Okay, this was a random one-shot that I wrote for no real reason. It's super short and has no actual plot…it's also completely (and I do mean completely) different from what I usually write.

I appreciate reviews and warn you now that this is not intended to be literary genius.

I own nothing except my trusty laptop.

A note about the title: the blue lotus symbolizes birth, death, and resurrection in Egyptian iconography.

--Aimes

It exists within me, struggling for release. Once, when I was a foolish child, I'd loosed it. I thought it an imaginary friend, wanting to play. So I let it out in the woods behind our summer home to take shape for me. It would do anything for me.

But not for free.

Nothing is ever free.

It claimed its reward. No more chirping birds or chirruping squirrels. I screamed whenever my parents tried to go back to that place, though I knew it couldn't hurt me. It needed me; we are not separate. I destroyed that forest and loved it.

Now I sit in the office of a doddering old fool and listen to him ramble.

"They call your kind Deathmaidens," he reveals kindly, twinkling. My gaze is placid. I know what they call my kind. They are wrong.

I am no servant of death.

I am Death itself.

I must wonder what he truly wants, because everyone wants something. I am tempted to bargain with him, to become his Angel of Death. I have done it for others; it would not be the first time for me. Before I knew better, I let the foolish Muggles use my 'talents' for the 'safety of the people.' But perhaps I've always known better. Perhaps I simply did not care.

I sense death in all its forms and I do not judge. Violent death, quiet death, the thousand deaths of a broken heart. I crave it all. I am an addict and this is my substance to abuse. I am capable of feeling each individual cell die and it intoxicates me. Better than drugs, better than sex, better than life.

Does it make me a monster?

I operate within the confines of society. I do not kill, though I have helped death along. When my mother was dying of cancer, she wanted release so badly. I could barely control my need. She felt no pain; I eased her passing.

I should be an executioner. The death I deal is easy, enjoyable even. Better than drugs, better than sex, better than life. Who could resist?

My attention is drawn to the other man. Tall, dark, brooding. I am know him; my counterpart. We are diametrically opposed. Matter and antimatter. Would we annihilate each other? Or would one of us remain? A question men have pondered for centuries.

He is the reason for my summons.

My angelic looks disguise a demon. What does his demonic appearance hide?

"They call your kind Saela. Life," I say, interrupting the old man.

"I know what they call my kind."

"It calls to me. I've felt it since I entered this place. I have restrained myself for seven years."

"We have both shown restraint," he counters, and I know it to be true. The force within him calls him to imbue me with the life he so easily generates even as my spirit cries out to destroy him.

"If we were to proceed, I might kill you," I warn.

"And vice versa. What is Life to a Deathmaiden?"

The old man senses the coming storm and leaves us. Perhaps not the fool I thought him to be.

This angel of light comes to me and caresses my face. I feel his energy building and my own energy responds with vigor. We anticipate the challenge.

Antithetical elements: he is the darkness, the perpetrator of evil deeds; lonely, hard, lethal. His darkest corners would make even the strongest man cringe.

I am light, sweetness, the giver of kindness and knowledge. My idealism melts the coldness of reality.

But I am Death and he is Life. Matter and antimatter, but which am I?

I rise to face him, Death seeping from my pores. It burns him and invigorates him. I feel his Life stroking me and slicing me.

It surrounds us: an infinite feedback loop.

I kill him and he resurrects me so I can kill him again.

We stand there for an eternity before breaking, calling it back into ourselves. I am sated, gorged on the Death. The pleasure was almost unbearable and I am shaking in his arms in the aftermath. Or is he shaking in my arms? We tremble together and I sense the constant craving within me relent and fade.

I cannot remember a time when I did not crave Death.

He lifts me in his arms and carries me from the tallest tower to the darkest dungeon. I do not protest as he sets me on his bed and wraps me in his arms.

"You are mine for the rest of eternity," he rumbles.

"I am yours until you cannot sustain me," I counter.

He does not reply, nor does he state its corollary: He is mine till I no longer sustain him.

In our perverse universe, we sleep peacefully.