The Miracles of Reaper and Lil Fiend (possibly part of a series)

(Another post inspired by one of Evlyn Moreau's illustrations. Support her patreon. It'll do you good).

If you’re from around here you have seen this pair. Graffiti-artists love painting the working stiff grim reaper with the larged-eyed imp perched on her head. Scholars say they symbolize the unpredictability of life and the grim certainty of death. Others say they’re just unlikely friends. More and more people say they have seen them out there. Resting by the batting cages at sunset, keeping lumbering pace with a speeding Lexus, or coming out of the neighbor’s house as you rush to catch the bus.

Used with permission.

If you’re from around here you won’t be surprised that people have begun pertitioning them for aid. If you have Death and the Devil on your side you’ve got it made, right?

Murder, she gloat

This miracle is the perfect symbiosis between the gravity of Death and the cruel mischief of the Devil. Everyone in a city-wide radius will feel certain that a person you designate is dead. Murdered in fact. You can’t specify a culprit, but people will be only too happy to jump to conclusions.

In order to work this miracle you need to kill something. It must have living kin, whatever it is. It must have a name.

Karoshi

A Japanese term meaning something like “death by overwork”. While we fear death, we generally work until we drop. Almost as if something was more important. This miracle gives you the work-capacity of ten people. Ten people exactly like you in fact. It lasts for ten hours, but takes ten years off your life. Aren’t those the gray, decrepit ones anyway?

Ridealong

Reaper is not Death Herself, just a small death. Still she has a wide range, and she travels at terminal velocity. Death is always on time after all. If you ask nicely Reaper might take you along to the next death. You arrive instantly, but it always feel like half an hour. During those subjective 30 minutes you must of course entertain Lil Fiend.

As A Dodo

Life keeps giving Death love-tokens. So many creatures large and small have been lovingly crafted by Life and now while away eternity on Death’s infinite, yet crowded, mantel. Lil Fiend’s proximity to Death puts him in a unique position to ‘borrow’ something from the legions of extinct creatures. A mammoth, a cynodont, a unicorn, a Neanderthal… the list is practically endless.

Of course you do not get to control that creature. It doesn’t belong to you any more than it does Lil Fiend. It’s just sorta let loose in the world near your current whereabouts.

Cry Uncle

El Tío (The Uncle) is a demon which protects miners. He is primarily petitioned in Bolivia, and not generally allowed above ground. In order to get Lil Fiend to call on his uncle, you must gift him copious amounts of cigarettes, drugs, candy, alcohol and a slaughtered llama (a sheep will do in a pinch). In return El Tío will cause a cave-in for you. There is no guarantee that anyone is caught in the cave-in, of course, or that anyone will be trapped.