Life

Death frowns, her fingers flipping through flimsy, thin pages.

Her sable hair glimmers with every movement she makes, caressing the sides of her face in gentle strands as she paces the length of my uncle's living room. 

"Where's the rest?" she asks, holding my manuscript to the sunlight streaming in through an open window. Faint golden lettering glistens beneath the light, as if catching fire-- a telltale sign of the magical ink used to narrate the story.

I look down to my hands on my lap, fidgeting with my fingers. We've come to my uncle Lachlan's house, and Love, Death and I await him in the living room while he fixes us some tea. I convinced them to come with me to see if we could persuade him into finishing the story.

After all, you can't help someone trapped in a book if you don't know the ending.

"I didn't finish it, I can't remember the rest of the story."

Love makes a tsk sound, shaking his head as he falls back on some couch pillows. He takes a look around, angling his head but refusing to move from his resting position as my eyes begin to do the same. My uncle's home isn't small, he was a lover of travel in his youth, and as such he's kept all the mementos he accumulated over the years, tokens from cultures and people he met and loved from all over the world. 

He's got space to spare in his beautiful home. Gone are the trappings and pictures and collections of artifacts that used to hang on his tall, white walls, and his art pieces and displays of depictions from earlier societies are nowhere to be seen. All have been either thrown away or stored someplace else where little, grubby children's hands can not reach them. 

They've been replaced by bookshelves filled to the brim with dark, leather bound editions of philosophical books-- books of law and society and the human condition have taken the place of swords and spears he used to showcase proudly on the wall. His home used to be a wonder, now it resembles a blank canvas more than anything-- colorless and void of his sense of humor.

"Hmmm," Death mumbles, stopping her pace for a moment. She turns to look at me, brows drawn, unnaturally still eyes making me squirm in place. 

"Why was the girl pulled into the story and not us? We've each had a read, but nothing's happened."

I shrug, looking elsewhere. Death's stare makes me nervous. It's too fixed and somber. If you peer into her eyes for too long, you feel yourself falling into the endless dark pools that are her irises. You can quite literally feel your sanity slowly chipping away at itself.

"Maybe the ink was still fresh when the girl opened the manuscript?" 

Love's voice pierces through our concentration.

Death and I pause to look at him, pondering his suggestion. It's possible, I'd just finished writing for the day when the typewriter's keys began moving on their own again. Ripping the page off it, I quickly stuffed the machine into a box with packing peanuts and dropped it off the next morning. When I left my manuscript in the package, the ink must've still been wet.

"That would explain why we haven't been sucked into the story," Death murmurs, picking up her pace again. Moving to stand by the window, she lifts up the last page on my manuscript to the light, holding it in the air as the font glitters before her.

"Hmmm... how did you say the story ends?" 

Her question makes me tug at my lip nervously. Only my uncle knows the answer to that question. 

"I'd have to ask my uncle--"

Death lowers the pages in her hands, turning her head towards my approaching uncle. He carries a steaming kettle in one hand, and two mugs on the other, walking slowly towards the table at the center of the room as age-eroded bones grind one against the other.

"We can't get her out of the story if the book's got a fixed ending. Because then the typewriter will finish the story as it sees fit."

Death's voice interjects mine, pausing only when my uncle nears her and hands her a mug. She shakes her head, reaching instead to tug on one of Love's red locks, motioning for him to grab a mug.

"Maybe," Love offers, taking a mug graciously, "We can try rewriting the ending anyway and see what the typewriter does."

Death rolls her eyes, all signs of her affection gone as she flips her glossy, dark hair over her shoulder.

"This isn't one of your romance games, Love. We can't just take the easy way out. If we write the ending and go against the book's wishes, we risk killing off characters because the story will try and overcompensate."

Love scowls, placing a coaster in front of him before setting down the hot mug on the table.

"I won't even dignify that with a response, because there's much more to my job than you know. But I'm not stupid, Death. I'm serious, what if we rewrite the ending and get this girl out before the story continues? We can return her to her dad before the book even realizes she's gone."

My uncle approaches me, smiling at me conspiratorially as he takes a seat by me on his couch.

"Those two are clearly itching to screw in my living room," he whispers, winking. I feel my breath still as for a second, I see his old smiles lingering around the lines of his face, teasing me. Memories of the dirty jokes he used to tell which would elicit my mother's chuckles and even my father's hesitant smiles seem to hang around his forehead in thick, soft wrinkles. Even if just for a split instant. 

"Sometimes," he says, interrupting the two bickering, causing them to suddenly stop, "Stories are character driven. The plot moves itself forward if the characters are stubborn enough. Perhaps, you can give the girl another day and see if it affects the course of the story? What is this book about?"

We all stare at my uncle for a moment, dumbfounded. How does he know about the girl trapped in the story? And how does he just believe it? Drawing his brows, he shrugs as he notices our looks.

"I've been listening in on the conversations, sound really travels in this house."

We continue to stare at him, and he sighs.

 "I'm Irish. Superstition is in my bones."

I exchange a look with Death, and she juts her chin to my uncle, spurring me to ask him about the book's ending.

"Uh, uncle, do you remember that story you used to tell me when I was little?"

My voice comes out surprisingly shaky, no doubt thick with the emotions I've suppressed for so long. After my parents died, uncle Lachlan was all I had left. I needed him. I needed him to tell me stories and sneak me candy and take me to faraway lands every night before I closed my eyes and joined the realm of sleep. I needed him. 

But he was too caught up in his own grief and remaking himself, that he didn't notice the little dreamer in me dying along with his. Sure, he fed me, clothed me, gave me a roof over my head, and for all those things I'm grateful, but it felt like living in a stranger's house. Laughter stopped echoing in the halls of this big house, smiles stopped gracing his lips. Color was washed away from the walls, and stripped from his vivid bedtime stories.

What happened to my uncle? In a way, it felt like I wasn't only mourning the loss of my mom and dad, but my uncle's as well.

"Yes...?" he enunciates, looking at me with expectation.

"The one with the girl and the sun's gift of seeing the future?"

I swallow, feeling childish and embarrassed as heat prickles my eyes. I don't know why this story means so much to me, or why I feel like crying in front of my boss. But every time I visit this tale, I remember my parents' warm embraces, and my uncle's deep, loud laughter. His bedtime stories were one of the only things he and my dad could agree on. My dad, too, loved telling me stories, especially this one.

"Ahh yes, the Blushing Mage. I remember."

My uncle looks down for a moment, eyes glossing over with a film of reverie that only comes with many years of age.

"Well, do you remember the ending?" Death prods, startling me for a moment as I'd forgotten she was here. Her still eyes fix on him, thin fingers holding onto the pile of papers in her hands.

"Yes."

Nodding, he sits back into the pillows.

"Yes, I remember."

"Well?" Love asks, waving a palm in our direction. My uncle shakes his head, thinning his lips into a stern line.

"I'm not telling you."

"Why not?! We need to save this girl's life! If she stays in this book, who knows what will happen to her!?"

Death sounds desperate as she begins to go on about an Aries again, but he shakes his head, this time, turning to me with shining eyes.

"I swore on your father's grave I would never tell that tale again. It was his favorite."