Somewhere in the depths of space, past our world or any you may have heard of, beyond the reach of anyone save those who were already there, a sparrow was pecking at the seeds fallen from the latest harvest. The breeze rippled in the nearby fields, grassy dancers bending and swaying, gentle as falling snowflakes. A sudden movement in the brush startled the bird into flight while the ginger cat stalking in the stalks mourned the loss of his meal. He fluffed his tail in annoyance and went in search of a human to bother.
From the sun-baked dirt path, Death watches the world unfold before his blank gaze. Binky snuffled about, each exhale stirring clouds of dirt from the dry ground. Death turned his attention to the solitary architecture the landscape offered – a stone tower.
He had been here so long that he had forgotten why he was here at all. Perhaps the grizzled old jailer would remember, for surely someone had to keep track of these sorts of things or else what was the point? He might ask, were he able to find his voice or had he any interest in knowing if justice had been delivered yet. His cell was the world and the world was his cell. It just happened to be a very small world.
He was beyond old. Old implied a collection of years and memories stored and categorized like butterflies in glass jars recalling bygone days when times were better, the harvest greater, the girls prettier. This man was ancient. He was unkempt grey hair and brittle bone and deeply sunken eyes tied together by the loosest of threads, living only out of long practiced habit.
His diet was of the standard variety of prisoners everywhere – water, stale bread, and a half-eaten apple if his jailer felt generous. The water was probably poisonous to foreigners and the bread had all the nutritional value of a rock, but it was better than munching on the straw of his bedding, the only thing in the room of interest aside from the bucket and the barred window.
The window was where he spent most of his time. His dark eyes scoured the landscape like a searchlight, but he was too high up to see very much at all in any sort of detail. The occasional traveler would wander by perhaps once every year or so, no doubt lost beyond the hope of any map. He wondered sometimes if it was really the same person, many times over. They all looked rather the same from up here. Otherwise, his only companions were the sparrows.
Little brown birds hopped about along the windowsill where he had scattered stale breadcrumbs, softened by a little soaking in water. They would perch in his shaky fingers and eat from his wrinkled hands. He gave them straw from his bedding to build their nests and incubated the eggs himself on the single occasion when, for one reason or another, the parents didn't return. He whistled their songs through chapped lips and was moved to tears of joy each and every single time a chick took its first flight from his stone window. He gave them no names, but knew each one like a lifelong friend.
Death watches the seconds slide through the narrow gap between the past and the future, watches that strange unit of time that humans liked to call the "now" pass by.
He suspects the seconds fly like birds.
The man was waiting when Death came for him. He offered no word or greeting, but a gentle nod to the Reaper before slowly lowering the sparrow in his hand to the ground. The tiny bird hopped to the stone floor and let out a high-pitched chirp before flying out the window. The man turned to Death, ready to face whatever came next.
He had never believed in reincarnation, but he secretly hoped against hope that he would return to the world as a sparrow.
Death has watched and learned, but never understood.
He strode back along the dirt path to his pale horse and remounted. Binky recognized when it was time to leave and the sooner he returned home, the sooner he got his apple.
Back in the tower, the old jailer still stood, grimly staring out at nothing, unaware that his charge was no longer in his cell or even among the living at all. The sparrows chirped and fluttered about as sparrows do, eating what remained of the bread and filching pieces of straw to build a future.
Outside, the distant golden cornfields billowed softly in the wind.
Standard Disclamer.
-SilverInkblot