Scene 001
The Between
Azrael sat at the end of a bar in Tokyo with a glass of dark amber.
It wasn’t Tokyo, not the mortal Tokyo, but one that was patterned and named after the real one, one realm over.
He twisted the glass in slow half circles, watching the ripples in the amber liquid slosh against the rim. Wet rings interlocked over the black varnished bar.
Azrael hadn’t tasted the drink yet, he rarely did. He liked the ritual of order because it was always the same repeated script. Azrael almost laughed, thinking about it.
He had watched mortals since the first death required his function. Azrael remembered a time before bars and cities. He watched humans invent traditions and rituals and create comforts from thin air.
Some he liked, others he didn’t care for, but today, his Grims insisted he experience vacation properly since Bha-Heim required nothing of him between his own collections.
“Again with the ritual?” a woman’s voice drifted from two stools down.
Azrael didn’t look up, he already knew who had joined him. There were only a handful of beings that would sit next to Death and even fewer who would dare to speak.
“I don’t know what ritual you’re talking about,” Azrael lied.
Izanami smothered a snort and settled her arm against the counter. Jazz played from somewhere around her.
“The glass,” she said, rolling her eyes and motioning to Azrael’s hand on the glass. “Azrael, you’ve been negotiating with that drink for eleven minutes.” Izanami tapped the counter. “You still haven’t taken a drink because you never learned to simply enjoy something.”
“I’m enjoying it,” he mumbled.
“No, you’re going through the motions. There’s a difference, and you know it.” Izanami retorted.
She raised her hand and a second glass identical to Azrael’s appeared, allowing her to continue staring at him.
“You collect endings for a living, Azrael,” Izanami paused and lifted her glass from the bar, “You, of all beings, should know how to savor the journey.”
He almost smiled, almost.
“Vacation,” he murmured, meeting her gaze, “is a recent invention and I’m still learning the rules.”
“Recent, right,” Izanami sat her glass down with a sharp clink.
“You people think paper is a recent invention.”
“You people? I collected you, what thirty-two hundred years ago? At what point does length of time cease to matter?” Azrael sighed and drank from the glass.
Izanami raised her perfect eyebrow, but didn’t answer, clearing her throat instead.
“Yes, well.”
She lifted her glass, toasting to that fact.
“Some of us adjusted faster,” Izanami continued, sipping from her glass.
The constellations in Azrael’s eyes began to glow as the notification arrived without sound, unnoticeable to most, but Izanami noticed, the goddess always noticed.
“And someone died,” she observed, downing the rest of her drink.
“It is the vicious circle of life,” Azrael replied without reaching for the phone in his pocket.
“Your pocket is glowing.”
“I know,” Azrael said without moving.
“You going to check that?” Izanami pressed, leaning against the counter.
“Eventually, I suppose.”
Azrael leaned back.
“The thread tells me when the mark on the soul is mine. The rest belong to the Grims.”
“And does this thread require you to skip out on ‘vacation’?” She made air quotes around "vacation" as she said it, summoning another drink.
“No,” Azrael scoffed into his glass. “That’s kind of the point of the thread, Izanami.”
“To vacation Azrael’s vacation then,” Izanami said, raising her glass in salute.
“To vacation,” Azrael agreed, twisting his glass between his fingers.
A second name arrived before Izanami had sat her glass back down. This one caught Azrael’s attention.
He had seen it before. The name had been on the thread two, maybe three times in as many years, only to disappear before it could be followed.
But this time, the name remained, it was uncollected.
That was unusual, but it wasn’t impossible.
Just unusual.
