questions much, not unless they're the hungry type.

and now I've taken even longer, oops!

[inthebone]

"You can see me?" Susan says, surprised. "But you're not..."

Dead, her mind supplied. But she didn't say it. It doesn't exactly seem, well, polite.