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From the day that she was adopted Anya heard the story of how her parents came to be and how they met. She found it much more exciting to hear about how her papa came to life first because it felt like a grand entrance when her mama first met him. Some odd years ago, Loid died as a human but came back as a stitched-together creation, thanks to the fruitful work of undergraduates trying to conduct an experiment to see if they could bring the dead back to life.
However, the project was deemed a failure because of how long it took to find an actual working specimen like Loid. As undergraduates often did, their response to such a failure was to drink too much alcohol and have the bird-brain idea to completely eliminate Loid so their university wouldn’t find out that they poured so much money into the project only to come out with one viable specimen. As it turned out, Loid had the agility and skills of a spy and was able to escape.
While all of this occurred, Yor was undergoing her shadowing work as a fledgling reaper. At that point in time she’d done marvelous work in reaping humans and taking their souls to their rightful resting places. Due to her intricate eye for detail and deft hands that snipped off the threads of life when it came to a human’s end, even the most violent of deaths lead to the gentlest of care when Yor reaped their souls. She was well on her way to becoming one of the greatest reapers within the realm of the dead.
Her perfect record hit a snag when she met Loid. He was technically dead yet he still walked around without any issue. His soul was there and yet his chest was hollow. It should not have been possible for a humanoid being to walk around stitched up and yet there he was. In layman’s terms, his soul was unable to be reaped. As such, this blemish on Yor’s record was suspended because it was not her fault that she could not reap this soul.
She was tasked with taking him on as a part of her caseload, waiting until he somehow died of natural causes or otherwise could be claimed by death. They would not worry for expenses as everything they needed would be paid for by the reaping agency. In the meantime they lived in a splendid apartment building out in the country, just close enough that they could visit bat caves if they needed a chance to take a moment of meditation. The apartment came complete with a ghost dog named Bond that couldn’t be reaped because he had unfinished business on Earth.
For Yor and Loid, as they were already living together and were quite cordial with each other, they became friends (although, Anya was privy to their thoughts and saw glimpses of mutually requited, unspoken romantic love which exasperated her to no end. She would not say it aloud because her mama and papa needed to stop being idiots on their own).
Anya would often demand to speak about the next part of the story. One night when her mama was out reaping souls, Anya was scrounging for berries and roots to eat. She’d walked up to the grim reaper with awe in her eyes and perhaps the threads of life within her would’ve been cut. But it was not her time - or at least as Yor had put into her report because Anya was a witch, not a human, therefore it made sense as to why she could see Yor. It didn’t have anything to do with Anya’s mama immediately scooping her up and, upon finding out that the orphanage she came from didn’t care about her at all, taking her right home.
Normally children would be afraid of the gloomy apartment, complete with dark furniture and suits of armor and decorations such as a two-headed turtle, but Anya found it all exciting. She was enamored with Yor’s giant Venus fly trap, named Cleopatra, who would only hurt a fly and never Anya. She turned her nose up at storybooks in which nice dragons were thoughtlessly cut down by shiny knights that should’ve minded their own business in the first place. It was there that Anya was free to practice her magic, which felt like warm honey through her veins whenever she cast a spell.
This was why Anya came home from school one day, pouting. She dragged her book bag behind her into the living room where her papa was sewing his arm back up and her mama was reviewing her recent report on reaped souls. She could tell by her papa’s face that he was about to scold her for treating her things so poorly when she announced why she was in such a dire mood.
“Anya tried to show magic to the teacher but she didn’t like it at all.”
“She did not?” her mama asked, looking up in surprise. Her ink pen clattered against her clipboard. “Oh, Anya, and you worked so hard.”
She opened up her arms and Anya climbed into her lap, sniffling as her mama held her. When Anya breathed in she smelled the sharp scent of ink, and she rubbed at her reddened eyes. She watched her papa finish up sewing his arm back on, cutting off the thread with his teeth.
Her papa’s eyebrows furrowed, which made the stitches on his face turn into interesting patterns that Anya would often color in with her markers. He shook his head. “I cannot fathom how she’d take offense.”
Anya sniffled again and said, “Teacher screamed when she saw my spell, she said nobody would like to see vines sprouting out of books because it’s scary.”
“Scary? When you practiced, it was beautiful,” her mama said. “If your teacher wishes to see something frightening, she must see that no matter how many times I cut off the petals of my sunflowers they always grow back.”
Anya shuddered along with her mama. It truly was a mystery as to how the petals were so resilient, ruining perfectly lovely stalks with their bright colors.
“Yes, Anya, your teacher has odd taste.” Her papa sighed. “But we cannot force others to like what we like.”
Anya nodded. She let herself get rocked by her mama before she added, “Becky thought it looked cool.”
“Ah, I’m glad,” her mama said. “She is a lovely girl. Next time you have a play date you ought to let her see the bat caves.”
That sparked excitement in Anya. She wriggled out of Yor’s embrace and stood in front of her parents with perfect posture before she made her request.
“Anya wants to play with Bond and the bats,” she said decisively.
“Wash your hands first,” her mama reminded her.
“And you can only play for an hour,” her papa added, “You do have to study.”
Anya groaned as she walked to the bathroom. Bond followed her, nudging at her knees as she washed up her hands. He didn’t have a physical body so his face felt cold against her skin but she appreciated the affectionate gesture. Anya tried out a drying spell to clean up the water and soap residue on her hands and grinned as it finally worked.
Anya led the way to the bat caves, Bond following close behind her. To an outsider, Anya’s family was mysterious and kooky but it didn’t matter when she had the best life that she could ask for with her mama, papa and Bond.