oh, and one more: has death read the princess bride? does death like the princess bride?

Here are five headcanons about Death and Sephie the gay barista!  (…are they headcanons if it’s my own stuff?)

ONE

Sephie has never seen someone with hair like Death’s.  It’s as thick as sheep’s wool, but perfectly obedient, sleek curls that pile up around her shoulders like snowfall.  Hours of styling, even in a salon, could never reproduce it.  They’re sitting in one of Death’s gardens–phosphorestent blossoms cast an eerie blue-white light over the sleek black walls and the cataract of precious gems pouring into a false river of opal and lapis lazuli and sapphire–and Death’s head is in Sephie’s lap as she plays with the curls.  Sephie stretches one white lock out and it springs back, and Death opens an eye, smiling when she sees Sephie grinning.

“Is it so amusing?”

“Yes,” Sephie says, delighted.  She pulls out another curl and cocks her head as Death opens her other eye.  “Why don’t you dye it anymore?”

“Dye it?” Death repeats, blinking.  Sephie nods, and it takes a moment before her question seems to click in Death’s mind.  “Oh!”  Death laughs a little.  “No, I didn’t dye it.  What color did you like best?”

“The red was nice,” Sephie says, bemused.  Death smiles at her and closes her eyes, and Sephie watches as each hair begins to change, deep venous scarlet seeping through each strand from the scalp until her lap is full of riotous red. Death opens her eyes again as Sephie huffs out a breath of surprise and rakes her fingers through the newly colored mass.

“Do you like it better like this?  I can appear however I choose, this is simply,” Death gestures down at herself, “my preference.”

“I love it,” Sephie says, bending down to kiss Death’s hairline and reveling in the electrical shock of the contact.  “However you want to wear it.  Surprise me.”

TWO

“Where does the food come from?” Sephie asks, evaluating an apple.  It’s crisp and red and perfect, and she knows that when she bites into it, it will be sweet and delicious.  “Why do you even keep food here?”

“The fruit comes from my orchard,” Death says from her throne.  A bowl of pomegranate seeds like drops of blood frozen in crystal rests in her lap, and her fingertips are stained with their juice as she pops one at a time into her mouth.   “And I keep food here because I like it.  And because you like it.”

“You mean those trees actually grow fruit?” Sephie asks, startled.

“Of course.  The rest of the food, I do what I can.  My sister brings me gifts sometimes.  She knows I love Earth food.”

“You mean she knows you have a terrible sweet tooth,” Sephie says, pointing at Death with her apple, and Death smiles, holding out the shallow bowl of pomegranate seeds toward her.  Sephie returns the apple to a dish that she suspects might be solid diamond and walks forward, until Death can neatly pull her into her lap in place of the bowl.  “You can’t fool me,” Sephie says, reeling in the pomegranate seeds to pop a few into her mouth.  They burst cool and sparkling over her tongue.  “I served you iced chocolate every day for years.”

“I do love chocolate,” Death confirms, and stretches up to peck a kiss on Sephie’s lips.  It tastes like pomegranates.

THREE

Sephie doesn’t actually know how many rooms are in Death’s citadel, but then again, Sephie is dead, and has thus reached a state of Zen acceptance about all things.  So when she opens a door one morning and finds a library with shelves twenty feet high, she doesn’t ask a lot of questions.

Death finds her quite some time later, comfortably stretched on a reclining couch upholstered in emerald green with a small tower of books climbing beside her.  Slinking onto the couch beside her, Death coils catlike into the empty spaces left on the surface and insinuates her head onto Sephie’s belly, curls–amber gold today–spilling over them both.  Sephie giggles and laces one hand into Death’s curls, lowering her book.

“What are you reading?”

“I have no idea.  It’s called Resenting the Hero, it’s great.”  Sephie gestures around her at the library.  “What is this place?”

“My library,” Death says.  “I’ve only just added it.”

“Only just?”

Death shrugs against Sephie’s side.  “I never thought to add something purely for the sake of leisure before.  Sometimes spirits spend time in my gardens, or my orchards, but this…”  She looks up at Sephie through her lashes, almost shy.  “This is my own space.  And yours, of course.”

Sephie spends a few moments working very hard not to melt through the couch at that, then clears her throat and says, “Have you ever considered a theater room?”

“A…theater room?” Death says musingly.  “Would you like one?”

Sephie laughs.  “Well, it might be nice to watch a movie together.  You would like The Princess Bride–it’s a classic.”

“I shall look into it at once.”

FOUR

Sephie’s favorite room in the citadel is a cave–or rather, it seems like a cave.  The walls drip with rubies and topaz, garnet and carnelian and amber, the ceiling laden with stalactites, and the floor stacked with pillows in a deep bowl shape.  Bringing a light inside turns the jewels into leaping, frozen fire, and casts fractured glints and glitters across the pillows.

Death doesn’t begrudge her a thing, is more than willing to give Sephie anything she asks for, and when she learns of Sephie’s affection for the place, it begins to mysteriously fill itself with gifts.  Bouquets of glowing flowers from the gardens, blankets and cushions of a fineness that Sephie never saw in life, sweets and books and bowls of pomegranate seeds and apples and cherries.  Death is always shy, when she comes to the fire-crystal room, and insists firmly that it is vital that Sephie have her own space.

Death shouldn’t be so endearing.

But stretched on the floor of Sephie’s fire-crystal room, turning her hair different colors as Sephie feeds her pomegranate seeds, it’s quite undeniable.

FIVE

Death doesn’t sleep.  Sephie doesn’t need sleep, anymore, but Death doesn’t seem to be capable of it.  So Sephie is a little startled to find that Death keeps a bed chamber, well, if palely, lit and ornamented with the same pristine jewels as the rest of the citadel.  The bed is soft and comfortable, a canopied thing with blue and green jewels inlaid in the black stone corner posts, and piled deep with pillows, and the bedside table is stacked with books and one of the shallow bowls of fruit.  Sephie doesn’t need sleep anymore, but more than once she has taken a nap in Death’s bed, purely because it’s so pleasant, and she often wakes up to find Death curled up beside her, eyes open but breath steady and calm.

This is not one of those times.  Death, after a long series of hearings and judgments in her audience chamber, comes to find Sephie in a garden with her usual unerring efficiency.

“Come with me,” Death says, and Sephie–oh, of course Sephie does.

Curled up with her head on Death’s chest, Sephie feels the low crackle of lightning through her nerves, the unmistakable feeling of power from being close to Death.  Death’s hand is tracing Sephie’s jaw as she sorts through the books on the table with the other, and Sephie hums, a pleasant sound vibrating deep through her chest.

“Read to me,” Sephie commands, and Death laughs, the sound even more inhuman at close range, before pulling her hand back with a book.  It’s a plain paperback, with a black and red cover embossed with gold lettering.

“Have you read Sunshine yet?” Death asks, amused, and Sephie smiles.  “I did recommend it to you.”

“You did,” Sephie agrees, and nestles deeper into the pile of cushions  as she tucks an arm around Death’s waist.  Even skin-to-skin, Death has no heartbeat, and her chest only rises and falls so that she can speak, but Sephie has gotten past finding it strange–it is calm, soothing, a level of peace that Earth never offered.

Death kisses Sephie’s hair and opens the book.  “Part One,” she begins.  “It was a dumb thing to do, but it wasn’t that dumb.  There hadn’t been any trouble out at the lake in years…”