<blockquote>Death paused. Death really didn’t have time to pause because there was so much work to do: but Death had discovered long ago that it could make its own time. Souls didn’t particularly suffer if it was slow to collect them. But sometimes they wandered off and then there were ghosts and it hated to chase down ghosts if they were happy and weren’t causing any problems—
Anyway. Death paused. This particular soul was curled up like a cat while it waited, and blinked and stretched and demurred when Death caught up to it. “But I’m waiting for my friend.”</blockquote>