Astarael

Astarael

---

She's not real. Not in the same way everyone else is. It is not the only way she is different from them, but it is the most frustrating.

They can't see her (except the Bakus), but watching them takes up most of her time. She can't touch them except on rare occasions, nor can she move anything like they can. They can't hear her, though when she gets very close and whispers, sometimes they shiver and look through her. It doesn't matter how long she spends following someone, or some clan, or chasing a traveller. Her familiarity with them has never made her easier to notice. It's been like this for so long she can't remember when it started and it no longer really bothers her. It's lonely, but she is content to Watch.

---

She tries to be there when someone she's been watching for a while dies. It's one of the rare times they can actually see her. Sometimes there's a deity ambassador or a necromancer or ghostspeaker or some other abomination that takes them away before she can get a word in and she doesn't like that. Those people aren't as fun to watch, otherwise she'd simply wait for them to die to give them a piece of her mind. But the ones she likes who aren't swiftly ushered into the next life, she likes to talk to.

They're usually confused or frantic or sad when they go. She's never felt emotions that high, but they seem to appreciate her calm steadiness even as she wishes they could switch places.
They always have questions: 'Will they be alright?'
'What's after this?'
'Where do I go?'
She doesn't know the answers, but she's gotten pretty good at guessing and she's right most of the time. She keeps them company until they fade, or decide what they're going to do; join their deity, choose a new body, become someone new. She finds it silly that the ones who clutch their memories tightly enough to retain them started calling her Death. She's not remotely responsible or even that powerful, even if she can't remember anything before being here.

---

Yrael is the first dragon she meets that she can touch, and it's before the ghost of a Shade-mauled Ridgeback in the Hewn City. At first she thinks she's somehow here for two dragons but there's only one body. And as she looks, the black skydancer seems.... not quite real, not quite unreal. A bit like her. The ridgeback fades quickly before either of them speak.

"I'm not dead." He blurts out, seemingly as shocked as she is. "Are you?"
"I don't know if I was alive to begin with, but I think people usually start with hi?" Her tentative question cracks the distance between them as he fumbles for some suitable greeting, feathers compressing as he bows his head. It doesn't seem like he's really talked to anyone... maybe ever?

She steps forward and offers a paw.
"Hi. We can shake paws. I call myself Astarael."
His claws fit strangely in her palm but that's less important than the fact that she can feel them; moving even if not alive.
"I'm Yrael. I've never met anyone who could see me before."
"Me neither. Not who was alive, at least." She admits and he nods, an understanding in his eyes that makes her well with sympathy, stronger than anything she's ever felt before.
"Do you wanna talk about it?"
"Please." She begs and they sit beside the quickly rotting corpse to chatter.

---

Themesong: Be by Hozier
(Tie them into Blackwater?)