dying

And we surrender the stage to those pale horse riders.

It is in the nature of the power I have been given over the earth to be personal. Every life that ends on my watch is a life I come to know intimately. There are individual voices in the anguished cries that fill the world these days, dying of sword, famine, and plague. I can hear all of them.

Perhaps there was a time when I could have been described as compassionate, but I don't remember it now. How could I grant someone mercy when I've seen all the little murders they commit day by day? How can I do anything but what I am meant to do--bring their lives to an end.

I've read once that justice is everyone being treated the same in the end. I suppose there is justice in that way--in the end nobody gets away with it. In the end even the worst things people can do are lost forever, until there's not even a memory left, and they are well and truly dead. That's the justice I bring.