***THE LAST FROZEN THOUGHTS***
OF RUDY STIENER.
"Why does it hurt so much to see her hurt?"

Rudy could barely stand to watch Liesel. She's kissed him. And declared her love. He didn't like it. Maybe, if she hadn't called him Jesse Owens, he would have accepted it, maybe if she hadn't said it with a heavy heart and a broken mind, he would have believed it.

He didn't want to keep watching. However, he did. He knew he would regret not looking away but also that would regret it most if he did.

***WHAT DEATH TOLD RUDY***
WHEN HE STARTED CRYING.
"It kills me sometimes, how people die. "

"I wasn't crying because I was dead." Rudy told death when he had asked. He hadn't known he, or it, had been close enough to see. But he guessed it was something he should have expected. Death was always a lot closer than everyone thought.

"Then why were you crying?"

"I was crying because she was hurt. Liesel was hurt and it made me cry"

***WHAT DEATH TOLD RUDY***
"everyone hurts"

***WHAT RUDY REBUTTLED WITH***
"Yes, but not everyone should."

Neither one of them spoke a word after that, for the first thirty seconds. Death broke the silence first, unable to make out more colors.

"I know what it feels like, you know? To have loved and lost."

Rudy wasn't sure if Death was lying or not. How could death have a heart, if it broke so many others?

"Who was she? The lucky saumensch you loved and lost."

"She was life, Rudy. I fell in love with life just as you fell in love with Liesel. You would have loved her. She's been everywhere I've ever been."

*** A SMALL FACT ABOUT LIFE***
at the mention of Life the sky went dead.

"So why did you lose her?" Death took a long time to answer; Too long.

"When you put life and death in the same place together, something is bound to happen to one of them. Obviously, something happened to her"

"Something like what happened to Liesel and me?"

"Precisely" Death answered "But I don't think of her much anymore, I'm sad to say that so much death has made me forget life.

"So what do you remember?"

"I remember as much about her as you remember about Liesel" Death said and would not say more. Death left right then, He had a job to do and it had been a long while since he had been everywhere.

Rudy wasn't sure where to go then. He didn't know how to look for Liesel, he wasn't sure if he even could, so he dedicated his hours to remember everything about her. Because he was now Death and Liesel was Life.

*** A SMALL FACT***
Rudy would not let himself forget.

He remembered how the fruit stealing turned into bread giving. And how he'd become the boy with hair like lemons, and how he had been saying goodbye without even knowing it. He remembered Arthur and he remembered Christmas. He remembered the Amper River.

He remembered something else, and he said it out loud this time to see if it would make it seem as real as it felt.

"I remember it hurt"

It still does.