The Deathly Hallows
Death, was inevitable.
That was the rule gifted by Life. One got time, borrowed from the sands of worlds past, and spent it with breath and body. That, was Life’s domain. Full of color, of feeling, of the gift some abused while others struggled to maintain.
The end result was always the same. Death, was close behind, ready to take back the sands of time and grant Life the chance to spread them as they wished once more. It was cold, with death. A silence, a scream, always a beg for the sands to tip in the favor of those who had spent their gift. In the end, it was a finality.
Always.
Despite this harshness, Life and Death were of the same coin. Bound by the sands that flowed between them. As life poured their end into the silly little things that scuttled along the land peppered in their creations, Death merely waited for it’s return to start the cycle once more.
That was how it was. How it had always been, until Death had met a push back from those magically blessed by the energy of the lands. A human, they had named themselves. A wizard, they later corrected. In the end they were nothing more than doubly blessed sand vessels and the most entertaining of the lot of Life’s little creations.
The wizards had always been Deaths favorite of Life’s critters. So creative, in their manipulation of the Earth’s energy through their own being. So powerful in their place, and yet so bound by the law of Life that no matter how crafty they were they always met Death, in the end.
That was all interesting, in small doses, but what really drew Death to these little beings were the stories they would spin. That was what captivated Death. What was not really known by most, until the time came to learn, was that Death loved one thing more than Life. The stories of how those who had been lucky enough to be gifted, spent that sand, made the whole point of this push and pull worth every grain. And, oh the stories those who were twice gifted with magic spun.
That was precisely why, when three brothers, slotted to run out of sand and fall to Deaths ever present game of Life, summoned a bridge through magic that had yet to be pulled into the world, Death had been cheated. Death had felt betrayed the right to their story, as it stood, and the sand that should have been redistributed instead was stolen from a being not yet strong enough to enter the cycle. He had taken that as a true offense to the rules of the gift, and in turn broke the rules imposed upon the great laws of the natural world.
Death, revealed themselves to the brothers.
Believing that their sand belonged to the times ones more, yet the brother had so strongly fooled Life. Where the sands of their being had run low, now poured in once more and stood strong as the wizards stood on their made bridge without an ounce of Death in their grains of being.
Desperate to right the wrong done to the sands of time, Death had announced the brothers winners to the game played by all of Life’s creations. That they were to be awarded gifts of their choosing. Life later deemed this a fools bargain, but if there was one thing Death had learned of these humans over lifetimes, it was that they were creative in ways even Life could not be.
And, they were unbelievably greedy in their desires when an opportunity presented.
Sure enough, the first and loudest of the humans had boisterously declared that he desired nothing but the strongest of their magic directing contraptions. Thinking fast, Death produced an item to fit the desire, a stick embedded with magic slotted to obey the strongest of wizards. The ‘Elder Wand,’ as it was, Death had found this name to be rather clever in its making, as they had picked a stick from a close by Elder tree and wove their very essence into its core. The wand, more powerful than any around, would no doubt bring Death stories for lifetimes to come.
The second, not so swayed by the greed of power but control, demanded instead that Death gift them the power of resurrection. Foolish creatures, indeed. They never realized that once the sands of what they called a ‘soul’ were returned to Life they were no longer able to return to past flesh. That the ones the man wanted to bring back, would be fractured and distorted by the grains that had once been already distributed to be again.
Nevertheless, Death granted the request. They plucked a stone, smooth in the center with edges pointed enough the cut with enough force, and declared it a resurrection stone. Here, too, Death tipped a good deal of their own connections to the sands of time into the stone and watched it change from a dusty gray to that of the deep black of the void. Cold to the touch and unable to pull in heat, the stone was passed to the brother with instructions on how to cast with it, and a fair warning that Life does not like their sands messed with once they have passed Death’s curtains into the dunes once more.
The third brother, meek in his approach, tested Death’s understanding of these so called ‘humans.’ Where the first two proved all that Death knew to be correct, driven by greed and hungry for power over some kind of unknown. Death had been ready for the final demand to be the greatest. A possible combination of the two before, or even something Death had not yet thought of.
This had been proven false, and Death’s understanding of the world was shown to be timeless, and still with room to learn.
What the youngest had requested of Death, was a way to pass unseen over the lands. To move freely and never be caught unless they willed it so. Thinking fast, Death agreed to the brother and cut free a piece of their own being. It threaded itself to that of a cloak, able to keep the brother from the sight of all of creation as they passed through Life.
Death, had done their job too well.
Unable to keep their victory over Death secret, the first brother had declared themselves the master of Death’s powers and thus been slain in their sleep, Elder wand stolen with the job of bringing those to Death faster than written by the fates, to pay back the time stolen by the brothers.
And thus, the first brother returned their sand.
The second, unaware of the fate of their counterpart, built his space to pull back one beyond the veil. Unwilling to listen to Death’s warnings, they pulled the sands of their young bride, snatched away by Death’s very own cold grace the same day they were to be bound by their human laws, and waited.
Death, too, waited. Unseen by those at work, Death watched as the brother reformed his bride. A beautiful human, both in the colors of their sand and the stories they had woven, but incomplete. The body of the lost lover was lacking in the flesh, the sands of the woman already having begun to be spread once more out into the world and unable to return.
She screamed and wailed of the wrongness that had been done to her. Of how she was being torn, literally, between the worlds where she no longer belonged. The man begged her to stay, to not let Death ‘win’ and to let his love be her strength. She had wept and looked to Death with such pleading. Her arms had opened wide, in what the brother took as invitation and scooped her crumbling frame close.
Death, knowing that this was in part their doing, took pity on the woman as she continued to reach towards them. They moved in the ever present silence and released the woman’s sand once more with an apology for her part in this lesson. The brother, in a ring of ash, found that Life was no longer a place for him.
And so Death eased his sand behind the veil, an apology unspoken in the still air.
The third, proved to be Death’s undoing. The cloak Death had created worked well, too well, and the youngest of the three moved without Death’s ability to see their sands to collect them. For earthly years, and millions of sand rotations across the lands, Death found those blood connected to the brother and yet never him.
That brother, had not demanded fame or power. Had not tried to take from Death what belonged to them. They had instead stolen from Life, and done what billions before could not. They had learned how to stop the flow of sand. Hidden from all of creation, they lived out lifetimes worth of stories far from Death’s grasp.
Life, once finding this little slip beyond the grace of creation, had come to enjoy the creativity. Called it a ‘cat and mouse’ based on a little saying their creations had spun. As the sands from those hidden did not steal from the veil, so too did Death come to find the game more entertaining.
When the brother, three lifetimes passed his sand’s due date, passed the cloak to his son, he greeted Death. Not, as an enemy or a being to fear. No, the feeling of hate, of fear, of any negativity had bled from them both years before.
No, he did not fear death, but greeted Death as an old friend. Ready to give his sands back to the flow of time, the brother passed down the cloak to his son with the knowledge of just what it could do. It was up to the child to see the truth in the tale, or greet Death in due time.
And so the game continued.
For generations, that one family evaded Death’s gaze time and again, living well beyond their sands. While some greeted Death as the brother had, with a sigh of relief and a warm smile, others still screamed or begged. It was a new game, after all, and all players were different.
That was why, when the last of the children of that third brother pulled Death to them one cold All Hallows' Eve night; Death had found themselves, for the second time since the dawn of time, perplexed and with a choice to make.
A choice, about what to do with the sands of one such small infant, stuck between the cycle of Life and Death.