I REMEMBER WHEN ALL THIS WILL BE AGAIN
-Terry Pratchett, “Reaper Man”
~~~
Death stood in the void, watching the lights of the universe go out one by one. Untold eons passed as the world continued its inevitable march to death. She wished, every once in a while...
But there had been no way to explain the timelessness of the world beyond the living, or how Death was meant to be alone, and that at the end of time, she must be alone by herself. It had been a little lie offered to her companion, but one that still weighed on her. The knowledge that Trixie likely would have forgiven her, or had received some compensation for this absence, was only a small comfort.
Life had come to an end, but all things strive. Stars were a life, of a sort, and contained potential to birth life again. Even specks of dust, if gathered enough, could create stars. And so it was that Death waited until the end, when all hope that life could ever be, had gone.
She waited in her true form, because there was no creature to be driven mad by the sight of Death, and a shape other than her own was confining, restricting. There was something exhilarating about reaching out to either end of the universe with her wingspan, one of the few joys she was left.
Time passed, as it was wont to do, both impossibly quickly and maddeningly slow, impossible to explain to a creature that lived and died in a mere ten thousand years. And slowly, the stars died, and the dust drifted apart, and Death came to all corners of existence.
At last, there was nothing left, and then Death folded her wings around the universe and allowed it to die.
She stared at the emptiness left afterward; how long she spent was a concept that no longer had meaning. Eventually, she realized there was something wrong. She knew everything had died, but there was the strange, nagging sensation that she had missed something, that somewhere there still existed something that needed to pass on.
The eons passed (or perhaps only a moment did), and Death mused upon the strange feeling of wrongness. She looked back upon her existence, but found her mind lingered on the moments of kindness she had been shown, the friends she had, however briefly, made, instead of the source of the disharmony.
When she found a thought fixed on Trixie, who had been, after all, her longest friend, Death almost laughed.
To have a personality was to have an existence, a life. And all life must end.
Indeed, as she looked closer, Death found the part of her that had known and loved the creatures that had lived in Equestria. It was a strange sensation, to fold up a part of herself with her wings, like trying to look at one’s own eyes without a mirror.
But it was the Duty, to bring an end to everything that must die, and so in time, she sent on the fragment of a spirit, that had earned a heart and given her name, that had shared a life of sorts and experienced the magic of friendship.
And once that spirit was gone, Death felt a shift in the balance of the infinite emptiness, and a speck of dust floated from nothingness to being. She smiled, as best as a manifestation of primal forces can, for this was her purpose. To clear the way of the old, so the new could come.
She wondered if it would be ponies again. She had quite liked the ponies. But so too, had she been fond of those little girls, and that house full of humans’ imaginings...
In the end, the fun was in discovering what, exactly, would come next.
Death crouched and watched the dancing of newly-born motes of dust, waiting for the world that was to come.