Mum is standing there. She looks... So... Normal. A green felt coat with the steel pin of a cherry blossom pinned on it. The foamy-cappuccino-brown leather boots, zipped all the way up to just below her knee. The black cloth trousers that flare ever so slightly, and bulge above her boots and matching blouse-shirt are less so, and the six foot scythe looming over her head... Definitely not.
The scythe's handle is ebony, with a knob about halfway up to swing it in a neat, controlled arc. It's blade looks like forged moonlight, it seems to emit a glow of it's own, ethereal, and sharper than a soul. There are engravings of an arched branch of cherry blossoms along it's blade, each detail minute, and careful and tailored. A reapers blade. As the arc of the blade glitters down, the blade seems to look less polished, and I know that's because it grows, expanding like a living thing.
With each soul a reaper escorts to beyond, their scythe gets bigger, and more beautiful, and ethereal. Maybe it's in my blood, but something like that is more beautiful than an angel's wing, and more haunting than a demon's scream. I've had nightmares, that are just mum's scythe sitting there. Not doing anything. Just sitting there, glinting.
Mum's curls are thick, and a deep brown, like chocolate. Her face is smooth, like a pebble that's been in the sea so long all it's edges have been knocked off. It's soothing, but it's not what anyone else sees.
Death is a comfort, so mum will look like what you want to see as comfort and reassurance, and as a part of that, a death can bring a soul that the deceased knows, to comfort them, and help them adjust to being dead. Part of that is the wonderful scent of cherry blossoms that I can never tell if it's coming from her or the scythe.
Mum smiles, that exhausted smile that's part relief and part fatigue I see so often. Her brown eyes are shiny, but tired, and the crow's feet in the corners are deep. I see behind her, there is a woman, with a wrinkled face, and glasses so thick I can't see her eyes, holding onto mum's arm. She is shining, faintly. A ghost. A soul without a body.
I step aside, knowing this isn't about me. It's about Miss Decimal. I look through the door's window. My maths teacher is collapsed on the floor, reaching up with shaky hands to the florescent lights.
I wonder what is happening. A life, is flickering, 'going blue' as deaths call it. How is she dying? How many people are going to mourn her? I can feel the sorrow burn at my chest like acid. But this is the way a reaper must feel, or they can never truly be a good reaper.
I force myself to watch. This is the compassion of life. I must look. Looking away from death as taboo is how the world falls to ruin. Trivializing passing is the way the world breaks. Acknowledgement, and mourning is the way, even for deaths.
Mum opens the door, holding ti for the ghost on her arm, who kneels next to Decimal. The ghost strokes her face, holding her hand. Mother and daughter, perhaps. A reunion. My teacher isn't breathing right, it's all shallow and weird, then she goes tense, her hand flying to the side of her face, her head turning.
The living become aware of the dead when they pass on. My teacher relaxes, and her death is standing at her side. The glinting blade swings up, silhouetting against the fluorescent s, before it sweeps down under her chin, and is suddenly next to a second ghost. Only a thin line is left on my teacher's lifeless body, under her chin.
The old-woman ghost clings to Decimal-ghost's hand, helping her up, smiling, talking to her with words of love.
"Kirsty. Oh, Kirsty." The mother clutches onto Kirsty Decimal.
Knowing a teacher's first name is weird, let alone hearing it used with love. But there it is. Kirsty clutches at her mother, looking so childlike and little it scares me. My mum lifts the scythe over both of them, like a protective archway, as she clasps her hands together.
Light, pink and fluttery swirls around her hands like feathers, condensing. It takes a delicate, curving shape, that feels breakable just looking at it. A cherry blossom on a twig. Mum places it on Miss Decimal's forehead, and then turns to the ghosts.
"I'm here to escort you to the Beyond." Mum says.
Her scythe curves over her head, and seems to cut the air, swooping like an eagle through the classroom. It returns to her side, and there is a silver chink hanging in the air. It looks molten, dappling the fabric of the world with cool, odourless air. Perfectly still in the air, unaffected by the world, like something not of it. Yet so... Haunting.
My mum holds it open, like a door, or a window really, pulling a curtain aside, as the mother and Kirsty step through. Mum follows, and I see on the other side the scythe flash before the rift is gone and I'm alone again.
They say death is the ultimate power, for everyone must meet her in the end. They're right, for in the end, everyone will meet a scythe's blade, and if they didn't... The world would fall to chaos.
YOU ARE READING
A Tale of: Ravens, Scythes and Cherry blossoms
General Fiction'All it takes to consult the dead is a pen, some paper, and a secret you've never told anyone else' Hana is the daughter of death, a hereditary position that has existed for as long as mankind has. She lives through each day with the caw of ravens i...
