14. Drifting Through the Fog #2
“I’ve frozen before, too, Bee-Bee. It just takes practice and self-restraint. Remember, we’re here to relieve them of their suffering, so we have to act fast sometimes. Don’t let nerves stop you.” Elektra stood and gestured to the window. “Hop to your next one, ok?”
“See ya, Elektra!” Beatrice turned to smoke and darted through the window, leaving Elektra to sigh to herself and look at her next reap.
I stepped out of the shadows and crossed my arms, clearing my throat loudly. Elektra jumped wildly and spun on her heel, gasping when she saw me standing there. “Um, Nick! W-What are you doing here?”
“That was an interesting choice you made just now, to help your friend like that,” I began.
She hugged herself while biting the piercing in her lip, a common habit of hers. “Look, don’t hold it against her. She’s a good Reaper, but I don’t think she’s seen more severe cases before. I don’t want her to lose a spot over one slip up.”
“I never said she would. Then again, had I not stopped in to check on you, I probably would have given her the credit for a more difficult reap: a reap she was not ready for, though.” I raised an eyebrow at her. “You handled that reap well, as well as helping your friend.”
“I, er, thanks. I only wanted to do the right thing for the Human and the situation,” she nervously explained.
“You’ve given me a lot to think about, that’s for sure.”
“Like what?” she popped.
I stepped up onto the windowsill to prepare to depart. “I guess you’ll have to finish reaping your souls to find out,” I said with a wink before turning to smoke and dissipating.
When I returned to Odysseus’s side, my Reapers were nearly done with their task and had begun lining up with their collected souls in their arms. Calvin and Grace bounced excitedly as they exchanged details of their task, while Felix kept counting his repeatedly to ensure he had gathered all ten.
Thomas tried to reassure him, but Felix wasn’t having it.
Elektra and Clara were last to arrive, and once they had, I held my palm out to the group.
“Please deliver your souls one by one. I will send them off to Purgatory while you reconvene with your Life Elemental match.”
“You can do this through your touch?” Odysseus inquired as Felix came up first to start dropping soul after soul into my hand. Each one that hit my skin flashed white before fizzling into the opening I had cut into my palm while waiting for the kids to finish.
“I can open portals to Purgatory with my blood. Otherwise, I have to become Grim to access the Realm. The only other beings beside Grim who are allowed to send souls to Purgatory are Magnus and Geneva, but they cannot enter it. They have special access to my father’s portal room to deliver souls there for him to judge. ”
“How do you guys go through so many a day? Surely, it’s an all-day task?” he continued to question as he crouched down to watch the souls slip into my hand portal.
“Dad usually delegates days of the week where he goes to judge souls. Geneva and Magnus do a lot of this grunt work. You can tell what direction a soul is going in based on their color. For example…” I plucked one of Calvin’s souls up and held it before Odysseus, who marveled over it curiously.
“This soul is a hazy grey color. This means she has committed sins while alive, not serious ones, but enough that she needs to speak with Grim directly to plead her case for Caelum. Those souls take longer to process and get sent to a special section of Purgatory called ‘The Waiting Room’. White souls are automatic contenders for Caelum and are grouped into another section so Dad can send them off quickly. Black souls…” I let the soul drop into my hand carefully, “are the worst of the worst. They’re Gehenna-bound regardless of the excuse and go into their own category as well.
The souls that go into The Waiting Room take up the most time and are the ones he dedicates the most time towards. ”
“Fascinating. I find it funny that souls start out as gold and end up turning white.”
I shrugged nonchalantly. “I think it’s because souls are pure when you make them, untainted by humanity. When they become Human, they inevitably do right and wrong, so it changes their complexity and color.”
“That would make sense.” He waited for me to finish reaping all the souls before I ran my index finger over the cut, so my skin would seal and the portal would close.
I gave him a solid nod to confirm I was finished and he could continue with his Elites.
“Alright everyone, you know the drill! Let’s get these souls placed properly.
Remember: do not place a soul with a Human not on your list. We don’t want to disturb the balance, now that we’ve reaped so many souls today. ”
“Yes, sir!” they responded before flashing as rays of blinding light through the mute sky.
“Sir, eh? You run a tight ship,” I teased, nudging him playfully.
“I tried to convince them to call me Odysseus, but they refused. Probably because Life Elementals are such people-pleasers,” he chuckled with an eyeroll.
“I got as close as Mr. Crawford with most of mine.”
“Mr. Crawford-Levasseur,” he corrected with a wink.
I stood on my tiptoes so I could bite his cheek. “How could I forget?”
“Do you want to see my guys in action?” he asked hopefully.
“Would I ever!”
He laughed lightly and took my hand, tugging me forward off the edge of the rooftop.
We both morphed into more fluid forms, I smoke and he light, before gliding through the air after a young woman Odysseus seemed to have an affinity towards.
She materialized as her normal self and landed before a Human girl, who looked to be around twenty.
She was sitting on a bathroom counter with a pregnancy test in her hands, the test shaking as she did alongside it.
Her husband waited outside the bathroom door, his face in his hands as he tapped his foot harshly in anticipation.
“Yasmine is particularly good at this,” Odysseus whispered to me as we peered around the corner to watch her work.
She pulled the bag around her neck up and gave it a gentle toss, which made the souls inside bounce about.
She giggled as she watched them do this before plucking one from the mass and balancing it in her open palm.
“Off you go, my sweet little angel. Be good for your mommy and daddy and prosper in unimaginable ways.”
“What is that soul’s destiny?” I peeped.
“He’s a lucky one. He’ll be a doctor, move to North Carolina with his wife and three kids, and live a humble life by the ocean doing what he loves.
His parents will follow him, and together, they will be a very happy family.
I love ones like this,” he crooned, putting his face in his palms as he gushed over the soul.
I sat on the floor beside him. “What’s it like when you see a soul’s future like that?”
“It’s much like how you see a soul’s wrong doings. I usually have to touch the soul to see what path is laid out for them, but if I make them, it’s programmed up here.” He pointed to his forehead. “I can tell who every soul is just by the way they vibrate, move, sound.”
“That’s how it is for me, too. Once I meet a soul, I never forget it.
” I scooched over to snuggle into his arm as Yasmine gently placed the soul against its’ mother’s back.
The soul blended perfectly with her body, breathing new life into her womb.
The mother jolted a little during this, and placed a hand on her stomach, as if she knew what had just happened.
“Does she feel it when they place a soul inside of her?”
“No, but something amazing happens. Humans tend to have ‘paternal instincts’ where the parent can feel the difference of having a new soul within them. It’s an intuition only expecting parents seem to have. Cute trick Erasmus made, eh?”
“It’s interesting, for sure.”
Yasmine clapped her hands in excitement before placing a kiss to the hair of the mother. “Good luck on your life journey. It’s only beginning!” she squeaked before disappearing back out of the window.
Odysseus gleamed as the new mother took her test, found out she was pregnant, and burst into happy hysterics.
She ran to find her husband, who spun her in circles at the news.
“Yasmine is one of my favorites. She’s got a naturally outgoing aura, something opposite me, so I think we balance one another out well.
She’ll definitely be one of my top two.”
“You can be pretty charismatic when you want to be,” I assured him.
“You’re obligated to say that,” he snorted.
“Says who? I’d be honest with you if I felt you were lacking at something.”
His cheerful demeanor shifted suddenly. “Sometimes, I feel like everyone gives me too much credit.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I moped as he stood.
He turned his back to me and spoke in a low, painful tone, “It means that I still don’t feel adequate to become a God, especially when I’ve barely scratched the surface of my personal issues.
Every day we grow closer, I feel like this is all a huge mistake.
I’m nobody, yet I’m supposed to govern the entire universe? What makes me so special?”
“Odysseus…?” I tsked.
He shook his head. “It’s nothing. Let’s get back to the kids.” He whisked away as a flash of light, leaving me to frown to myself on the floor of the couple’s living room.