Eleanor walked through the crowded streets with hurried steps, the bustling market on Triage Avenue overwhelming her.
She had been given a location to meet her Guardian Angel to begin her training; however, nothing but the date had been mentioned, leaving the time a mystery.
One day had passed since her conversation with the True Angel, the mission she had been given clinging to her mind like a particularly persistent fly.
Strava… That's Aaron's homeland, and possibly the last place he was before awakening on the Ghostship…
It sat wrong with her, the sheer coincidence of an Angel's reincarnation in a place outside the Sea of Wishes, and more importantly, the place where the anomaly called Aaron Grimstall first began.
Before her death, she had entered his mindscape and seen the island only a few months prior to his disappearance, yet she could not detect any abnormalities.
Lord Cosmoti had visited, but that isn't any different than the times he journeyed for drinks with Lord Quinn… Furthermore, even while the deity that attacked me isn't normal, there are grounds to believe that it was interfering with the memory and wasn't originally a part of it.
Biting her lip and pushing her way through an unusually dense crowd, she heard muffled shouts ahead.
"You damned conman! Go to Hell!"
Furrowing her brow and pushing forward with even greater tenacity, the blonde-haired girl heard murmurs from the civilians around her.
"Isn't that just a kid?"
"I heard that when he was alive, he was a Devil!"
"That's impossible, only those in Hell have borne such a moniker!"
Disregarding the swirling whispers, she pursed her lips and made her way to the front, breaking through the crowd and into a small clearing that had formed in the middle.
There, she noticed an elderly man holding a child by the collar, his pure white hair adorned with streaks of black.
In his hand, there was a sack of coins, jingling as he waved his fist crazily.
"This city ain't got room for thieves! I'll send you to Hell myself if it rids this damned city of one more delinquent!"
As he stretched his arm, preparing to swing the heavy bag of money at the boy's skull, Eleanor rushed forward, grabbing him by the forearm.
"Sir!"
As if deaf from rage, the man struggled to shake her off, still trying to swing downward at the black-haired child, who closed his eyes, bracing for the strike.
Losing her grip on the surprisingly spry old man, she could only weakly hold his sleeve as the sack rocked around violently, only centimeters from the boy's face.
「Calm」
An instantaneous soothing feeling enveloped the street, placating every spectator who observed the scene from afar.
The old man was no exception, dropping the bag he held and walking away as if his attempt to kill the child was no more significant than bumping shoulders with a stranger on the street.
Eleanor felt an irrational urge to relax, to close her eyes and succumb to a wonderful slumber that, when she woke up, would make the incident seem like a dream.
Ahead of her, the small boy looked around with a puzzled expression before standing up and stumbling a little.
Noticing the crowd dispersing, he rushed to the girl's side and bent down to grab the sack of money, not daring to waste the opportunity.
Clang!
Her foot clamped down on the bag, pinning it down to the cobblestone road as the boy tried to tug it free.
"Abraham Flourister. Cease your actions immediately."
A serene but powerful voice echoed out from behind Eleanor, her body trembling slightly as she turned her gaze.
The boy did so as well, his movements freezing as he realized who exactly was speaking to him.
A man with long cherry-blossom colored hair shook his head slowly, a golden ring floating above his head clearly announcing his status.
The priestess instantly bowed her head, the boy following soon after, his body trembling slightly in fear while faced with the second-highest authority of the land, right after Death himself.
Slowly, the winged Angel walked forward, his pink eyes looking first at the thief, then towards the girl.
"Eleanor Lynn. You have yet to learn the ways of this land, and therefore I hesitate to punish you for this transgression; however, if such an act were to occur on your watch again, there would be no leeway."
The girl's eyes bore holes into the cobblestone, confusion clouding her thoughts as she heard the Angel pick up the bag of money.
I-I'm the one he's scolding? Not that old man who was about to kill a kid, or that thief that I stopped?
Not daring to talk back to the man who could easily kill her ten times over and banish her to Hell itself, she remained silent.
I-I'll ask my Guardian Angel later… This seems… wrong…
Hearing the flutter of wings and feeling the mythical being's presence vanish, Eleanor released her held breath.
The child beside her did the same, panting hard as he looked for the coin pouch that he had been clutching just moments before.
"W-why…"
"W-why…"
As he muttered repeatedly to himself, the blonde-haired girl turned her attention towards him, a frown settling across her thin lips.
"Why did you steal that man's money? The commotion you caused brought the gaze of an Angel over these parts and even caused you both to lose any chance of keeping the money."
She wasn't angry with the child, as, for all she knew, he didn't even know that stealing was wrong yet, given his appearance, which looked no more than 5 years old.
Could he have been from Sea Fallen? He's so young…
As the Priestess of the South, reigning over the only cathedral in the South of Sea Fallen, she knew better than most the reasons why one might steal.
Whether it be starvation that left their bones protruding from their chest or a cold weather so vicious that it froze away their saliva as they chewed on stale bread, the families that visited the church were far poorer than those in the North.
"I-I…"
He began to stutter out a response, catching Eleanor's attention.
"…I wanted the Angel to banish me."
The girl's stare instantly solidified, her mouth falling slightly agape, and her breath going rigid.
H-he wanted to be sent to Hell? Why would anyone wish for such a fate, especially a kid so young?
It didn't make sense; his actions, his age, his expression, none of them indicated depression or a will to make oneself suffer, whether as an atonement or otherwise.
She couldn't process why someone within Neutrality would go as far as summoning an Angel for punishment.
Trying to collect herself to maintain an appropriate image for a priestess and an Angel apprentice, she spoke again, hiding the unsteadiness in her voice behind a false confidence.
"Why would you want that? Hell is truly a vile place, unbefitting a child like yourself. Wouldn't you rather aim for reincarnation in Neutrality?"
Listening closely, he shook his head hard, spitting out words in a harsh tone that surprised the young girl.
"You are new here, so you don't know, do you? All you see is a helpless four-year-old who plays with toys."
He paused, taking a breath.
"When you've spent close to 5,000 years in this plane, wondering endlessly in a void, and you can't even remember how you died, you WISH for true death."
Eleanor instantly froze, her mind scrambling to process what the apparently ancient man said.
F-five thousand? That's older than the Great Flood!
Reassessing her impression of the child, she tried to piece together something to say and blurted out the first question that came to mind.
"W-why haven't you simply faded away as most ancient souls do?"
The second she finished, a shrill laugh escaped the boy's mouth, his body falling backwards as he chuckled.
"Don't you think I've tried that? I don't fade! Ariel says it's because of my past life, but I call bullsh*t!"
Covering his face with his small hands, he began to sob, his mind long since destroyed by the stretching years of torturous nothingness.
"I've waited millennia, and Death hasn't once granted me an audience! The Angels refuse to listen to me, and I'm stuck in the body of my former life! I clawed my way out of the gutters in West Hornston and earned all that money myself to bring to the Angelic Order!"
Fiery hot tears rained down his cheeks, blurring his vision.
"That was number 1325. The first few hundred were of the old currency, but even with the switch to Draughts, it's still nearly 1,000 per bag! Each time, I mysteriously run into a coincidental encounter that causes me to lose the bag before I even have the chance to use it to arrange a meeting."
His despair had begun to morph into rage, his heartbeat increasing and his body shaking even more violently than before.
Eleanor couldn't keep up with everything he was saying as his language was split by thousands of tongues he had come to speak, the words ending up misconstrued and mispronounced at every turn.
All she could do was watch as the clinically insane in a child's body flickered through his emotions like a broken light, his anguish the only thing that remained the same.
I'll be an honorary Angel, so maybe it'll be possible for me to bring his money directly to Death once I meet him!
It was a quick thought that she began to murmur without thought, the boy's gaze tilting up to meet her own.
"I can…"
She stopped herself mid-sentence, realizing something was intrinsically wrong with a promise that she couldn't keep.
What if I'm brought back before then? He'll have to wait for another 100 years until I inevitably end up back here permanently…
Biting her lip, she slowly stood up, trying hard to ignore the look of hope across the child's face.
"Abraham, right?"
He nodded as she said his name.
"I'll come and meet you at Aurora's Bookstore every week from now on, okay?"
Abraham looked at her with hesitant eyes, caught off guard by the offer.
"Why…?"
Usually, whenever he told his story to one blighted by the curse of Neutrality, they simply shrugged their shoulders, forgetting the event and then returning to their labor.
However, this girl, whom the Angel had said was a new arrival and who bore a priestess uniform, was now showing genuine concern for him.
His years of wisdom told him to doubt and deny any aid that came his way, a likely trap from yet another Angel trying to rouse him out of even more Draughts.
Yet, with her, he felt something different, as if she harbored a similar dream to his, one wishing for freedom, for an escape from the hell of Neutrality, regardless of how it happened.
"O-okay…"
He wiped his nose with his sleeve, standing up slowly and bowing his head to the girl who had protected him from the strikes of that enraged man before.
Nodding her head in response, Eleanor turned away, her gaze focused on the large building that rested ahead.
She had gotten sidetracked by the incident and wasted precious time, so now she had no idea whether her Guardian Angel still waited for her at all.
Watching Abraham scurry off into the distance, his small figure quickly vanishing among the thick crowd, she smiled.
Just give me time, and I'll help you out… Just you wait…