#42 Lake
There is a story, in among the old legends, that the souls of the dead flow down rivers into the sea, and there in the sea they gather together until they are indistinct, no longer individual souls but one great soul of mankind.
Some nights, Kira dreamt of them.
He dreamt he stood by a stream and watched shinigami, with their great, terrible claws, fashioning tiny boats of paper and string.
He dreamt that he asked them why, and they each replied that their duty was not only to kill, but to look after the souls of the departed.
He dreamt that his own shinigami, he of the black wings and magnificent grin, told him he too had to take care of the souls he harvested in the name of justice.
Kira dreamt feverishly that he knelt by the banks with piles of paper and bottles of ink and worked far longer and harder than the shinigami, but still each attempt t making a soul boat made his fingers bleed. He began to write the names of the souls in the blood of his fingers, faster than ink.
With each passing boat he would light the tiny candle inside and place it on the water, without looking up to watch it go.
He came to the last boat, at long last, and though his fingers wept in agony, he was somehow determined to prove that he was as good as the gods, and kept working. It was done, and he lifted his head to place the final boat in the water.
Only to see a floor of golden candlelight before him. Strange and oddly beautiful, he only then saw that he had placed the souls in a lake, and from there they could not pass on, and now the lake was naught but a river of souls.
He cried in frustration and reached to pull the fruits of his labour from the water, perhaps there was still time, he dreamt, to put them in the stream…
But he could not reach far enough, and overbalanced, falling in and screaming as he was pulled under. All he saw as he descended to the bottom was a sea of little pinpoints of candlelight.
Those were the dreams which woke Light up screaming.