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Fifteen
The void swirled around her. Here and there, ribbons of silver dipped in and out of her personal space. By now, Bunny knew that this was normal, but at first it had freaked her out more than just a little. She extended her arms and splayed her fingers, letting the silky silver vapor trails of the souls caress her palms. A soft smile played on her lips as she let herself slip deeper and deeper into that space between her dimension and the millions of others that lay both above and beneath it.
The thing she loved most was how different each little soul felt. Some were bold, some were shy. Most of them were strange combinations of traits that she could ‘feel’ through their trails; waiting to be born so that their natural inclinations could also be shaped by their experiences and surroundings. All of them were pure light, loving and loved. For all that she’d never wanted to have a child of her own and wasn’t much of a people person in general, Bunny could easily have stayed in ‘the between’ for hours on end.
Which was a good thing, considering how much work she needed to catch up on and then complete on a daily basis.
But things were on the up and up. Once she realized her quota would refill automatically with each new day’s total and she just had to keep catching up, Bunny knuckled down on getting better with harnessing souls and locating the vessels. Her splits were getting better and better, and she has busted her butt all the way down to the final few hundred thousand of her overdue quota.
Not everything was smooth sailing, though. Marrying souls to vessels was tiring work, and she was definitely feeling like overstretched pizza dough by the end of the week. She was starting to have serious doubts about how she was going to work four night shifts a week and still see to her celestial duties, too. She could slip through time and space easily enough, sure. But she still felt exhausted after doing it hundreds of times over.
But now was not the time to devote to those worries. Now was the time to finish today’s ensoulments. Where once she had felt clunky and unsure, she now dipped through the dimensions with a speed that shocked even her. She even had a mantra in her mind that played on repeat—find the vessel, find the soul, couple.
When she had all the souls she was batching, Bunny would complete the split. Being able to manage a hundred thousand ensoulments at once was almost within her reach, meaning it would be much quicker to be done with her daily workloads. In the back of her mind, she found herself wondering how many her mom had been able to do.
With a steadying breath, Bunny took hold of the next soul to ghost past her hand. Holding it gently, she began to push her mind outwards, searching for the echo of its vessel. This process was almost lightning-fast for her now. She could hear the distant ringing of a telephone, the muttering of hushed voices. The glow of the vessel was apparent first—a bright beacon—but soon other details of the dimension Bunny was entering became apparent, too.
It was her OB-GYN’s office. She recognized the same perky-looking potted palm in the corner, the hushed tones the receptionist used on the phone lending the whole place the reverence of a library. But as the vessel herself came into focus, Bunny’s attention wasn’t on her.
Rather, it was on the woman next to her.
Pippa.
Still without a glow. Still with the same sadness in her eyes Bunny had seen in person that day they had met. Bunny’s heart squeezed as she felt the sadness and pain radiating off Pippa.
Her vision blurred slightly, Pippa and the now-pregnant woman next to her glitching as though the aerial on top of a TV had accidentally been moved. Beads of sweat began to prickle the back of Bunny’s neck. Holding the rest of the batch in the split was strenuous work, and she wasn’t going to be able to do it for much longer.
Exhaling with frustration, she pulled away from Pippa and focused on gathering one more soul for her final split for the day. She hated not being able to fulfil the wish of one very sweet woman, especially when she had just ensouled so many others. It was one of the things about this whole celestial-duty thing that didn’t sit well with her. How was it decided who got a baby and who didn’t? What was the reasoning? Who chose when someone would die?
Thinking about people dying inevitably made her think of Death himself. She hadn’t seen him since that night at her apartment. She supposed that he didn’t need to see her, so long as she was pulling her weight, but the reality of that stung.
Because that small, private part of her mind had even begun to think of him in other ways, no matter how much she had tried to fight it or tell herself she was being ridiculous. Their back and forth banter was, to her, as tantalizing as it was infuriating. She’d never met a man who would clash wits with her willingly.
Not a live one, anyway.
But their last conversation had been far from friendly, even by the usual standards she held their conversations up to. At first, not seeing him had seemed like a good thing. Being able to get on with fulfilling her quota without him constantly quipping by her side was bound to make the somewhat monumental task easier. But as the week wore on, Bunny wasn’t exactly sure that’s what she wanted after all. She couldn’t help but feel as though she was being punished for something, though what that might be completely escaped her.
It was strange not having him around to bounce things off of, to ask questions. To argue with. She hadn’t realized just how much she’d come to depend on the companionship of the one person who actually knew that she had a whole new job as a celestial. Not like she could talk about that with just anyone. Not even Ben. Her brother would probably think she was loopy if she started talking about weird shit like inter-dimensional travel, Death personified, and actually putting souls into people ready to be born.
But were those the only reasons she was bummed to have not had Death pop in to check on her?
She finally took hold of one of the souls that darted past her, clearing her mind and find its vessel while she balanced the other pairings she had in her now-familiar holding pattern. When the new pair was ready, she took a breath and began to release them all, feeling them zip and zing as they popped between dimensions.
Her smartwatch began to buzz against her wrist as the last few souls slipped out of the between. When she was finally able to look at the name on the display, she frowned.
Dad.
Bunny lifted it to her mouth to answer the call a moment after the split was complete. Static crackled through the tiny speaker.
“Hello?” she said, frowning as she clapped a hand to her other ear and held her wrist to her cheek. “Dad?”
Her father’s voice managed to break through the static momentarily. “—sy inconcl—”
“Dad, I can hardly hear you,” she said, trying to speak slowly and clearly, her eyes darting up as a soul swooped past her head in the void. “It’s… uh—a really bad line.” Honestly? She was thrilled she had coverage at all, given that she was in the Between. She really didn’t give her cell service provider the credit they deserved.
“Ho—can it b—a—ad—ime?” Dad crackled. “You’re the—who—this autop—”
Bunny’s frown deepened and a low growl of frustration escaped her. With her watch still held up by her ear, she began to walk away from the souls that were still swirling around the pool of light she stood in during her inter-dimensional jaunts. The farther into the dark she got, the less static she could hear on the other end of the call.
