Maya, a small island just north of what had once been known as Great Britain, was tucked discreetly away on a remote section of the world. Just a corner of it, smack dab in the middle of a wide ocean that rippled and rolled with life. It wasn't a very beautiful town - no it could never be called that - but there was a ruggedness about it that could be considered charming, a rawness to it that could hold glitters of prettiness here and there when the weather was fair and the sun cast upon this stretch of pasture just right or this rocky beach just so. The houses were built in rows on rows, stone buildings with a simple structure. Gulls cried overhead, gliding on a saltwater wind to pester the fishermen at the docks for a chance at thieving this fish or that shrimp. Laborers tended livestock, toiled in the greenhouses, carried sacks of grain and moved about in an orderly, precise manner. All knew their place and their duties, they knew what was expected of them and the work that kept their little thriving island running. Every little someone contributed to the greater whole - everyone except Heather.

She watched the rain pour at the library's foggy window, leaving traces of clear trails that cut down the glass like rivers or veins, depending on one's perspective. The small cuts of transparency allowed a glimpse of the disgruntled ocean outside, dark and rolling with an overcast sky just above it. She tapped her pencil idly as she listened to the recede of thunder. She hadn't always lived in Maya, but even back then she was nothing more than dragging weight. Back when the dead were walking and small towns were tucked behind high walls and little girls became women for sips of what was hopefully clean water or a mouthful of hard, moldy bread. Way back when.

Curious how quickly the human mind could bounce back from that. 'Way back when', as if it were hundreds or thousands of years ago and not something that existed within the span of her twenty-two years of memory. As if she hadn't been one of those dirty, starving children in one of those piss-ant little towns where people killed people for the shirts on their backs. Or their boots.
Tap, tap, tap.
Slow to rouse from her fluttering thoughts, Heather didn't immediately notice that the library was quiet. So quiet, she could hear the soft ticking of the clock on the wall. So quiet, it was almost oppressive. "Keep going," she tapped her pencil, still staring out into the world, into space itself. "Quadratic x equals negative b formula to the power of pumpernickel."
"That," came the familiar dry tone, "was not even close."
She glanced in it's direction and saw Azrael leaf noncommittally through the thick textbook that made up today's lesson in literature with a clawed hand. "We're analyzing the story of Romeo and Juliet today. I had the silly idea of that something less complex would lighten the mood of the afternoon's dreary weather." He waved a hand vaguely towards the windows. "This accursed country. You might have even enjoyed the lesson, had your mind not been occupied."
Heather snorted and began a very bad and exaggerated doodle of her instructor's face on her paper. "Don't they both die in the end? How's that for dreary."
"Read it before, have you?"
"Not really, it was full of those fake fancy words that people only pretend to understand, but I got the gist of it."
"Early Modern English," Azrael corrected. His unnatural eyes were still trained on the pages, although the glowing white of them were on the dim scale, which meant the topic of conversation was still safe enough to tread. Presently. "and be that as it may, it was once one of the most infamous love stories ever written. I thought you might take a liking to it. So. Where was it?"

Pausing in the act of scribbling the 'eyes' of the doodle-Azrael in (giving the eyes of the drawing a distinctly vacant, empty look rather than what she was going for), Heather looked at him, perplexed, "What?"
"Your mind. Where was it?"
No one would ever have guessed that this man who sat before her, this being that looked at once muscled and strong and gaunt and starving, this scarred entity who used to read storybooks at her bedside as a girl had once been the cause of mankind's downfall. Had cursed the dead to rise and walk again, to feast on living flesh. To have doomed thousands to grisly deaths and leaving those alive to a slower, crueler fate. This murderer of children. This impaler of parents, of sisters and brothers and lovers.

He wasn't her father, not her true one, but Azrael had been like a papa to her in the years that came after the the end of the Eaters. A year prior to that even, her mother - a desperate and starving woman - had traded her to him for gold. And who would ever do that? Heather often wondered. Put their daughter in the hands of a perceived monster in exchange for gold? But that was what the world had been back then. It had been a hard, cold, callous world. And sometimes daughters were traded. Sometimes sons couldn't run fast enough. Sometimes you had to pick a child.

An abnormal chill radiated from Azrael, it was frigid and grossly unnatural but familiar and it could even be comforting at times. Slowly, he turned the intense attention of those ghoulish white eyes in her direction and the weight of them were as heavy as iron. He'd healed since moving to Maya, had been allowed to heal after unknown eons of running, unfathomable tortures, assassination attempts. He wasn't what she could ever consider handsome or even human but he was Azrael, her papa, and he couldn't ever be anything more than that for her. Never anything more.
"The sea." She lied. And of course he knew it immediately, a spark lit his eyes that cast the glow of them just a fraction brighter. But though he knew it for the lie that he was, he allowed it with a mild, "Is that so?" and closed his textbook.
"When I was small, I never thought I would ever be able to see an ocean. A real one." She looked back to the windows. "I always thought there would be mermaids. Remember? I asked you to catch me one once. And I thought this island would be my Avalon and I would find my Excalibur."

The light of his eyes dimmed again. He said nothing, just listened, waited. The rain poured on.
"But then I grew up," Heather said, then quieter, "I grew up."
"And have you outgrown Maya?" He asked finally. Patiently. But there was something that lurked in his eye, something she couldn't quite place.
"Not Maya, not really." She gave her Azrael-doodle a mask, one of his old ones, the featureless stone.
"Then… have you outgrown me?"
Surprised, she blinked at him. "What? No. You're my papa."
Some of the tension left his body, his expression took on a more speculative look. "What, then?"
"I don't know." She scribbled a very poor loincloth. "Isn't that funny? I don't know. I used to be so full of… of wonder. Imagination. But then I grew up and I realize there is no Avalon, there are no mermaids."
"The ocean is expansive," Azrael added quietly. "And much of it not yet discovered."
"I realized I was no Arthur, that I would never meet Ariel. But without those things, who am I? What could I be? We have this whole island for us and only us, but the dead don't eat. All the food that grows here feeds only four. And yeah, the Doc taught me a thing or two about doctoring, but the dead don't get sick! I try to help where I can but…"
And even quieter, he added, "But the dead do not favor the living."

"And they don't like upsets to their routine," Heather agreed. "I'm not welcome in the gardens or at the butcher's or in the stables for that matter. And I'm the youngest person on the island! There's no one my age. There's no one to talk to. Well," she added hastily in response to the frown that tugged at his lips. "you know what I mean. You're good company and so's Lan and the Doc and the rest, even Master Tempo sometimes. But…"
Azrael raised a hand in a silent order and Heather swallowed down the rest of her words. "I understand," he said slowly. "although Lan, I think, would understand better. You want a purpose, friends."
Eyes dim, he gazed about the library. It was nothing compared to the one they'd had back in the mainland, back when there was a palace Heather used to think was like straight out of a fairy tale. There were mostly textbooks to further Heather's continued education - learning to read and write, to do her sums from simple equations to the more complex, the sciences of the world. There were some storybooks, things to read for the pleasure of reading, things to make a child's world more expansive than the small island she lived on."There was a time not long distant that I, too, longed for a certain kind of company. You can be in a roomful of people, of smiling faces and still be alone. Maya is a dream, child, but it was never your dream."

Silence descended. Heather picked at the the eraser of her pencil. Finally, Azrael sighed and stood. Really, he was quite big, but there was nothing menacing in his loom and there was only understanding and a sort of fatherly affection on his face that, as the years passed, had come to stay. Even when he was angry with her, all spitting mad with his eyes so blinding they could be their own suns, was there ever a (albeit frustrated) fatherly affection still hidden deep within.
He extended a hand to her, large and clawed and rough in it's not-dead-not-alive state. "That's enough of lessons for today. Come… let's wait out this horrid weather in a more comfortable setting."

And she took it. Of course she took it. It was a cold and unpleasant touch but it had never touched her save with gentleness. She remembered being a child and hanging off of this hand as they walked on the beach, squealing in child-like joy as he swung her tolerantly off her feet just so he could hear them. Azrael helped her to her feet, gave her shoulder two gentle pats. He was in the midst of turning away when he suddenly jerked his gaze on the paper that sat atop her desk. First his brows knitted, then raised high as he leaned to scoop it up, the glow of his eyes filled the page. Heather shifted from foot to foot, rubbed eraser shavings from her palms. "Well," Azrael finally said, then again: "Well."
Face burning, Heather snatched the paper from his hands and bunched it up into a ball. Then she threw it across the room. For good measure.

They both gave that a moment's pause before Azrael clasped his hands behind his back and ventured, "I wanted to keep that."
"Oh please." Still blushing, Heather hurried for the door. But his legs were longer and, subsequently, he had no trouble at all keeping up with her.
"It's been so long since you've given us portraits to hang on the walls. I've missed them."
Heather walked faster.
"Your talents have improved since." He tipped his head back in thought, easily eating up any distance she tried to spread between them. "Well… somewhat. If your passion lies in illustration I'm sure-"
"It doesn't! It was just a silly drawing!"
"Ah, but Lan and I do so enjoy your silly drawings. Thank-you librarian." He nodded absently at the dead man who stood at the front desk of their cozy little library dusting furiously at the bric-a-brac that decorated his spotless station. Azrael fetched their shared umbrella while Heather opened the front door right into a gust of wind and rainwater.
"Don't be so shy. You have a gift… and I am honored you share it on occasion." He smiled faintly, then it slowly disappeared. "Let us go home. We'll drink hot tea and wait out the rain. I… I will discuss what you've told me with Lan. But until then… Let's go home."