Peace of the Dead - Kelsey Smith

The Bonefish swept through the sea with crimson souls at the flank. The chilling water did nothing to numb their drive to the celestial river. The ferryman had to ferry. Those were the way things were. Even though the Bonefish wished differently.

He longed to go upon the shore.

He longed to meet the living creations his mother crafted with crafted with all her heart and soul.

He longed to see. Everything.

But his siblings were watching. The ones that were left anyways. In their eyes, humans were shackles of duty, nothing to love or serve. They were murderers.

Which was true. He had met plenty of them as he gave them one last chance to return to the shore, not husks of themselves, but as flesh and blood. Many lost. Less than a handful won. The most recent to win her life back was a woman with jet black hair and a witty tongue that surprised even him.

The Bonefish hovered to a stop as he approached a wide oily abyss chiseled through in the ocean floor, the sand glazing through the water so thick, they could barely see to the bottom. Yet they knew the way from the trillions of swims to the gate of the celestial river. Diving past the jagged gray cliffs, the souls moaned in excitement as the blinding blue light of the gate approached.

Crystal carved itself squarely into the stone, with shimmering refractions of light stringing through the water like pearls. In its center, a portal whisked the seawater into an ebony space beyond all time and meaning.

The Bonefish grinned when the souls fled from his flank and swam through the gate. The very essences of their being unraveling like threads to be sewn anew again. The river, blades of blue laced light streaming in the void, wringed all the pain, anger, and sadness away until all the Bonefish could feel was the souls’ collective peace ringing in every fiber of him.

Maybe one day he could feel that very peace too.