Morning, Noon and Night

Aug 12 04:20 UTC 1997

        Her car hurtled along the expressway. The rising sun
        began to dispell the darkness. She turned on the radio,
        but there was only a faint static hiss on every frequency.
        She approached the industrial sector of the city.

        Noon found her parked on the shoulder, fast asleep. 
        Then the faint odor of lilies and the distant buzzing
        of bees awakened her. She wondered what it was that she
        had forgotten.

        Night came on the highway, and with it the return of her
        resolve to die. But perhaps she would change her mind.
        I watched silently, from a great distance. Should I try
        to dissuade her? If I could not, then I might assist
        instead.

response 2 of 2:

Oct 12 22:55 UTC 1997

Without hope he flees.  His hour of triumph has come and gone, and with it
mortal mankind.  But in that hour, with his bloody scythe the sceptre of
his power at it's zenith, he learned the terrible truth of the Phoenix.
By their own devices he laid humanity low.  There was not a man, woman,
or child who could resist crumbling to ashes at Death's whim.  But that
was not enough.  How terrible was his shock when he learned that his power
to will death to any mortal was not the power to will death to the
*last* mortal maid.  Like an unheralded sunrise on a world of eternal
darkness, the realization of his fate came upon him as looked into her
eyes in the final moment, when Death's omnipotence withered to impotence.  
He fled in fear, but not before seeing the first hints of understanding
dawning in her terrified young eyes.  

Now in his final hour he knows the secrets of his birth and the terrible
justice of his end.  Like the burning Pheonix, this cycle of the world
draws to an end.  The Maid hunts him without any weapon at the end of the 
world, and will live to see the next.  He flees with all power imaginable
as his command, and will soon die by Her hand.  For Death is denied but
one power - that to break the Egg and end the cycles.  While he restrained
himself, he enjoyed immortality, immeasurable power, and ignorant bliss.
But when his greed grew to consume all, he found that fate twisted against
him within the unguessed and untouchable cycle of the Egg, and his end
loomed large. 

His dark horse tires, slows, and stumbles, and Death flees his doom on
two feet.  With every step, he feels Her will building behind him, and
with it a resolve to do the previously unthinkable.  He left the shores
of the world behind with his horse, but She was undaunted, and scarcely
paused in seeking in a direction unknown to Her race when her iron steed  
could no longer follow. 

She draws near, and Death fights for the will fight his end in her hands.
All is clear now, and a backward glance finds the truth no less clear in
Her pursuing eyes.  The Maid will catch Death.  He may struggle, but it
will be useless.  He will die.  She will leave his corpse far in the void
and return to a world between its ending and beginning with life newly 
quickened within Her.  At the dawn of the world She will bear twin sons.
The first will fear Her, and soon flee beyond the reach of mortals to hone
his malice and wonder at his origins in the void.  But the second will love
Her, and know nothing beyond the margins of the world as he grows to become
the father of mankind in a world in the bloom of its youth.  

Death strength ebbs, and his hope with it.  A startled cry breaks from his
lips at the strength of Her hands closing upon his neck.