Presenting my flash fiction from the prompt on Wednesday, August 2, 2023!
I slide along the bookshelves as I follow the pull inside my gut. A name is calling to me, urgency in every throb of the pull. The magic of the universe stops me, and my arm shakes as I reach forward, my hand guided to a soft lavender cover.
Pierce Soon.
His Book of Life jumps into my hand, desperate to be read, and I tuck it safely into my chest and hurry to the Desk of Time.
The air between the bookshelves shifts, twisting the soft light that just is and a figure appears.
I stop, blinking. I haven’t had a visitor in…several centuries. Guardians of the universe don’t visit the Library of Names often.
The man standing before me is just as surprised. His brown eyes wide, a drab gray robe nearly falling off his thin shoulders. Definitely not one of the guardians.
“Sir?” I ask, uncertain how to proceed.
“Is this…death?” he asks, starstruck.
The light shifts around him, and his robes absorb it until they’ve turned full black.
A reaper.
I’d never met one, but I’d given their Books of Life to guardians in the past when they wanted to recruit someone for the job.
My arms tremble, and the book slips away.
The man, the new reaper, catches it. “That’s my name on the cover.”
Our eyes meet, and realization crashes over me. This man, this Pierce Soon, the universe turned him into a reaper on its own.
The guardians won’t be pleased.
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