POV Astral

‘I’m not getting anywhere with this!’ Astral stopped the text-to-speech app and pulled the earbuds from her ears, placing them next to her tablet on her cluttered desk.

She buried her face in her hands. She needed a minute to clear her head; a minute to think and refocus.

At her uncle’s request, she’d been combing through the data provided by the Gaming Commission and the Council’s Academy. He’d hoped that she’d see something in the data that he could not. He was a clever man, fully capable of filling the gaps in the sparse information provided. What he needed from her wasn’t a second set of eyes, or an alternate way to think about the data; he had expert analysts on payroll for that. He needed her to read for soul signatures.

It was a clever idea. If she could read the data at all, she could have provided him with a list of deceased students, saving months of work while focusing their efforts. Of course, if she picked-up on anything else that would help them locate the demon…

As things stood, she couldn’t see the names on the list. She couldn’t see any of the information. Not age, biological sex, address, tuition fees, academic year, academic branch. Nothing. Her screen remained blank despite the hundreds of thousands of students listed.

The impartial registration process didn’t leave a visual imprint of the registrants’ existence. Without that brief spark of awareness, the momentary collision of two souls, the person might as well never have existed.

The program had no soul. It was not a thinking thing; it was not an understanding thing. It was designed to calculate or generate results within a defined set of parameters all without understanding the concepts their human masters had programmed into them.

Technology was a boon and a hindrance.

A pair of newborn wind elementals tumbled through the open window and onto her bed. The wolf-fox creatures’ soft, silver coats glistened in the late morning light.

Under the light of day, Astral’s world was a wash of saturated hues. Hints of violet powdered the perimeter of her large room resembling a slow drift of haze. Her floor, which had been a deep rich osage orange a few years ago, was a barely present pale yellow. She was sure that one day she’d fall through the floor, or accidentally step through the wall. The haze of colors was faded, but bold enough to shape the boundaries of her world, keeping her rooted to this reality.

In the light, her world was ephemeral. A suggestion of an imposed reality.

The shadows made her room real. Solid. The shadows added definition to her world by revealing textures. She saw the fake, wooden base paneling, knowing that they were painted in an off-white shade that hadn’t registered as an actual color in years.

Much of her furniture held the essence of the collective of the trees that they once were. The craftsmen which was commissioned by Dezmond on her behalf, had unknowingly imbued their creative energy into their work, sealing the remnants of life essence within the furniture. Each piece lived still, suffering a slow decay as was destined for all organic matter.

Her problem manifested with manufactured pieces, whose base essence had been severely damaged through the industrialized manufacturing process. The materials used to create the products had never lived. The result existed to be used and discarded. Objects which were hollow imitations of what they once were, whose shadows revealed their soulless nature, mirroring their dark shape along the floor.

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On her bed, discreetly dodging the wolf-fox pups’ play, were her legions of teddy bears of all shapes and sizes. Sergeant Scruffy sat at the forefront of his little army, arms spread wide, protecting the new recruits behind him as the wind pups played a little too close and a little too rough, before their play tumbled them to the ground.

They nipped and bounded around one another, oblivious to Astral’s presence. It had been a long time since the primordial forces had to concern themselves with human interference.

The wolf-fox pups danced around the foot of her chair, knocking up a breeze that ruffled the piles of open books on her desk and floor, before bounding toward the open window on the west side of her room.

Astral followed them.

The pups struggled with the height of her window, leaping but failing to grab onto the sill. Their brilliant white-silver manes shifted to a blue-gray as their play turned to worry.

Astral cupped her hands beneath the first pup as it leapt. With her help, it leapt again, reaching the window with pleased self-approval. Its juvenile mane shifted from brooding grays to a sparkling white.

Its twin yelped in panic, unable to join its brother.

“It’s okay.” She kept her voice soft and quiet, like the breeze itself. A spark of surprise would call their mother, or worse rally the pack, causing a storm.

She cupped her hands for the remaining pup, who for the first time, acknowledged her presence by sniffing at her before tentatively climbing in. She lifted the pup to the window, as she had done for its twin.

A low growl paired by a strong breeze tore through her room, tearing pages from her books, and causing a paper flurry. The Zephyr had come for her young.

Untrained teddy bears dove for refuge under her bed, and a couple of the bears toppled down the stairs through the open attic door, desperate to escape the savage wrath of the primordial beast.

The mother snatched-up her cowering pups; bushy tails tucked tightly between their legs, launching skyward to rejoin her gallivanting pack.

Someone had to herd the clouds after all.

Astral wiped her hand across the window sill. Dry. No rain today.

A quick succession of gentle knocks announced Mathias’ presence. “Philip’s here,” he said, teddy bears in hand. “You lost a couple.” He smiled as he lifted one of the cowards.

Mathias’ soul lit him up from the inside, offering Astral perfect clarity of his person. He had a pure soul, which was not an uncommon find. His frame was surrounded by a fiery aura of greens and yellows, in this instance, compassion and optimism respectively.

Auras informed Astral in ways that made the average person shy away from her gaze. He was in a good mood, well rested, and his spiritual energy looked to be improving. Green always flooded his aura when he was dealing with her. Dark tendrils of guilt and regret inched their corrupting influence into the green. He wasn’t kind to her because he liked her. He was kind to her because of the guilt he harbored toward her.

The yellows in his aura burst with optimistic energy at the sight of her. He was genuinely happy to see her. Or happy to see her leave. She doubted that was the case, but logged the possibility away in the darker corner of her mind.

He had dark brown tousled hair, and soft brown eyes; his mother’s eyes.

In the photos she had seen of his father, grand-father, and so on, they had hard, piercing stares. Their souls were filled with hate and fear. A desire to isolate and destroy, instead of nurturing and healing. They had believed themselves to be warriors, protectors of the chosen, defenders from all manner of sinister machinations. Failing to recognize themselves as part of the corrupted machine; broken cogs in a system designed to consume.

Mathias appeared young for his age. Now in his early-thirties he easily passed for mid-twenties. Age might be merciful to him, or catch up with him with a vengeance. There was no way of knowing for sure which side his genetic lineage favored.

Death Keepers in general aged slower, it was a boon, a curse, and a requirement. They lived longer lives if only to better serve the mission set to them by a Primordial God whose name they may have never known. It didn’t matter if they didn’t believe, because this God believed in them.

For better or for worse, Mathias had yet to fully accept his role as a Death Keeper.