The World Walkers: Kankirin: Elodie: Recording Souls (part 2)

[k_a_webb]

Part 1

Elodie did her best to push aside the distaste she felt at what she was doing. It wasn’t her job to have any feelings about Caiomhe’s experiments – it was her job to record souls, no matter their age, because if she didn’t there was a chance she might end up in one of those jars. Maybe there was even a time when she had. There was no way for her to know, unless she went searching the records and that was something no one did. Not when Ruarc might find out. Ruarc was the one to be wary of – unlike Caiomhe he didn’t seem to have any morals, so there was a chance he was, if Elodie was right, he was doing certain things that Caiomhe wouldn’t accept. Maybe, if someone dared to bring up their worried that Ruarc might be harvesting people for their souls, they would find out, but no one did.

Sighing, Elodie moved onto the next soul. A young girl of 5, no magic in her family but appeared to have some herself… that was interesting. Elodie put her aside, knowing those were the ones Caiomhe most liked to see, and pressed the button on her desk. That should bring someone to Elodie’s desk to gather the soul, so it could be passed on, but doing that turned her thoughts back to the morality of what she was doing. Recording souls wasn’t immoral. Technically neither were Caiomhe’s experiments, if she was using souls whose lives had ended naturally. If she didn’t know what Ruarc was doing… how could she not, though? Maybe she was turning a blind eye to it, because it got her more souls that waiting did. No one knew, no one dared ask the questions, not when they knew they might end up in one of those jars, ready to be put into a new body.

Even though it was hard Elodie suppressed a shudder. If she had lived a life before she didn’t remember it. Was that a good thing? She bit her lip, turning to the next soul, because she couldn’t just wait. They had a certain number of souls to record every day, for them to keep up, and she was behind, again, although it did seem like that wasn’t as much of a problem as it would have been if she wasn’t so detailed in her recordings. Unlike some of the others she made certain that her notes held everything the next person might need, because she’d had problems herself with not knowing enough about souls due to the previous recorder not giving enough detail.

Working on a souls first life was Elodie’s preference, although she had no idea where the souls came from. It was another one of those things she tried not to think about, because when she did think about them it made her wonder about things she shouldn’t really be thinking about. Once she started her mind down that path… the soul in her hand was male, 45, parent to four children, one of whom died at an early age, and might well be the little girl Elodie had put aside. They would be unlikely to see each other again, as she would become a part of one of the newer experiments while he’d end up on the shelf until he was needed again.

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

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