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act i: prologue
—
Maya is built out of routines. Multitudes of them.
Calculated. Controlled. Concrete.
Her parents hammered into her that her true success is in her steadfast devotion to a singular focus. That focus requires discipline by way of routines. So Maya only knows what she can control.
She sits at the same cafeteria table because she always eats at the same time every day.
The first time the woman appears is on a Monday. Maya is engrossed in her chicken bowl and her book.
"Excuse me—”
When Maya glances up, what strikes her is, well, everything. The woman holds exemplary beauty, manifesting wishes of peasants from benevolent gods. Hair the color of wheat fields at first lick of sunlight. Bright irises reflecting the creation of dusk. Lips that invented the concept of shapes. Jawline as sharp as the horizon.
“—there are no other seats, do you mind if I sit here?”
Maya blinks, and the woman arches her brow, waiting. She nods. "Please."
The woman helps herself to the seat, placing her tray on her half of the table. Maya does her best to quell the curiosity of watching her new table-mate dig into her tuna bowl.
She blinks and they’ve somehow both finished. But Maya allows her to leave first, cherishes the grateful smile from the stranger.
The woman is out of view, lost to the mill of strangers. Maya stares at the now-empty seat across from her, words for possible conversation sitting untouched on the roof of her mouth.
The next day, the woman does not show. Maya does not allow herself to frown. Instead, she glances down at her tuna bowl. A first for her.
When she takes a bite, the corner of her lips curve upwards.
Two days after that, on a Thursday, Maya resumes her routine — a chicken bowl, and her book.
Maya feels her before she sees her, warmth wrapped around a faint sound of rustling, so when she glances up and away from her book, she finds a miracle repeating.
"Do you mind if I sit here again?"
"Please."
The woman places her tray on the table first before sweeping the back of her skirt close to her before sitting.
Maya notes the tuna bowl. She wonders what routines this woman is made of. She remembers the untouched conversation from their first meeting and decides not to squander the opportunity.
"The tuna bowl is good,” she comments. “I tried it the other day."
The woman's head snaps up in mild surprise. “Oh? It's the best thing on the menu."
"Though I recommend the chicken bowl; it's never dry."
The woman smiles and nods just as she snaps the chopsticks apart. "I'll have to remember that next time."
—
She’s on her train on the way home, eyes languidly fluttering closed.
First, there’s darkness.
Thundering screeches, metal on metal. Lacerations from the whips of the wind. Blurs of chipped off and aging paint, rusted.
A roar, a crash, a blaze.
She startles awake, smoke in her lungs, knuckles white as she grips the metal bar, her breathing hard and labored.
She is alone. She looks down and releases a pained exhale.
In her hand are brittle pieces of chipped off and aging paint, rusted.
—
When Maya glances up, she's greeted by a curve of a smile, so natural and easy.
Her hand itches to welcome the woman, but the joy of hearing the stranger speak is too tempting to pass up.
"So we meet again," the woman says as she sits in the chair Maya now refers to as hers.
"So it seems."
"I’m Claudine. I feel like I should introduce myself since I keep sitting by you."
"Claudine. It's a beautiful name."
"Thanks." A pause. "Are you gonna tell me yours?"
She laughs once, wonders how disappointed her parents would be about her loss of manners. Her last name, the weight of expectations sits heavy on the tip of her tongue, like a boulder on the edge of a cliff. But she swallows it, surprising herself as she opts for just her name instead. Maybe today she can be herself, and not the sum of their expectations.
"My name is Maya."
Claudine reaches across the table and offers her hand. Maya places her chopsticks on the lip of her bowl and clasps her hand with Claudine's.
"It’s very lovely to meet you, Maya."
Maya wonders if the words are only a formality, but when she stares at warmth incarnate in front of her, she wants to believe Claudine means it.
Claudine returns to her every week for the next three weeks. Maya hesitates to relinquish her hope in a routine she can't control. But her eyes automatically scan the crowd for Claudine, hoping for sunshine to sit with her.
There's a dance to this. And dancing, she knows. There are steps to a dance. A rhythm; a groove. Feet on the ground.
Maya sits down at her table, as she has always done. A woman approaches her table, hand already reaching out to the back of the chair opposite her.
"Excuse me, but is this seat taken?" Her eyes are trained on foreign hands even after the woman speaks. “Miss?”
Maya clears her throat, admits the truth to this stranger before herself. “It is. She is on her way."
The disappointment on the woman's face is tucked just behind a polite smile.
"My apologies," Maya offers, as a consolation.
The woman steps back, already hunting for empty seats elsewhere. Maya can only watch until the last of this stranger's grip releases the chair.
Just as the woman leaves her view, it is replaced by Claudine bounding up with her tray and her smile.
“I was hoping you didn’t give the seat away,” Claudine comments as she breaks her chopsticks.
“How could I? It’s yours.”
When Claudine rests her chin on her knuckles with an appreciative smile, Maya can only avert her gaze, reminds herself that staring into the sun can burn.
Claudine shares the adventures of her day, and Maya volleys back with the mundanity of hers. Yet instead of shame, she only feels acceptance as Claudine listens to every detail with care that she’s never thought the tiny pieces of her life ever warranted.
Claudine’s just like that, Maya realizes.
She hopes that perhaps this is now her routine, too. If so, she’ll tuck it between preparing her tea in the mornings and taking strolls around the park on the weekends.
—
The thunder outside crashes against her spine, lightning piercing her lungs.
She startles awake, gasping for air, sweat drenching her in bed. When she gains clarity, she finds that the night sky outside her window is dark, dry.
When she fully looks outside, the night is clear.
She lets out a shuddering breath.
She chases after sleep for the rest of the night, but only catches the faint and faraway traces of gasoline smoke as she wakes.
—
Maya makes a friend in Claudine. Their joint lunches evolve into walks after work, tea breaks over the weekend.
Tendrils of tender affection root quickly in the ventricles and veins of Maya’s heart.
“Have you ever tried a different flavor?” Claudine asks, after ordering ice cream from Maya’s favorite ice cream stand.
“No.” She shakes her head before accepting the two cups from the seller. Claudine’s hands graze hers as Maya passes the cup of strawberry ice cream. Maya absorbs the energy, the electric currents flash against the shadows of her desires.
“But there are so many other flavors to try!”
“What if I don’t like it?”
“What if you do?”
The intensity of Claudine’s gaze makes her look away just slightly, hears the humming tone under her words.
Maya can only watch as Claudine swipes with her spoon a small bit of her chocolate ice cream before walking away. She covers the few steps and reaches out with her spoon for a taste of strawberry ice cream. Claudine’s laughter wraps around her shoulder like a comforting childhood, familiar and well-worn.
Claudine is fleeting, ephemeral. She is the opposite of what Maya is.
Claudine is like the wind, but even that is an inadequate comparison. Except it's the closest thing she has. Because this woman forces Maya to follow what she cannot see, to believe what she only hears, to trust what she feels envelope her skin.
Step for step, side by side, smile for smile. Maya’s never tasted ice cream so good.
—
Maya walks past an elderly woman with short white hair and deep blue eyes.
“I’m not ready for you yet.”
She doesn’t say a word, unsure how to make sense of her words. She does not allow herself to frown.
—
“I hope you had a good time with me.”
“I always have a good time with you, Maya.”
—
The sitting grin on her lips is easy, effortless; her coworkers note how long it stays there.
But Maya reveals nothing, holds the joy close. She doesn’t know what to call it, but she knows how it feels. Fully formed, corners and curves defined.
The idea grips her: where Claudine begins is where she ends. Their lives intertwined. She wants more. Would like to ask for more.
Except that one night, she wakes in a panic from the earthquake in her ribcage and it hurts. It hurts, it suffocates her. Yet the pain feels at home, in place.
She wonders why. Why now?
Just when love vines around her lungs.
act ii: the black tragedy
—
When Monday arrives, Claudine doesn't show up at the cafeteria.
When Tuesday arrives, neither does Maya.
—
Maya wakes and she's met by a pink haired woman sitting in her room eating an apple, legs propped up on her desk, the chair tilted.
She's startled, her shoulders stiffen, but instead of questions anybody else would ask, she opens her mouth and says, “Good morning.”
The pink haired woman lazily turns her head until mirroring violet eyes are staring right back at her. “Name’s Futaba. Been waiting a while for you.”
“Is this about—”
“You got it.”
“Oh. Already?”
“Yep, already. I’ll give you a minute, then we go.”
She nods despite Futaba already rising from the chair and out of her room.
She follows her routine one last time — unsure why she knows this — wishing she could have said goodbye to Claudine. Maybe her parents. Some friends from work.
When they open her front door, they’re met with a series of hallways, a series of doors, a series of rooms.
They land in front of a cabin door. Just as she expects Futaba to open this door, Futaba just turns back to her.
Her questioning eyes earn her a shrug. “You’re the only one who can open it.”
Futaba sidesteps and Maya brings a hand up, hands trembling. She turns the handle and when she opens it, she finds a sparsely decorated and furnished home.
“What is this?”
“Someone from the Council’s coming to explain. So sit tight. Here—” Futaba offers her a lollipop. “While you wait.”
She accepts it, holds it in her palm. Then Futaba leaves through the front door.
—
There’s a knock on her door, a knock she’s been waiting for.
When she opens it, she finds a woman, irises the color of ocean depths, hair the shade of midnight skies with soft bangs that curve the way her eyes do. She’s sporting a kind and familiar smile, though Maya’s never met her before.
“Good to see you, Maya. May I come in?”
Wordlessly, Maya steps back, allows her to enter.
“You must have questions.”
Maya has many, doesn’t know where to begin. But the knowing glint in the woman’s eyes seems to read her thoughts before she thinks them.
“I’ll answer all of them.”
—
The woman, Mahiru, details her destiny.
"Your existence was decided many lifetimes ago to uphold and maintain the balance of this universe." Mahiru pauses, lets her words saturate Maya’s skin. "For the next thousand years, you will assume the duties of Death. To bring souls across to their final resting place, this is your role: you are their last touch of peace."
Maya accepts the heavy crescent of a smile on Mahiru’s lips, understands the truth as it seeps into the marrow of her bones.
"It’s work that can only be done by you, as recorded in the stars."
“What happens to me after?” Maya asks, as her fate begins to slot into place.
“You start over.”
The thought brings an image of the before, of the routines she’s built, of routines that have built her.
But it also brings the thought of Claudine, forcing every routine to readjust around her. Would starting over be with her or despite her?
Maya does not allow herself to frown, but the crease on her forehead gives her away.
—
Maya wakes again, losing track of days and time altogether as the inheritance of her obligations adapts quickly into her bones. She frowns at the idea of not being in control of her choices.
Yet.
Yet, she thinks again of Claudine. If all of this was fated, wouldn't meeting Claudine have been her fate as well? Her heart consoles her, reflected by a small tug at her lips. She hopes for Claudine’s happiness, wherever she may be.
Today, Maya meets the person inheriting Life as a good faith effort of the gods to maintain balance. She cheats by being early, betraying her own routine of strict punctuality.
The word ‘partner’ echoes in her mind. It could be worse, perhaps, having to do this alone. She’s been alone for so long. Her mind wanders to the thoughts of brightness and warmth, but it’s too much to hope for, so she doesn’t voice it, despite desire thrumming just underneath her skin.
Her hands are folded on her lap as she sits on the singular bench at the train platform.
She recognizes where she is immediately, the still river of dilapidated trains in front of her, blocked by a massive crash further downstream.
A roar, a crash, a blaze.
She absorbs this new realization, thinks it's fitting to find a graveyard before her.
When she hears the chorus of wheat fields dancing before harvest, she’s twisting her neck to look, to search. When the wind envelopes her, she can only feel warmth.
And she smiles, genuine happiness coursing through her body. Because approaching from the other side of the platform is the beginning and end of her.
Every muscle in her body screams to jump and cross the gap between them, but she doesn’t, afraid that it’s just a spectral projection. Instead Maya stands, brushes the front of her clothes of invisible dust, giving her hands something to do, and waits.
When Claudine arrives in front of her, Maya’s fingers twitch out of place, wanting nothing in her short life but to hold her.
"So we meet again, Maya."
"So we do."
The depth of Claudine’s magenta eyes pull her in, an ocean she wants to wade into, submerge herself in. Claudine, always the braver one, lifts a hand and caresses her cheek. She tilts her head and leans into the touch, the slope of her cheek fitting perfectly against the curve of her palm.
“I hoped it would be you. I wanted it to be you.”
Maya’s smile spreads far beyond the strength of the muscles of her face. Because for once, she is not chosen out of duty and obligation, but of want. Claudine wanted her.
“Does that make me selfish?”
Maya shakes her head, brings her lips to kiss the junction of Claudine’s palm and wrist. “If it does, then we are both selfish.”
Claudine smiles, pulls her into a hug, one she hungrily returns. And it’s only in their tight embrace that Maya remembers to breathe.
—
Their reunion is short-lived, Mahiru and Futaba appearing. But Claudine’s hand is in hers, and that’s enough to ground her.
Mahiru’s kind eyes glance at the pair of them and their joined hands. Maya’s grip tightens.
“Huh. Seems like you two’ve introduced yourselves,” Futaba comments. Maya notes and records the exchanging glances that the otherworldly forces share.
“Yes,” Claudine speaks.
Futaba gestures with her hand for Mahiru to speak, but Mahiru simply sighs. This time, it’s Claudine’s grip that tightens.
“What I’m about to say must be heeded carefully, do you understand?” They don’t move, don’t nod, don’t breathe. “Your powers, as it has been foretold, exist for a specific reason and to be used in a specific place. As you can probably tell, Life and Death are opposing forces, drawn irrevocably to one another, but destined to end in entropy and destruction.”
Her body seems to understand before her mind does; goosebumps traveling across her body. Her mind chases after, but can barely follow along.
“What are you saying?” A question that crosses her mind, but is voiced aloud by Claudine beside her.
“Because you now both embody and uphold these natural and inevitable forces, the risk is far too great to ever come in physical contact. Your paths simply can’t cross. The ensuing chaos and disastrous consequences to this universe will likely threaten the balance and order between the two of you — not as Claudine and Maya — but as Life and Death.”
Maya cannot — doesn’t — hide the sadness in her eyes, and Mahiru reflects that sadness in a smile. As if she understands, and Maya wonders maybe she does.
“I’m truly sorry it has to be this way,” Mahiru offers. “It is hard, and it is cruel. But it’s what has to be done.”
The cages of their obligations now drawn around them, Maya instead turns her attention to Claudine, whose hand is tightening her hold, a solitary tear running a track down her cheek. With her free hand, Maya wipes it away.
“I’ve never seen you cry.”
It's the bit of shock, of indignance, that does Maya in. Where she guesses in another life, as in this one, she finds the display so endearing.
“That’s what you focus on? Not the—” Claudine gestures lazily around them.
“No. You look cute.”
Claudine sniffles and laughs as they embrace for the last time in a millennium.
—
How it starts is unlike her old life, the way she prepares for bed. The way she pulls a book from the shelf. The way she nestles under the covers and pulls the blanket up to her chest. The way she helps pass the time reading.
The way she closes her eyes after staring at an empty ceiling.
There’s a sense of welcomed familiarity, her limbs treading the same path as they have done countless times.
It’s small comfort, when she thinks of Claudine across the river of trains beholden to the same duties. But comfort nonetheless.
—
Maya doesn’t know which souls get ushered to her. Just that they do. By Claudine’s hand.
Claudine walks with an elderly woman, her arm draped over shoulders, as they approach the sliding doors of the train car between them. Maya watches from her vantage point, gently scuffs the bottom of her boot as she waits, not allowed to step into the train car until Claudine’s back on her platform.
The woman gives Claudine a hug, and Claudine wipes the woman’s face.
An ache of envy settles deep within Maya’s chest.
Claudine looks up at her and smiles, waves. She returns a pair of her own.
Her eyes trail after Claudine as she retreats, hair billowing in the wind. Maya gasps at the sight, as if every time’s the first time.
She’s struck by a moment, a memory. A warm smile across the table. She wishes against all wishes that she could go back in time, if only to reach across that table sooner, at least once.
It’s her turn now. So Maya takes a step, each one as stern and final as the last. It is who she is, who she has become.
“Are you…”
She nods at the woman, short white hair and deep blue eyes, and takes a seat where Claudine has occupied.
“Is it scary?”
“What did she tell you?”
“That you will take care of me.”
“I will, yes.”
The woman tilts her head, the lightness of her voice betraying the depths of her wrinkles. “You look awfully young for the job. You sure you know what you’re doing?”
Maya is taken aback by her frankness. Perhaps that’s what happens when you stare Death in the face.
“I assure you, you’re in good hands.”
“That’s what blondie said.” The woman nods her head at Claudine’s direction. Then the woman pats her knees and stands. “Ok. I’m ready for you now.”
Maya smiles, holds a palm open. The woman’s hands are rough and calloused in areas, but strong. Maya is happy to provide this woman a place to rest.
“Oh, before I forget. She wanted me to hand this to you.” There’s a folded note pressed into her offered hand. Maya opens it and in a scrawl that invented poetry, it only says, You look lovely today <3.
Her gaze snaps up and she hears the chorus of wheat fields, warmth enveloping her. Her eyes catching the glint of gemstones through the train car window.
“Miss?”
Maya returns her attention to the woman and offers her hand. The woman takes it, willingly walks alongside Death, to Maya’s side of the river of trains.
After she walks the older woman to her final rest just over the sloped horizon, she returns to her platform, closes her eyes, and sings the woman’s song for the last time.
She finishes, the last of the notes released from her lungs. She savors the moment of silence just after, before she opens her eyes to the sound of clapping from the opposite platform.
Maya wants to sing for Claudine for the rest of her life.
—
As expected, they get into a rhythm, a groove. And though Maya’s heart is buried under the weight of every soul that comes to pass with her, her heart still manages to trip on itself, uncoordinated as it had been from the start, when Claudine looks at her.
“You shouldn’t use the people who come through here to pass notes to me,” she comments as she sits on the bench of the platform, her voice carried by the breeze. Claudine busies herself with folding paper airplanes and setting them free until dozens are flying above them.
“So you didn’t enjoy my drawing from yesterday?” Claudine teases.
Maya shakes her head, though the playful grin stays on her face, remembers the drawing in question. It had been beautiful, taking her breath away, a sketch of Maya smiling with an elderly gentleman she was walking with just a few days ago. “I said no such thing.”
Claudine laughs and the melody of it filters through the air. “Then I don’t see what’s so bad about a little note-passing. Didn’t you notice how they smiled up at you whenever they did it? Not a bad thing to do before going, don’t you think? Plus, it’s a good distraction for them so they don’t see how it’s a little rundown around here.”
Maya tilts her head, watches Claudine through the cloudy and stained windows of the train car between them. “I suppose that's true. It’s hard to question the joy you spread with them when they come to me.”
“See?” Claudine releases a paper plane that heads straight for her. “You do get me.”
—
They dedicate years and years and years doing what they have to do, following the rules of the stars. Even as it begins to show the wear and tear of their hearts.
Yet.
Yet, every exchange they hold from a distance, all the while wishing for the impossibility of closeness, is still laced with longing, yearning.
They make do with what they have, dutiful of the tasks that have been bestowed upon them by the stars.
But she struggles to contain herself. She wants. Wants more. More of Claudine.
She wants to cheat the universe.
—
“I want to hold you.”
“I know.”
—
She leans on the outer wall of the train car, Claudine doing the same on her side.
“Your singing is beautiful, Maya.”
She smiles, pride surging through her. “Thank you. Though, I’m just a vessel for the final song of those who have come to rest with me.”
“But you always had a beautiful voice even before.”
Maya blinks, raises her head, twists her head to see Claudine staring at her, hand on her chin as she rests on the arm rest. “You still remember?”
“How could I forget?”
Her cheeks flush, warmth coloring the paleness of her skin.
Maya shouldn't be surprised. After all, she’s also spent centuries memorizing everything about Claudine.
—
Maya, as always, waits just outside the sliding doors of the train car, scuffs the bottom of her boot against the platform.
Her heart is leadened with a different kind of sorrow today.
She watches through a crack above the train window as Claudine leans down to whisper to a young girl, no older than ten. The giggle and smile that erupts from the child is enough for Maya to mirror it, her own smile loose on her lips.
Claudine stands, grins and waves at her, before exiting to the other side.
Then, it’s her turn. She sits beside the girl.
“Hello,” the girl asks softly after Maya steps in the train car. “Are you Miss Maya?”
She smiles at the girl. “I am.”
“Miss Claudine said you should help me put this on.”
The girl twists until she pulls two flower crowns of daisies behind her, as if by magic.
Maya gasps and opens her palms, waits for the girl to hand her the crown. “Princess, bow your head please.”
Dutiful, the girl bows and Maya delicately places the smaller crown atop her head.
“How do I look?”
“Beautiful.” Without another word, the girl gestures for Maya to do the same, and she bows her head until the girl places the crown of daisies on her head. Maya clears her throat and offers the girl her hand. “Princess, are you ready?”
The girl nods and pulls her forward instead of the other way around. As they walk towards the sliding doors, Maya glances at Claudine through the broken glass, her arms folded, leaning on the metal post.
Maya presses the button and the sliding doors open. “Claudine? How do we look?”
Claudine wipes at her face, and offers them a bright smile only Life can give. “Like princesses.”
Maya gazes at her, wishes she can offer the kind of comfort that she cannot give. But Claudine understands her, as she has done for many years, before giving a nod, raising a hand as if to say this is what happens.
When Maya returns from walking the girl over the sloped horizon, she stands at the platform and sings the girl’s final song, flower crown held in her hands, tears streaking down her face.
—
“I feel like I got the better end of the deal here,” Claudine comments idly after they walk further down the river of trains, settling on the roof of a train two cars apart. “I just send them off, but you have to be the one to let them go.”
She turns to her side, rests her head on her arms, faces Claudine who mirrors her movements. “Perhaps. Though, without you, they are not as at ease as they would be with just me.”
“I don't think that's true, Maya. When they come to me, I still feel their nervous energy. But when they get to you, you give them comfort unlike anything I've ever seen.”
Silence settles, like a haphazard blanket thrown over.
Maya thinks, then pushes the question out of her lips. “Does it pain you when they walk away?”
“Of course. It’s difficult letting go.”
Maya squints her eyes, pretends that Claudine is right in front of her, just a whisper of a breath away. She imagines reaching out to caress the smooth expanse of her cheek, to wrap a lock of blonde hair around her finger. She imagines soothing the pain that exists in Claudine’s own heart, as reflected by the pain in her eyes.
“Then, Claudine,” she finally starts. “I don’t think either of us got the better end of this deal.”
Even as the breeze whistles around them, she hears Claudine sigh.
—
Centuries pass, and despite the routines that she takes solace in and the strength she gains from carrying the weight of all that she mourns, Maya finds herself wanting more.
She yearns for more, longs for more, wishes for more.
More for this life. More for Claudine, of Claudine.
And as her own gaze meets the darkening of Claudine’s, they speak through the charged air that settles between them, coming to a resigned understanding.
They stand on either side of the sliding doors of the train car, with Claudine peering from inside, as Maya watches her from the outside. When she looks up the clouds darken on the fringes of the horizon, but Maya can feel the rumbling inside of her.
“Will you always love me, Maya?”
“I will.”
Claudine brings a hand up, hovers over the button, each moment an eternity.
Claudine finally, finally, finally presses the button from inside and the sliding doors hiss open. Nothing stands between them now but air and the universe, but risk and the uncertainty.
Maya gently scuffs the sole of her boot. Her muscles ache from withholding, from being without the hundreds of years of Claudine infiltrating the depths of her heart, her soul, her mind until every synapse that connects is laced with the golden sunlight of Claudine’s warmth.
Claudine walks forward, foot on the platform that Life has never touched. Until now.
“Can I kiss you?”
A lifetime exhales from her lungs.
“Please.”
act iii: like an awry arrow reveal the imitation of god
—
They break the rules of the universe.
An angry downpour outside has them seeking shelter in the train car, awaiting their fates, hands and souls intertwined.
“We’ve really done it now,” Claudine comments as she studies the storm behind Maya’s head. Then winds howl in packs and shake the train car, the cacophony of sounds shrill against their ears.
Futaba, the messenger of the gods, arrives first, shaking off the rain from her jacket, and gives them a pained look. Little comfort for whatever’s to come, but still, comfort.
“I’m very sorry to be the one to share this news, but what you two did was forbidden.”
“So what’s the punishment?”
Futaba scratches the back of her head. “You’re not going to like it.”
“Just tell us,” Claudine begs.
The messenger of the gods closes her eyes, then violet eyes that mirror her own stare at the pair of them. “Claudine, you have to die.”
“No!” Maya jumps forward, voice already hoarse, heart already aching as if she’d already been mourning this news. “She can’t!”
The sliding doors open and Mahiru appears before them, pulling the hood of her cape off.
“Mahiru, please,” Maya starts to say.
The goddess looks forlorn as she glances at Life and Death holding one another. “Balance must exist in this universe, and it was against the rules to do what you did.”
“I understand.”
“Wait!”
“Maya, please. I was the one who opened the door.”
“And what of me? Did I not kiss you in return?” She turns to Mahiru and Futaba who are frowning. “Please, she can’t die.”
“Maya.”
She grabs hold of Claudine’s hands, desperately presses them against her own cheeks. “If you die, so will I. And I refuse to let you cross over like this, Claudine. Not by my hand.”
They turn when they hear Mahiru speak. “You both made a choice that disturbed the balance you were meant to uphold. It can’t go overlooked.”
“What if we do something else?” Claudine’s voice echoes in the train car.
“That’s not how this works.”
She steps forward, places herself between Mahiru and Claudine. “Then let it be me.”
“Maya!” Claudine gasps, her hand gripping the fabric of Maya’s shirt.
The goddess shakes her head, and it’s only in this moment that Life and Death is staring at Kindness frowning. “It can never be you, Maya. You are the last stop.”
“Is there no other punishment?” Maya asks.
Mahiru stares at the pair of them, before she glances back to Futaba. The messenger seems to catch her drift and silently nods before exiting, leaving the three of them alone awaiting their judgment.
They’re suspended in time, in the storm. Except even as they stare at the barrel of eternity, they’re thankful to finally let hundreds of years disappear between them. Maya studies the interlacing of their fingers, the softness of Claudine’s thumb grazing against the back of her hand.
Too soon, Futaba returns, and unearths a letter from the inside of her jacket pocket to give to Mahiru, who unfolds it and reads it carefully.
“Ok.” Mahiru walks over to where the two are seated, and places a gentle hand on their shoulders. “The Council has come to a decision. We’ll make an exception.”
Hopeful hearts beat wildly, their grips tightening against one another.
“Maya, your punishment is to add another millennium to your duties. You must perform your tasks alone. In exchange, Claudine won’t die.” Mahiru turns her attention to Claudine. “But as a result, you will have to live through a thousand lifetimes.”
“You don’t have long,” Futaba comments, cuts in, as she approaches Claudine. “We’ll give you a minute.”
Left alone, Maya lunges forward and pours a promise in their embrace, a blessing to watch over Claudine’s many lifetimes. Even if it’s without her.
“I’m sorry, Claudine,” Maya whispers, bows her head when they pull apart, their old reality quickly slipping out of their grasp.
Claudine tilts her head up. In the depths of those rich magenta eyes, is a softness only meant for her. “Are you sorry for loving me?”
“No. Never.”
“Then there’s nothing to be sorry for, Maya.”
The kiss they share is an outpouring of every desire that Maya has withheld for centuries, channeling the flow from every inch of her body. It ends too soon, time mercilessly cutting them off, and all she feels is the phantom of Claudine’s warmth that holds her.
Maya stands on her side of the river of trains as Futaba escorts Claudine where she cannot see, where she cannot follow.
Beyond nightfall, the isolation sinks into her every limb as she trudges back home. Fully and unequivocally alone, she looks up to a now calm but overcast sky, the first of infinity where Maya sees nothing but gray.
—
Routines. It’s all she knows.
Memories. It’s all she has.
Like a desperate archivist afraid of extinction, Maya catalogs every memory of joy and light and Life she has with every routine she builds and keeps. She intertwines the memory with every path she treads, every choice she carves out, so she never forgets history, herself.
So it is no longer just obligations and duties that she upholds, but love.
—
Dutifully, she follows the rules.
Every morning, she waits inside of the train car until the sliding doors hiss open, revealing a person deserving rest.
“Are you…”
“Yes.”
“And am I…”
“Yes.”
Every morning, she conjures up the memory of Claudine pacing her side of the river of trains, waving at her, blonde hair billowing in the wind.
For years and years and years.
The only consolation is Claudine is somewhere out there.
Not here. Not where she bears the weight of finality.
—
Loneliness becomes its own version of comfort. Under the perpetual cold, gray sky, she befriends it.
She does not allow herself to frown.
—
Maya stares back at the last couple hundred years of mourning, numb.
She closes her eyes, pages through well-worn memories of Claudine, retrieves a passing comment she’d made.
She stares ahead at the next few centuries in front of her. Then glances at the river of trains, full of broken cars and tracks.
She gets to work.
She spends years clearing the block of crashed trains downstream, pushing every car back onto its gears until it can roll away, until her muscles ache.
She spends years scraping the chipped and rusted paint off, slams fists through the windows until glass litters the floor, sweeps the debris until the train car is empty of its broken veneers.
She spends years with cuts and bruises marring her once pristine skin; reminds herself how to feel.
She spends years holding on to Claudine, painting as much of her colorless existence with her memories, willing the illusion of Claudine’s warmth to dye what little she has left.
—
Maya inspects her hands, now calloused and scarred, wonders how it feels to hold again after so long.
—
Mahiru and Futaba check on her sometimes, standing where Claudine would have stood.
She has nothing to say.
But the way Mahiru catches her gaze with her own, knowing and kind, Maya already feels her thoughts being read before she even thinks them.
She says nothing.
—
As she has done for time immemorial, she waits. Only when she feels the presence of someone approaching does she straighten her posture.
When she glances up, she blanches at the sight of blonde waves billowing in the wind. She holds her breath when a woman with the wrong shade of magenta eyes stares at her, confused.
“Are you…”
“Y-yes.”
“And am I…”
“Yes.” She’s staring, as if she’s the one looking Death in the face unprepared, and can’t help the gnawing at the tips of her already aching chest. She knows that this isn’t Claudine, her Claudine, but it does little to quell the terror filling every corner of her insides. “Ready?”
She holds out her hand for the woman to take, the first time in hundreds of years that she does it. The woman takes it, and she’s both relieved and troubled by how the hand feels foreign, misplaced.
When she comes back alone, she stands at the platform and sings for the woman, wails for herself.
—
The rumbling in her chest returns. After laying dormant for hundreds of years, it returns and doesn't disappear.
She says nothing of it, almost welcomes the change, continues to sing the songs of souls she's laid to rest. Only during the song does the rumbling pause, allowing her a temporary reprieve.
—
The rumbling continues, gets stamped into the deep grooves of her routine for another century. She twines the memory of Claudine’s laughter around it, the vibration as a poor man’s version for the real thing.
It, too, gets folded into her routines, tucked between the rest, right beside the moment in the mornings when she wakes up and prays for Claudine.
—
One day, otherwise indistinguishable from the others before it, the rumbling finally stops.
Suddenly a hollow silence engulfs her.
The next day, Futaba walks up to her wearing a purple jacket, Maya only finally noticing the wings on the sleeve. Maybe it’d been there from the start and she’d just forgotten.
Maya watches as Futaba pulls the lollipop out of her mouth. "Good news, Maya. You're done."
She stands. “What do you mean?”
“It means what you think it means. I don't make the rules. I'm just the messenger." Futaba hands her a key. “Use this on the door by your kitchen. Mahiru will take it from there.”
“What about—”
“It’s been handled. Go back.”
Without another word, she trudges the same path home, but everything about it is wrong. When she tilts up to the sky, wisps of clouds scatter, and she has to squint to know if the faded blue on the outer fringes is real.
When she wraps her hand around the door handle after inserting the key, she realizes that it’s the first time that her hands tremble. She pushes forward, Mahiru already waiting for her with a cup of tea and a small smile.
“Come, sit. Let’s talk.”
She does as she’s told, takes her spot across from the goddess.
"What does it mean I’m done? If I don’t complete this then—” Claudine will die, she finishes inside.
Mahiru takes a deep breath. “You've fulfilled your duty."
"I have hundreds of years left."
Mahiru, kindness etched on her features, places a hand on her balled fist.
“Have you not suffered enough?” It’s not an accusation, just a fact.
“That won’t hinder me from fulfilling the rest of my obligations.”
Mahiru stands, walks to the window, her hands behind her back. “Maya, do you know why you were chosen?”
“It has been written in the stars.”
Mahiru glances back at her. “Right. Do you know why you and Claudine were chosen together?”
“Is it not for the same reason?”
Mahiru fully turns around. “Though it is true that you two were always meant to uphold the balance of this particular universe, it was never recorded anywhere in the stars that you would do so at the same time.”
“I apologize, but I don’t understand.”
“You were never meant to meet.”
If she hadn’t already been sitting, she would have staggered back.
“Maya, what you’ve shouldered has been a heavy burden, an unfair task, in order to save her.”
“I would do it again,” she says, her voice strong and unwavering. Mahiru smiles at her.
“I don’t doubt that, if the last thousand years is anything to go by. You see, the others and I on the Council, we’d never encountered Life and Death to know each other before fulfilling their roles. And that’s by design. So we were admittedly quite scared of what would happen. And, well, you saw it, right?”
She nods, her mind slowly wrapping around this burgeoning truth. “If I’m done, does that mean Claudine—”
“Claudine’s fine because you spent a thousand years loving her. Because somehow you two found each other, chose each other.” The kind goddess walks over to her, and places a gentle hand on her shoulder that soothes out the tension in her body. “The tether between Life and Death has always been love; it’s the strongest force there is.”
She blinks back the tears threatening to flood against the desert of her cheeks.
“Maya, you’ve cradled your solitary heart for well over a thousand years. It’s time.”
“I—”
“She’s been waiting for you.”
act iv: we, together,
—
It’s Futaba who greets her once again. A comforting presence that Maya never thought would affect her so.
“You ready?”
She shakes her head, still disbelieving. She’s spent a millennium alone, greeting souls without a partner. Incomplete, in isolation.
“I just go back to my home?” she asks, looking at the door of her modest cabin.
“That’s it. Everything’s taken care of on our end.”
“And will she—” she swallows. “Will she remember me?”
Futaba chuckles and rocks on her heels, thumbs hooked on the corner of her jacket pockets. “Why don’t you go and find out.”
She releases a shaky breath and walks to the door she’s opened every day for hundreds and hundreds of years.
What she steps into is her cabin, the modest bed and table that’s been part of her routine for almost two thousand years. The door closes behind her. She opens it again, wanting to confront Futaba. Instead, she discovers a room that floods her with so much familiarity, she can practically taste it.
And as if peeling back protective sheets off the furnishings of her distant past, she finds herself in an apartment that feels like second skin.
Maya walks to the mirror on top of her dresser, reaches out to her reflection. Her violet eyes stare back at her and find everything, find nothing.
—
Maya returns to an old routine, every step forward molding back to her shape, as it once was. For a time, she spends her day as if a bystander to her own life, until she’s able to tread the steps, the paths, the routes so expertly.
Most everything feels right, save for a specific emptiness she can’t explain away.
For her lunch, she reaches out for a chicken bowl, but stops and instead picks up a tuna bowl. It tastes good.
She reads her book.
“Excuse me, do you mind if I sit here? Everywhere else is full.”
When Maya glances up, she’s struck by a radiant smile against the backdrop of a dawning sky, familiarity scratching and scoring every rib in her chest.
Instead, she shakes her head, gestures to the empty seat across the table. “Please.”
Maya’s mind scrambles trying to place her, thumbing through pages and pages of her memories. But what she sees, she can't decode. So the questions burn on her tongue as lips fence them in.
Instead, she steals glances of the woman enjoying her lunch.
It’s a Monday.
Maya doesn’t see the woman the next day. She holds a frown for the rest of the day, tempered only when she buys a scoop of strawberry ice cream.
It’s on Thursday when she sees the woman again. Their eyes meet from across the cafeteria, the walk of the woman growing more confident with each step. Maya is thankful that she’s already sitting down.
“Do you mind?”
Another head shake, another gesture towards the empty seat. “Please.”
“I should introduce myself, it’s only polite. I’m Claudine.”
“Maya.”
“Maya. What a lovely name.”
She wonders about the ease of her name coming out of Claudine’s mouth. Perhaps it’s a formality, but the way it’s accompanied with comfort in magenta eyes, with a soft curved smile, Maya believes her.
—
“Have we met before?”
“I would remember if we did.”
—
Claudine invites her to an outdoor festival happening at the local park, and Maya quickly agrees. It earns her a tipped back laugh and an amused shake of the head, but Maya just doesn’t see any reason to waste any time.
So that’s how they find themselves resting on a blanket on a patch of grass, the wind and music whistling around them.
“Finished!” Claudine announces triumphantly after completing the flower crown of daisies in her hands. Maya is only too happy to watch her. “Bow for me please.”
Dutifully, Maya dips her head until she feels the crown placed on her. When she looks up, she’s met with the dizzying softness of Claudine’s gaze. “How do I look?”
“Beautiful.” Claudine beams and Maya’s mind flashes through hazy recollections, just shy of forming concrete edges of her memories.
—
“I think we have met."
“I think so, too.”
—
Routines are choices.
And every choice Maya makes about Claudine feels right. As if Claudine is the rule, and anything else is the exception.
Lunch graduates beyond the confines of the cafeteria. It takes her a short month when she finally exercises the courage to invite Claudine out on a date.
“Thanks for inviting me,” Claudine says.
Maya gently scuffs the bottom of her shoe against the pavement, a habit she doesn’t recall forming, yet feels as natural as breathing. “I hope you had a good time with me.”
“I always have a good time with you, Maya.” Claudine’s hand is on her cheek, always the braver of the two, and Maya leans into the palm that perfectly curves against her face.
Suddenly, the intimacy overwhelms her senses. Her heart travels forward in time, travels back in her memories.
Maya remembers a thousand years ago. Maya remembers a hundred years ago. Maya remembers yesterday.
This is where she needs to be.
A thousand years makes you forget what air in your lungs feels like. So she can only gasp for it one painstaking inhale of breath at a time, a memory of blonde hair billowing in the wind, a smile radiating.
The chorus of wheat fields in the wind sings the first notes of its return into her ears, warmth finally, finally, finally enveloping her.
When they kiss for the first time in hundreds of years, Maya remembers the creation of the universe. When they wrap their arms around each other, Maya remembers the invention of love.
They pull away and Claudine’s eyes, the color of daybreak, is looking at her with tired relief, like she’s finally, finally, finally found what she’s been looking for.
When they kiss again it becomes civilizations born, the creation of religion to explain this miracle. Maya, a disciple in the truth that this is it.
Claudine is it. She’s the one.
They break apart and her tears taste like love found.
“I hoped it would be you. I wanted it to be you.”
“It’s me. I’m here.”
—
— the end —