[ WP ] `` Those eyes of yours could swallow stars , galaxies and universes . What hope did I ever have ? ''

I have no idea where I'm going with this. > < Inspired also by [ this other prompt ] ( https: //www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/3jl5tq/wp_what_is_death_like_she_feels_like_an_old/ ) and [ norse mythology ] ( http: //www.mythencyclopedia.com/Go-Hi/Hel.html ). 
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'I did n't have a choice to be here, you know', she said,'Not any more than you do.' 
 
 I looked away for a moment, shivers racing through my soul at the strange notion. I had run for a long time in the forest, deep and dark and silent, before she caught me, before I let her reach me despite all the promises I had made to myself. Better an eternity of running, I had thought, among the ruins of my old life frozen as black and white pictures under glass, now just beyond my reach, than some unknowable darkness. But eternity is longer than you think and even free will grows weary, losing its substance and mingling at last with mere stubbornness. 
 
 It was there that she waited for me, patient and ready, sitting on a sunken empty gravestone beside tall dark pine trees, at the top of a cliff that overlooked the sea. 
 
'What happened?', I asked eventually, forgetting for a moment my own dire predicament. 
 
 She did n't say anything for a long while, and when she did the answer she gave was no real answer. 
 
'I did n't make these decisions', she said, her voice implacable and resolute but not unkind, coloured with traces of untold regret.'I did n't make the rules. But people can adapt to almost anything. So did I, and so will you.' 
 
 Dark and small she was, her pale skin drained of blood and her figure outlined against the bleak light of the clouded sky, with the open sea as a backdrop. Her face was undefinable, oblivion and memory, a feeling of déjà vu flickering on and off on the edge of remembrance. 
 
'So, what say you?' 
 
 My first answer was a joyless chuckle. 
 
'What choice do I have, really?' 
 
'Oh, you can keep wandering these forests', she said, as simple information.'Or you could come home with us, the choice is yours. You could meet others there, and our table is always ready.' 
 
'But how long would I stay?', I protested,'How long before I have to leave again?' 
 
'You do n't have to leave', she said, looking thoughtfully out to the waves crashing at the feet of the cliffs below, dying a cyclical, rythmical death,'No one will come to tear you away from here, this I can promise.' 
 
 Absently she caught a blade of grass in her fingers, stopping just short of crushing it. 
 
'What is it you are not telling me?', I asked, unbelieving, relying still on a long habit of suspicion and self-loathing.'Where is the trick?' 
 
'There is no trick', she said, and her voice was like the wind in the leaves in the autumn, like the warm familiar embrace of the earth.'I am death now, and I turn none away.' 
 
 She smiled, her eyes a clear mirror that could catch the light of dying stars, the gentle force of entropy that could swallow time and galaxies, entire universes with a soft glance. Oh, really, what hope did I ever have?
