For the first time in an eternity, The Reaper greeted the morning with a heavy sigh. His lips began to curl as he realized this was the first day that no one was going to die. As he walked among the graves of those past, in the dim light of the crescent moon knowing that this peace could never last. Moving like a mist cloaked in shadows and whispers, he decided to take his first day off, but what shall he do. He began his day walking through the cemetery with the silent breath of memories of the past that still lingered in the air. Though the world was was alive with the promise of life, he found a happiness he never felt as he walked among the night. While the air was thick with the scent of the damp earth haunted by the countless souls that remain forgotten memories of the ones that have past. He floated among the tombstone’s as he traced the cold marble, each one a gospel to the lives once vibrant with love and laughter, remorse and pain.

He stopped to pause among his favorite grave an empty throne of a poet, a soul whose words danced through the ages. He chuckled softly like the sound of falling leaves. Hello dear friend you thought you could escape me without a verse, I was there the day you penned your first line and I’ll be there to hear the last one when you fade and join me in the night. Can you speak once more to me before I go about this of the day?

Among the living your a beast is what they say,

As you guide us through death in our final days,

Yet you are with us a friend that forever stays,

That never leaves us and teaches us your ways,

You remind us at the time of our birth,

That one day we’ll perish into the earth,

Yet you are not our foe but a friend guiding us ashore,

Reminding us of our worth forever more.

His day off not one of leisure or pleasure. He reflected on the echoes of joy and sorrow. The highs and lows, the fullness of spirit and the broken and hollow. Joining them together in perfect harmony. Every soul was a note forming a divine symphony. A perfectly imperfect beautiful and tragic melody.

As he wonders he was prone to ponder his dualistic nature. A friend that guides and comforts us in the sea of mortality, and perceived as our foe when he shows up in the end. As twilight deepened, he visited local place’s full of people alive with their friends and laughter amongst the living. Oblivious to his presence but a shadow away, as they created memories throughout their fleeting days. The Reaper sat listening to their mindless rambling of the shared tales off their lives, unaware of His presence smiling as He sat by watching and listening. He sat in the shadows reminiscing of bitter regret and sweet nostalgia. You dance on the the razors edge of your own fate, yet you celebrate life with such excitement. How delightful he thought. In a moment of devilry he whispered in the ear of a drunken reveler, a man with desires too big for his unsound spirit. “Take the road less traveled, dear friend,” he spoke in an undertone, his voice chillingly caressing him to his bones. “Embrace your thirst of everything more, while I await for you by the endless shore.” Shivering through and through, a fugatious perception of fright washing over him, yet he brushed it off and raised a glass lifting spirits in the memory of his legacy. The Reaper cackled, a flicker of bone under his hood, for he knew every toast of celebration was a precursor to the delicate balance between creation and destruction.

As the night played on, he roamed the streets, witnessing the beauty of human life unfurl before him. The old remembering stories of **yesteryears, young ones chasing fireflies in the moonlight and the sweet embrace lovers shared beneath the stars. He felt a stab of covetnous, a climbing nightshade itch for the vital spirits of the lives he touched. Every infinitesimal breath a reminder that he was both a protector and a fortoken, a companion who strolled beside them and a unholy fate that would lead them to the land of the dead.**

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**With daybreak approaching, The Reaper found himself at the edge of a cliff, observing a valley bathed in a soft glow dispelling the night. He breathed in the splendor of the universe, a place of both love and loss, beauty and sorrow. “How magnificent,” he pondered, that to be both the beginning and the end, the darkness the precedes the light. As the night gives way to the morrow, casting shadows playing in the day, he felt the weight of his duties calling him back. **

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**The pause of duties a minute embrace,**

**A time of reflection of his eternal fate,**

**A final glimpse of the world below,**

**A graveled whisper of what resumes tomorrow,**

**Fear not for I am your most beloved friend,**

**Guiding you through live until the end,**

**Then I’ll be your friend in the shadows,**

**Guiding you through the darkened meadows,**

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**Then like smoke in the wind,**

**He faded to begin anew again,**

**A ghost filled with both comfort and dread,**

**Forever intwined with the living and the dead,**

**Friend and foe, the one and only Reaper,**

**To continue on in his eternal vigil,**

**Patiently waiting for the next friendly soul,**

**To join him in the inevitable black hole,**

**Both friend and foe, life and death,**

**A solemn song playing throughout our eternal rest!!**

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