Ereshkigal purred contentedly next to him, her small hand curved over his heart. “What are you thinking, mu’er?” Samuel looked at his wife. Not wife. Such a paltry human word couldn’t encompass everything Ereshkigal was to him, and his own language failed equally. She had the look of youth, one unmarred by time’s fickle hand. And her smile—so glorious it started his un-beating heart. When she laughed, it was a sound of creation, the notes carrying small universes of endless joy. “Muha,” Samuel whispered the endearment across her forehead, pulling her naked body closer to his. “My thoughts are not for one such as yourself.” She arched a petite raven brow. “Meaning?” He indulged her with a patient smile. She was yet tried, burdened with exuberant youth. Barely out of shedding, he’d fallen in love with her intelligence and ability to surprise him in an otherwise dull world. “My thoughts are unpleasant.” She laughed and rolled on top of him, her reaper power throbbing with excitement. Propping her arms up on his chest, Ereshkigal let her curls spill around them in dark veil. “We are unpleasant, Samuel. Both you and I are Death. Can your thoughts be worse than the ceasing of life?” He sighed gently and let his hands roam her lower back and hips. “We do not cease life, we transition it.” “For a brief time it is gone.” “And then it is back,” he countered. “Nothing is ever permanent.” A flash of pain crossed her gray eyes, and Samuel realized his error. Their death was. When a reaper went mad from too long an existence they experienced the ‘true death’. It was the only absolute is a world of possibilities. Once Death was gone, it was ad finem. “Tell me,” she coaxed. “Do not carry this burden on your own.” He relented. “I obsess over things I cannot control.” “Such as?” “The future. The past. Other’s actions.” “Why do it?” “Habit.” He reached forward and ran a hand through her hair. “I have done it so long, I know no other way.” She was silent for a long minute, forcing him to look at her. Even for a reaper she was pale, skin translucent against his. They could not be more different. He was dark skinned, a mix of an African human and a newly made reaper, Samuel had inherited most of his mother’s looks. The power was all his father. It flowed through him with the ease of water near the bottom of the ocean. He was settled, used to the current and not controlled by it, whereas Ereshkigal was the opposite. She prefered riding the waves instead of settling with them. And what should have made her wild and untamable did not. It was why he considered a reaper several decades his junior his partner; he was controlled because of practice and experience, she was controlled because it was her nature. “Habits,” she began slowly, “like rules are made to be broken.” “Rules are made to be followed.” “No, Samuel.” She smiled. “There will always come a time when rules are broken and new ones created, because rules fail to keep bad things from happening. At the end of the day, one will do as one wants.” __________ © Rosi S. Phillips