Life energy

No, not really."

“What do you think will happen to the dead? Do you believe in life after death? "

“No, not even that, but what does that have to do with me? How do you know me from? "

"Do you think angels and demons exist?"

"Still no. I don't believe in anything like that, okay? Neither paradise nor hell, nor their inhabitants. Satisfied?"

But Samuel didn't seem happy with her answer.

"But what do you believe in then?"

Amelie let out a loud breath. What was this Question Time about their faith and God?

“I believe in science and common sense. It must be enough."

He nodded thoughtfully.

"Then it probably doesn't make sense to talk to you about it."

Amelie blinked in confusion.

"I do not understand you. You come here and say you want to talk to me. Now I'm not giving you the right answers to your really strange questions and am therefore no longer good enough as a conversation partner, am I? "

“I think it was a mistake that I came here. Forgive."

Samuel started to get up, but Amelie wasn't finished yet. She grabbed his wrist to keep him from leaving. She shuddered.

"Your skin ... you are freezing cold," she stated and let go of him again.

She felt as if she had just touched a piece of meat in the fridge. In disbelief, she grabbed his hand again and held it for a few seconds. She didn't get any warmer from her own warmth either. With this she had gained two new insights. First, Samuel had absolutely no body heat of his own. Second, Samuel wasn't a hallucination. However, she could neither calm down one nor the other.

Samuel nodded in agreement.

"But why? Who are you? Or better: What are you? "

Waiting and waiting, she studied his face and waited for a reaction on his part. Any. But his face was still blank. His eyes fixed hers.

"I am an angel of death."

Amelie sat frozen there and tried to understand what that meant. Samuel watched her as motionlessly as she was probably staring at him. A thousand things shot through her head at the same time. Everything she had heard at one point or another about angels on television and read in books.

Samuel brushed the black hair curtain back from his shoulders for the first time, exposing his ears. If it was at all possible, Amelie's eyes widened a tad. He didn't have ordinary ears. They came together to a point at the highest point; like the ears of an elf. He wore countless black hoop earrings, roughly the size of a euro, in both of them.

Amelie took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment. Was it all just a stupid dream? Was she still asleep and all encounters with Samuel had only sprung from her seemingly limitless imagination? But when she opened her eyes again, Samuel with the lavishly pierced elf ears was still facing her and watching her.

She swallowed.

"Do I have to die?" She asked in a barely audible voice.

"No. You still have time."

Amelie nodded absently.

"If you are an angel, why don't you have wings?"

It could hardly be more clichéd, but the second thing that came to her mind was this question.

“I lost my wings when I became the Angel of Death. That's part of the punishment. "

She furrowed her eyebrows as she struggled to believe his words and to let herself into the direction of this conversation.

"That means you weren't always an angel of death?"

"No."

"Rather?"

Samuel seemed to be thinking.

“A Guardian Angel,” he said at last, after an effective pause.

"Then you were actually born a guardian angel, or how can I understand that?"

"No."

She was getting annoyed that his answers only contained a fraction of the information she needed to be able to understand his claims halfway.

“Can't you always answer monosyllables? That is really exhausting in the long run. "

"I'll try," he promised then.

"If you weren't born a guardian angel, what then?"

“I used to be human. After my death I was reborn as a Guardian Angel. "

"And how does that work?"

“People with a good soul are given a choice. You can either move on and find peace, or stay on earth as a guardian angel. "

"That sounds nice," said Amelie. As a result, selected good people might at least have a chance of an afterlife.

“I guess there is hardly anyone who would turn down the offer to become a guardian angel. I probably wouldn't do it. "

"That's true. Most choose to do it without really knowing what it means to be a Guardian Angel. "

"Namely? I assume that you have to protect a person. "

“Yes, but not just one. There are thousands of living beings whose fate is placed in your hands. This is a very great responsibility that only very few can handle in the long run. "

“How can you keep an eye on and protect thousands of people? Sounds like an almost impossible matter. "

“It is not only people but also animals that we watch over. All living beings that have a soul. Indeed, it is not an easy job. "

“And that's why you dropped out and became an angel of death,” Amelie speculated.

"Not quite. It is not a conscious decision to become an angel of death. Rather, it is a punishment for failing as a guardian angel. "

"Oh."

So Samuel was a goddamn guardian angel. Did many people and animals lose their lives because he wasn't paying attention? She wanted to ask him about it, but didn't dare. It was certainly not a pleasant subject for him.

“And what is your job as an angel of death? Kill everyone? ”She quipped skeptically.

“Mainly I transfer the souls to the other side. We should avoid intervening in what is happening on earth and manipulating the life energies, but that is not always that easy. "

"What does it mean to manipulate the life energies?"

“Every creature carries a kind of life indicator. Due to various influences, this indicator of life falls faster or slower. The main influences are age, illnesses and injuries. When the display has dropped to a certain, vanishingly low level, we angels of death come into play. We take the remaining energy so that the bodies die and the souls can be convicted. This is how it usually works. But just as I can withdraw life energy, I can also add some if I want to. "

"You can decide who lives and who dies?" Asked Amelie, shocked.