“How are you feeling ma’am?” Allan asked, approaching the bed very slowly.“Oh dear, I’ve been good, bad, good again.” Eileen answered. “It’s strange, you see? Sometimes I’m feeling good as if I was in my twenties again, but there are times when I feel even older than I already am.” She said, chuckling.She did sound vivid to Father Allan, but there was something off in all that vividness in her voice, so he decided to test the second ‘and’ the third step in one go.For real.“Okay, can you move your head?” The priest asked in a warm tone.“Not much, my dear. I also can’t see too well lately, my eyes seem to play pranks on me.&rdqu

Becca roamed aimlessly through the battlefield, and wherever her feet stepped, demons fell to her might.There was no demon around her that could even think of daring to approach her. Wherever her empty eyes glanced, the feeling of death would follow, to friends and foes undistinguished.“BECCA!” A voice echoed in her direction, followed by a punch that could, barehanded, easily shatter an entire mountain.Some part of the broken Ophanim recognised the voice that shouted her name, but it sounded so distant, so blurred that she couldn’t quite relate the voice to the owner.Her face went from one side to the other in a vertiginous speed, but her body didn’t fall.Becca actually acted as if she didn&rsquo

Jake’s sessions with his psychiatrist went on weekly along the year, and the more he attended the sessions, the more distant from Bert he grew. And by the end of the year, Bert’s mom passed away. However, Jake wasn’t there to comfort his friend, nor to know how heavy was the burden that young Bert was carrying. Young Jacob was too busy pondering and weighing the possibilities of what Mahasiah told him.   Mahasiah was a seraph, an angel from heaven. Earth wasn’t Eden. God was dead. And he was to become the Avatar of Death itself. Azrael, the archangel of Death.   Years couldn’t have prepared young Jacob to all those truths, and months of ‘therapy’ couldn’t have him accepting all that with a willingly open heart. Yet he had to. “Or else, someone other than you will have to carry that burden, and the next in line is your friend, Bertrand. It’s a heavy load to carry,” Mahasi

“You two can partner up, but only after I test your skills separately.” Gonzales told them the next morning, as they entered the precinct and went straight to talk to her. “I need to check if the rookie is good enough for the field, and if you are as good a consultant as the reports showed me.”“Yes ma’am!” Bertrand and Jacob said in unison. It was needless for them to worry about such things as not passing Gonzale’s test, because they worked really hard to get where they were. And after eleven years, they were together again.Of course it wasn’t as if nothing ever happened.They both experienced traumatic situations in their lives. Though they were able to meet again somehow, and if Jake was right, they