Young Writers Society

Quinn gave a little nod.

"I know what you are," she said, glancing over at Emily. "I'm not going to hurt you - I only hunt those who murder innocent humans, and you don't seem like the type."

There was a pause.

Vil stared on in silence.

And then Quinn shifted, sticking her hands into the pockets of her leather jacket. Vil could hear the crinkle of the wrappers as she tried to get them in better. "As for music, I'm going through a Panic at the Disco! phase."

Eos tilted his head curiously.
''What are you talking about? Panic ad the disco? What's that?'' Maybe he could get some answers.

"Oh!" Emily piped up, "It's this band on Earth. I'm a world hopper, and you don't look terrestrial to me, most of you don't." She looked up, well, up from her perspective, at the others, scanning them one by one, "A lot of other worlds look a lot like Earth though. Not at the modern era, but I don't mind that much. Anyway, Panic! At the Disco is a band that makes...it's like rock music, if they have that where you're from, but gay."

''We do have music where I come from, but it's...'' Eos paused searching for words, ''Nothing like the the music you humans listen to.''

"I love music," Margaret said. "Like I said, my fiancé and I were supposed to dance to We've Only Just Begun at our wedding. September 14th. Two months away."

She held out her ring so everyone could see. There was nothing she wanted more than to see John again.

Vil's gaze didn't linger long on the ring. Marriage was something he knew he would never experience - not just because he was dead, but because of a certain condition that had plagued him for the past five years. His gaze dropped down to the cut in his abdomen. The darkness still remained, even as it grew smaller. It was a constant, moving reminder that the lives they were talking about having could never be his own.


"That's nice," she said. She felt her eyes welling up with tears, but she didn't know why. Why would she cry over something like that? Marriage wasn't a thing that she'd do. Nick and her had talked about it, but now Nick was gone-

- try not to think of the broken body on the pavement, the police saying that it was just an accident, the fury in your heart when your protests fell on deaf ears, the feeling that it was all your fault because why else would the supernatural kill him like that -

-and people talking about marriage had never upset the girl until now. She took a breath, wiped away her tears with the sleeve of her leather jacket, and tried to act like she hadn't just had a mental breakdown at the thought of getting married.

...At the thought of who she'd get married to.

She wanted to say something to change the conversation, but her voice caught in her throat. Old wounds could heal, but this one? It had just been made. It was still fresh, and oozing, and if she thought too much about it, she was going to start sobbing. Because she had been an idiot who hadn't thought of saying how she felt, and now...

...Now the one she loved was an entire life away.

''Your ring looks lovely.'' Eos assured Margaret softly, He knew what it was like to loose someone you loved. He knew because 200 years ago he'd lost his father. Sure his body still lived, but his spirit, his entity, had gone. All that remained of him now were distant memories, and the sword he'd given Eos for his birthday.

"We were going to get married in Hawaii," Margaret said. "We got engaged there. It was..."

She trailed off, thinking of the memory. "He was working when..."

When I died. Except she couldn't find the strength to make those words come out of her mouth.

"I wish he were here right now."

Emily gave her a sympathetic pat on the back, "He will be, eventually. All souls eventually make it to the Duat. You'll be reunited when that happens," she assured.

In reality, she didn't know. She was just a girl when she'd first been killed and hidden away in the palace. No one bothered to tantalize her with the details behind life and death and the afterlife everyone told her she would never have after she was tainted. But this had to be the Duat. It couldn't be anything else. As much as Emily - Meketaten - hated to think of her family as wrong about anything, they had been wrong about that.

So this woman would see her fiance again. They were dead and they were here so it had to be true.

Quinn let out a sigh.

"I was supposed to end up in Heaven," she grumbled, kicking away a stray pebble alongside the river. She gestured up at the sky. "Someone important up there promised we-I'd end up in Heaven instead of any of the other afterlives. I wouldn't call myself a Christian, but..."

She sighed.

"...I wanted to end up there," she said.

A moment of silence followed her comment.

And after that moment, Vil finally spoke.

"...I wasn't supposed to end up anywhere after death," he said. "I was just supposed to stop existing."

Eos shrugged unmoved.
''Well apparently that didn't happen. We're here now.'' He sighed. ''I wanted to go to what my people call The High Place, and I spent most of my life doing everything I could to make sure I'd get there. But no. I ended up in this afterlife. Just like the rest of you.''
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Zorothin gazed at Eos his eyes narrowed.
''Maybe there's a reason for that.'' he glanced at the rest of this idiotic group. ''Shouldn't that be obvious?''

Quinn raised an eyebrow.

"I can't tell if you're trying to be antagonistic to him or actually have an idea," she commented. She was trying to be good, but it was hard. The tension was just far too noticeable. Every time she glanced between the two, it seemed like there was some sort of argument going on. If it wasn't a verbal one, the looks on their faces definitely showed some sort of conflict.

Quinn crossed her arms and made a musing noise.

"If I was going to give any guesses, I'd say we're in some kind of punishment. But that doesn't make much sense - we-I was good, and I was already promised an afterlife."

Vil's gaze dropped back down to his abdomen; the cut was shrinking more and more, and his other wounds were nothing compared to how they had been when they first showed up here. Given another five or ten minutes, he might look the same way he did before he was killed.

"I don't know why I'd need to be punished, either," Vil said. He looked back up at the group. "My life's been punishment enough."

Quinn gave him a long, hard look.

(A look that reminded him far too much of Axel's judging looks.)

"...You're pretty angsty, aren't you?"

He blinked.

"What?" he managed to get out. "No, I'm-"

"You seem pretty dark to me," she continued on. "And something tells me it wasn't your death that made you this-"

She suddenly skid to a halt. Her body went almost unnaturally stiff, and she didn't say anything else for the few moments that followed. Then her head started to look frantically down, like the rest of her body wanted to move, too. But even the movement of her head was choppy, and nothing else moved.

Vil stared.

It reminded him of something, and he didn't like what that something was.

"Am I wearing sunglasses?" Quinn said. She raised a hand to take them off, but her movement was slowly and choppy. "And is this your leather-"

She paused, looked around at the group and immediately went stiff again - though Vil suspected this time was entirely intentional. "Gabriel?" she asked. "Where are you-"

There was a pause.

"Oh," she said. "Oh."

Vil bridged the little distance between them.

"Who are you?" he asked.

She stared at him. "Uh, hi-"

"Who are you?" he repeated. "You're not who we were talking to earlier. You're someone else."

She finally took the sunglasses off.

"I'm Quinn," she said. "And I think you were talking to Gabriel earlier?"

Emily looked at the girl curiously, smiling the smile of a scientist with a never before seen discovery.

"Oh that is facinating." She walked over to Quinn and offered her a hand in greeting, "Hi, I'm Emily, or Meketaten, depending on how old you are," with her free hand she was digging around in her bag, and she produced two more chocolate bars, which she offered with her other hand while she continued talking, "How, exactly, were you someone else before? I've seen a lot in my time - I have had a long time to see things - and that isn't on the list."

''Yes,'' Eos agreed eyes narrowing. ''How did you become Gabriel. Can you split yourself into two persons...or...are you two persons?'' Could she have been lying to them about her identity this whole time?