LJIdol Week 12 - Home (based on the prompt salty)

Based on The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

They played for our souls, Death and Life-in-Death. Diced and paid us no mind. We were as nothing to them. When we play at dice, we care for our stakes, worry lest we lose too much. But our souls, though dear to us, were as nothing to Death and Life-in-Death. And so we watched, adrift in becalmed seas.

We’d spent the weeks prior tormenting one of our number for the death of the albatross, spent the days on our knees, praying for salvation. And now there was nothing to do but wait, and watch the game.

We none of us wanted to die. But they played on, and one by one we dropped, as Death won each soul. Each soul but one. The last life went to Life-in-Death, and only as we died, as we watched him not dying did we realize our escape. For in death there is freedom, in death there is salvation.

In Life-in-Death, there is nought but wandering and grief.

And so I cry salty tears for the mariner, enough to keep the seas lapping at the shore, enough to keep the tides flowing, and enough to one day lead him Home.