Afterlife: Richard (part 4)

[k_a_webb]

Richard reached out and gently squeezed Charis’ shoulder. “I understand. Hopefully we’ll be able to make a difference to those who come after us because you made the choice to train me. Every day has been enjoyable.”

Charis turned to look at him, raising an eyebrow. “Including the day I took you to bring a poltergiest back to the afterlife.”

“Of course.” Richard smiled. “It wasn’t easy, but having you there with me teaching me how to do it right made the day a lot better than it would have been if I’d tried to do it alone.”

“Poltegeists are one of the hardest things to deal with. I wish that we could do more for those spirits, but I know that some just don’t want to come to the afterlife. There was a time when some spirits wouldn’t come with me because I wasn’t an angel and they were expecting an angel. Some of them I just couldn’t convince to come with me.” Charis sighed. “Once we were helped by the angel of Death, but he doesn’t come down any more.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. Some of the earlier books talk about Samael and what he did to help Death, but I haven’t found anything more on why he decided not to help any more. There were a couple of pages torn out of one of them, so that may have held the information we need, and I wish I could do something to get those pages back.”

“Isn’t that against the rules?”

Charis smiled. “Technically, yes, but there’s no one who could stop us if we decided to destroy the books of Death. I don’t think anyone else even knows that they exist.”

“Would you want to?”

“I don’t know. It’s good to have an understanding of the history of our job, but sometimes I wonder if actually being able to read those books helps at all. When I was learning I could read about how difficult things had been, which just made me feel worse about everything, but there was never anything that would teach me the right way to do things.” She shook her head. “There was an entry in one of the books about what the Death felt as he first walked into one of the places of Death and then nothing useful about his learning experience in that place of Death. It was really irritating because I was planning on visiting, so I wanted as much information as possible.”

“When I flicked through one of the books I did notice that a lot of the entries were just dates and names.”

Charis nodded. “I think those are entries about what spirits the Deaths guided to the afterlife, but I have no way of knowing for sure.”

“The spirits who were once Death must pass through the afterlife.”

“They do. I have never been permitted a chance to talk to any one of those spirits. The council says that it will effect the spirits’ life path.” She shrugged. “I understand but at the same time I would love to talk to them about what it was like for them to have been Death.”

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Originally posted at dreamwidth.org (and crossposted to livejournal.com) as kajones_writing.

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.