#'youre mortal and youre impermanent' (negative) esp said by a goddess...

[samuhelll]

Sarah smears her jeans and takes his hand. Something in him has already tunnel visioned.

Broken bones and gunshots and tears. The ground beneath his feet suddenly pulling out from under him. Sam, in his vaguely concussed state of mind, sees himself in Sarah’s eyes: a man in a bedraggled salmon dress shirt. A sad middle-aged eulogy waiting to happen.

“Wh—” Huffy, his face folds. “What does that have to—?” 

She can’t fix death. Who said anything about dying. Sarah with all her millenniums looks at him and in a way that confirms what he already knows, and Sam in his finite existence feels the unmistakable pull of an event horizon. Something he might regret. His cheek pinches. 

“This isn’t…” Involuntarily, he pulls back his hand. “I’m— keeping my ass out of the firing line here!” he finally shouts, hands rattling.

“‘Turf war’. What? How was I supposed to know? I can’t walk into town, Sarah? I’m not allowed to leave my own home? How am I supposed to do my job when I’m home!” Hair frazzled tacky. It makes him look older, Sam’s voice tinny and metallic the higher it goes. His back arches. “I was just out, doing my thing and making deals and— Sue me!”

Whirlwind hands. Finally, they drop. An electrical surplus cottons the air, something in him diverging. The event horizon. “But hey,” he says, bitter. “I’m not permanent. Right?”

Her expression failed to shift, it was difficult to find the joy in a situation that felt so horribly dire. Not with the steady, rhythmic beating of his heart that resonated in her ears. The Goddess’ shoulders sagged, face screwed up with worry as he did his best to dig out the humour in it.

“Samuel. I can’t fix death.”

Sarah’s voice was monotone, strained as she leant forward. Her hands were coated in a thin layer of drying blood, wringing anxiously over one another with a force that blanched the tips of her fingers white.

“Broken bones, gunshots, tears, those are all fine. But if your body, your heart gives up? It is beyond the divine. Gods die. Nothing is permanent, Sam, tomorrow is never guaranteed, but that is the beauty of life.” Pleading now, she wiped a hand off on her jeans before reaching out to clutch at Sam’s own, brows furrowing in the middle. She couldn’t hide it from Margot, she knew how much her daughter had grown worried ever since the incident. And she knew of territorial disputes, she knew how the otherworldly would fight, she had more than enough blood on her hands from protecting what was hers, but she could take a lot more hits than him.

“You have a wife, you have family. Don’t squander it all over petty turf wars. You’re smarter than that… and I would hope far less selfish.”