Familiarity

Temples are a revered place, the house of God and the light that stands to guide society. People find comfort in relying on an entity higher than them, the black abyss painted into a dazzling paradise for the devout worshippers of the Everlasting Phoenix. "Death was not the only way to salvation.", they say.

Yet where he stands, the grand structure where prayers are cried and granted is but dust between the soles of his feet. There was a bitter taste in his mouth, a bite of frustration from an unripe fruit. The only temples that he's ever been to were all but smashed apart, only fragments of time left.

Behind him, the grim reaper leaned on her scythe embedded into the glass. Curiosity envelopes those who seek and Mori Calliope was no less than one. Many kinds of thoughts raced within her mind, most prominently was "How is the Everlasting Phoenix still alive?".

The body was rotten, lying somewhere deep within the soil. Not even the fadest of embers, not even the slightest hint of life. Clasped in death and never to be blessed under the sun ever again.

Now, in front of her was perhaps the very phoenix. All memories washed away, not even the slightest clue over how much of an imbalance he brings to the cycle of life and death. Wandering across the desolate world like a lost child looking for his mother.

Mori tilted her head, scrunching her face. Maybe there was more to that thought than she impulsively believed.

Mori breaks out of her thoughts when the nameless phoenix finally turns around, his feet sweeping the dust into the air.

"Well?" The grim reaper said.

His eyes divert to the distant buildings, merely waiting before they also collapse on themselves. Every second of silence tested Mori's patience. Death wasn't privy to wasting time, it's a concise and efficient thing.

"Do you even have any other idea besides drifting off into space?" Mori held in a sigh. His reply was just another deadpan stare right through her veil. "Chicken-brained…" She cursed.

Then, he finally spoke with a stuttering mouth, "...More temples, that... will have to be it."

"That's the plan huh." From her casual remark, she saw him blink twice. "Oh yeah. I'm coming with you."

"...Why?"

"Does it matter?"

"...Yes?"

The grim reaper pulls the rooted scythe from the cracked glass, the chine resting over her shoulder. She flicks her pink hair before keeping up her air of complacency. "Let's say I'm keeping tabs on you from now on. That good enough?"

"Aren't you supposed to, well…" His eyes shy away for a moment, figuring out how to finish his sentence. "Well… do other matters? Grim reaper matters."

A single dry laugh escapes Mori's spotless lips. "Death is omniscient, we are proxies to cut ties between the mortal world and send them to the next. Though we can't see each other, rest assured that the other grim reapers are doing their jobs." She points her scythe forward, the toe aimed right at his throat. "You can even say that this is part of my job too. You already died. I'm only doing my job here, ya know."

"So it wasn't a dream…" His hand drew over to his other arm, eyes glued to the ground.

Mori wondered. What would his reaction be if she told him that she had repeatedly severed that arm off, stomped on his face and incarcerated him in ten different ways before he woke up? Maybe he'd run away screaming. Yes, that would be one of them.

Mori puts down her scythe, crinkling glass greeting the bottom of the handle.

"But what about the rest? Will they also…?" His unsure voice rung through the quiet wind, through a hollow city. The grim reaper waves it off nonchalantly.

"Think of us like magnets. Death is the southern pole and grim reapers are the north pole. We," Her thumb sticks out first before her index finger followed to replace. "are attracted to death. When one grim reaper already appears, they also repel other grim reapers from appearing within the vicinity. Capiche?"

"Then how do you know there's more?"

"We just do, straight from our first shift, straight from when we were created."

The phoenix hummed, darting his eyes away once again to revel in his newfound knowledge.

Like a statue, stuck in motion, stagnant in the flow of time, unaffected until something smashes it to bloody bits. Yes, that was it. Phoenixes can die, it just takes a long-ass process to do so. Everything does, Mori thought.

It was just the basic fundamentals of life. The basic fundamentals of death. Rules laid from the start of everything, from the single speck that decides to fill in the darkness of the abyssal universe to the planets, to the galaxies harbouring within the infinite space. It was all set in stone, it was all meant to be.

In the midst of her endless thought of philosophy, the supposed Everlasting Phoenix had started drifting away into the distance.

"Wha-- Hey! Don't just walk off without saying anything!"

Thus began their unspoken pilgrimage. A journey alone means that you must talk to the winds and walls, perhaps to a book to tell your ideals that nobody will ever read. A journey with two means that there is someone to bother, someone to call a friend.

For Mori, after accompanying the nameless soul for days on end, every grain of sand leaving a mark beneath the soles of their feet and the unforgiving rays of heat stretching longer upon each day, she was just ignored by him for most of it.

Mori wasn't sure of it. The words and profanities that fly out of her mouth didn't come to garner his notice, as if it were just hot air indistinguishable from the desert heat. Even when the grim reaper walked in front of him, his eyes were just glued to the horizon. Outstretched, blank, not even blinking to avoid the sands from blowing into his eyes.

It wasn't until Mori decided that physical repercussions were needed when he finally blinked-- on his knees while his throat sounded out groans and air knocked out of his lungs from a mean left hook to his stomach.

"Fancy on talking now?"

He was still borderline vomiting to answer. Her anger may have incited her to punch too hard or he was not privy to being in pain much. Rather ironic, she thought.

"So…" He gasped in a few more heaves of air. "Sorry... I did not… I could not hear…"

"You couldn't hear?" The grim reaper's mellow pink eyes sharpened. "Next thing you're gonna tell me you didn't realise we've been walking in this desert for three straight days. We just missed an oasis, ya know."

"We did...?" His fingers dug the sand, his eyes stinging from dryness darted all over. As if he didn't realise he had travelled for days. Through the scorching sunlight, through the frigid moonlight.

The grim reaper raised a brow, her standing shadow covering him for a moment of shade from the harsh heat. "Has it always been like this?"

His breathing finally silences. "I… I think so."

He never gave it much thought. The weeks, months, maybe years even. No, it couldn't be. It couldn't have been that long. He only remembered blips of everything he's experienced, like looking at an incomplete film that has been cut to pieces by scissors. That was just normal for memories, right?

It was natural to forget most of your day to day life. People forget promises, people forget the date of the month, sometimes even the day that they were born too. But everything, after a long second glance over everything, it's all just too foggy to even remember properly. Things that he truly experienced, was that all of it?

A hand stretches outward in front of his face followed by a sharp sigh.

"If you're gonna have an existential crisis, do it over there. Least we get a palm tree."

Her words notion to the distant body of water, the handful of trees surrounding it and perhaps the critters enjoying it. Though a grim reaper may not feel the temperature drop or rise nor can they sweat, a proper break from walking for days on end sounds rather pleasant to her.

The man only stared at the palm of her hand, as if he was inspecting every line drawn on her palm like he was reading a fine leather book. Mori scrunched her face. A grim reaper doesn't show kindness often and if they do, it's rather short, much like their patience.

"Fine then. I'll go there by myself."

"A… wait, I'll follow!"

For a short while, the grim reaper was now leading the poor soul. This was how it was supposed to be. It was a grim reaper's duty, after all.

At the same time, in another place, not so far from whence they came, stands a weathered soul within the city buried in sand. Perhaps it was just a fluke, perhaps she was just mystically drawn over some energy she's forgotten. She's forgotten many things already from the cruelty of time, many of them have gone to sleep.

Though she may wither ever so slowly as the world tears whatever that are left of its old skin apart, she was sure that from old ends come new beginnings and perhaps...

The glass shards crack beneath her feet, the solid puddles of steel still pertaining to their cold nature even under the scorching sun. A grim reaper's weapon melted beforehand.

Perhaps it is time for fires of life to be ignited once again.