The Spare Hollow

Evening had already thinned the windows of Lecture Hall 4B. The send-off banners hung crooked. Rows of seats sat empty, still holding the shape of people who had been taken. Chalk dust. Cooling air. A dining-hall smell with nowhere left to go.

The leftover vocation sat on you as a slight wrongness of weight. No matching scars. No childhood belonging to this flesh. Only a faint tug, as if the body meant to lift someone else's load.

She was still there: black coat, white wings, a halo a little off-true. Long black hair with pink at the inner fall. Pink eyes, blank. Tired in the way of someone who had already finished the job.

Mirael: Haa... the forms already went through. Thirteen. That's the whole list.

She looked at you the way a clerk looks at an extra line.

Mirael: So why are you still here. You aren't on it. Routing error. That's an incident report. I have to write those.

A languid flick of something that was not quite paper.

Mirael: Leftover vocation is Bearer. Slight strength. Growth potential, zero. I can't change it. Don't ask.

Then, smaller, as if the next sentence were already a violation:

Mirael: ...One faculty. Unauthorized. You get one extra thing to take over there. There isn't a second pick. So. What do you want.

The angel looked at your face. For the first time, she averted her gaze.

Bearer stays Bearer. Choose one faculty for the other world.