fandomhigh | BWI Portalocity Terminal [Saturday Morning]

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!event: newbie shuttle

BWI Portalocity Terminal [Saturday Morning]

Rather than fly from Philadelphia to Baltimore, Eric's parents had given him a lift. They had offered to drive him directly to the school, but he told them he would rather meet the group at the airport and take the shuttle. That way he'd get an early glimpse at all the hot girls he was sure would be going to his new school.

So now he was relaxing in the lounge, drinking a soda and waiting. It wasn't going to college, but it would do.

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"Um ..." This should not be a hard question. "I'm 16? But I'm also two days old. And I'm also as old as the first living thing."

"Sixteen works."

She was pretty sure he'd think she was crazy. She did not mind that.

Jonas actually didn't think she was crazy. He'd been known by a number more than his own name for most of his life so he found things like that intriguing.

"I'm sixteen too," he said, slowly parsing her information in his head while he talked. "I was once a nineteen but Jonas was easier for some people to remember."

They could be crazy together.

"You're three ages?" he asked, getting back to her statements. "But one person?"

"I like the name Jonas," she said. "Better than a number, I mean. And yeah, there's only one of me, really."

She shrugged. "I'm Death. It gets complicated."

"Thank you," he said in response to her compliment about his name. He couldn't let kind words pass without gratitude being expressed.

"Death." The repetition was sometimes a nuisance, he knew, but it was helpful for him. Repeat the words, file it away, remember it for later. No one could take his memories this time. "I--Death has a body?"

Death as a concept was fresh for him, vividly painful and, already, Jonas was being that boy on the battlefield, begging for water before he died.

"It has me," Didi said, and recited. "One day in every century, Death takes on mortal flesh ... this is the price she must pay for being the divider of the living from all that has come before or will go after."

She looked rueful. "That's the idea, anyhow. The one-day-a-century thing went weird this time. And, uh, call me Didi."

"Didi," he repeated and gave her a slow nod. Grateful for his lack of memories and his lack of understanding, the fact that he was seemingly talking to Death itself wasn't that much of a shock to him. He had questions, endless ones but she looked his age even if she wasn't and he didn't want to overwhelm her with his requests.

"Why are you going to school?" he wondered, unable to stop that question. "Are you bored?"

Didi chewed on a thumbnail. "No. No, my job has never bored me."

Every person had a story, and she loved hearing them.

"Normally I'm human for a day and then I go home. This time I was alive for a day and I turned up here. It seems like I'm supposed to go to school."

All things considered, she sounded upbeat about it.

"So, it's an unexpected adventure?" Jonas supplied, knowing both of those words and easily stringing them together to vocalize the concept he meant.

"I think that's the idea, yep," Didi said. "What about you? How'd you end up here?"

"The Elders in my Village thought it'd be good for me to see life Elsewhere," he told her, already thinking back to that conversation. It wasn't like they'd had to force him. He wanted to learn, to grow. "I've only lived two places in sixteen years."

Didi nodded slowly. "So this is an adventure for you, too."

"I'm hopeful," Jonas answered with a nod of his own. "I'd rather it be an adventure than a tribulation. The adventures always seem to end well."

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BWI Portalocity Terminal [Saturday Morning]

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