Everyone knows the tale of the Grim Reaper; however, few know of his young apprentice, Nox.

A young boy, no older than seven years old, cloaked in a poncho forged from the night sky itself. His eyes hollow disks, his skin the sheen of dry bone, he hides himself among lost pets and forgotten toys. If you might ever suspect you catch sight of him wandering through the dusk, be weary of the dark oak shepherd's crook he wields to gather souls for his teacher.

Nox, a rather sensitive child, only has the heart to carry the souls of the weak and elderly. Seniors succumbing to old age, cats who have lived out their last nine lives, those are all fair to him. They've lived out their lives. Seen all to be seen. He couldn't bear to take the soul of a creature with memories still to be made.

But his teacher has decided that day will now come. As his next lesson, Nox must guide the soul of one they call Madeline. The village girl who resides just on the second highest hill.

The shepherd has seen Madeline many times on previous lessons. Her golden halo of hair observed through the window of her house, a guiding light in his treacherous work. He cannot fathom her death, but his teacher will not be taking no for an answer.

Nox knew that the young were not safe from his master's scythe, same as anyone else - but all the same, it lingered in his mind; the unfairness of it.

"Why must the world be this way?" he asked his master once. "Why must the young die alongside the old?"

"It is not for us to question," his master said. "We are beholden to our duty."

And so Nox did his duty: he watched, and he waited.

He watched Madeline sitting around the fire at night with her family, playing games and laughing and helping to clean the table when dinner was finished. She helped with the chores and kept to her studies at the schoolhouse.

Nox longed to tell her that her time was short, that she must see all that she can before he must do his duty and bring her through the veil. He wished so much that he could show her everything there is to see.

But before long, disease grabbed hold of Madeline, as it had so many others, young and old. And yet, somehow, Nox thought that if there were any goodness in this world, she would be spared.

He sat upon a bale of hay and watched the girl as she lay in bed beside her loved ones, fitful and in pain - and his master came to him.

"You are troubled, my apprentice."

Nox averted his eyes. "This night is her last. If only..."

"If only...what?"

Nox hesitated. "If only there were some way to save her."

"Even if there were, she may yet still die before her time. A beast, a disaster, a famine..."

"Still," Nox sighed. "If only she had more time...just a little more time..."

"You and I are timeless, my apprentice. Do you believe us blessed?"

Nox considered his master's words. "I guess not."

"What makes things beautiful is their impermanence," Death said. "What we offer is a gift. And now I leave you with your duty."

A cold wind blew as his master vanished, leaving Nox alone in the night, watching Madeline suffer.

Nox sat with Madeline through the long hours of the night, as he had sat with many before her. When the last candle in her room burned low, he rose from his place by the windowsill and stepped through the wall as smoke passes through a keyhole. He stood at the foot of her bed and watched the shallow rise and fall of her chest, each breath smaller than the last, like a song losing its melody. Her family slept around her, exhausted by their vigil. A mother with her head bowed at the bedside. A younger brother curled in the corner, his knees drawn up to his chest, still clutching the wooden horse he had brought to keep her company.

He raised his shepherd's crook, as he had done so many times before, and held it over the sleeping girl. The dark oak hummed its familiar hum, and the candle flame ceased to flicker, frozen in its last amber breath.

But Nox did not finish the motion.

He lowered his crook, and he sat down upon the edge of the bed, and he did something he had never once done in all his years of service.

He took Madeline's small, fevered hand in his hollow one, and he told her things, soft and unheard, in the way the wind tells things to the wheat. He told her about the morning she was seven years old, when she had released a jar of fireflies into the garden without knowing that he had been watching, and how the light of them had been the only warmth he had felt in a long season. He told her that her laughter carried farther than she knew. That it had reached him even on the darkest roads he had walked.

And then, because he could not help himself, he wept.

Now, it is said by those who study such forgotten things that when Death's shepherd weeps, his tears as time falls, slowly, heavily, each one an age unto itself. And it is said that wherever they land, something is given back that was almost lost.

A single tear fell upon Madeline's brow.

By morning, the fever had broken.

Nox slipped out before the first light touched the hills, his crook resting against his thin shoulder. His master was waiting for him at the crossroads, as his master always was.

"It is done?" Death asked.

"It is done," said Nox, and looked away toward the horizon.

His master studied him for a long moment. "You are not so unlike me," Death said quietly, "as you believe yourself to be."

Nox did not answer. He did not know what his master had seen or had not seen. He did not know if what he had done was right or wrong, only that he could not have done otherwise, and that perhaps that was what it meant to have a conscience: not knowing the answer, and acting all the same.