World of Make Believe

Note: This is the second homework assignment for the Above and Beyond class; a premise of 500 words. Enjoy!

—-
Hanalia is a human born into Llevaeh, which is, for most humans, purgatory. It is where the soul travels AFTER death. Not someplace they are born. Obviously, Hanalia is an exception.Like her family before her, Hanalia grew up learning and presiding over Llevaeh. She became acquainted with the various souls that worked for her and her family, learned how to guide and train those that worked on the assembly line, processing souls, and adapted to the ever-changing environment and population of Llevaeh. For all its change, really, it wasn't such a hard task to handle. Everything was the same, after all.

Including the souls. Sometimes she wondered what would happen if just one change could be made to the processing, to make the souls more alive, more enjoyable. Right now, the things are dull. Boring. In her heart, she knew she could never make an alteration to the assembly line. The results were too unpredictable, and that wasn't a chance she was willing to take.

But when a war breaks out on the Earth below and a nuclear bomb is detonated, Hanalia learns exactly what will happen when the processing must be speeded up and when a soul slips through the cracks. Because this soul has already been processed once, even unsuccessfully, further processing will destroy it forever.

As it stands now, Hanalia gains a new job in Llevaeh: guarding and watching over this one soul, who is traumatized by the world he left behind and shocked at the things he witnesses in his afterlife. Hanalia has grown up in this environment, so it is all she knows. She can’t comprehend how anyone can be horrified at what he sees, how anyone can have empathy to non-living (as she considers the souls) things. She is amazed at how the screams and the monotony brings him to tears. Similarly, he does not know how a woman can be so seemingly apathetic to what he views as people, spirits. He wonders if he is losing his mind, moreso than one normally would in simply becoming a spirit after death.

Gradually, he has to learn to adjust to this shocking lifestyle. In several attempts by Hanalia to do what she can to grant him reincarnation, as is the standard process, she finds that because he was only half-processed, he will never be able to rejoin Earth. By this point, she has come to care about him and fall in love, a feeling that is new and unusual for her.

She keeps her findings about his reincarnation to herself as she attempts to find a way through for him and also hold on to him at the same time. While she is struggling through this, he is continually questioning about when he will get to leave this “inhumane” place, completely unaware about the feelings she has for him– because she does not know how to express them. In the end, Hanalia discovers a way to be able to let him go and allow him to be reincarnated without killing him, but she will have to leave also. She has to find a way to convince him to love her, as she does him, and then give birth to a child to rule over Llevaeh when she (and he) both leave.