...La mort et le bucheron...art by MarcSimonetti...io9 writing prompt...

The woodsman stared at Death for a spell.  Death simply stared back.  Despite being a collection of bones and rags, lacking a tongue and any flesh all together, Luthric could read his movements as if he were speaking, You summoned me.  Its tone was nonplussed.  The woodsman could make out that he was wasting his time.  A bout of consumption was making the rounds in Castle Arthrias and the courts nearest its high walls.  Serves them right.  He grimaced for a second, his right eye a flash of temper.  He stocked it away when he realized that Death couldn't make the distinction - the hatred was in his heart.  But here Death was and he would rather die than be wrong.

"I summoned you, that is true.  Yet, you did not have to come to me.  Figuring you are a busy man in high esteem in your world and all afraid of you in this one, I'm thinking you're wasting my time.  At least both of our times, then."

Death broke the intent of his gaze, appeared confused, looking over Luthric at the woodpile, somewhere the light fell into the endless shadow of his sockets.  His head cocked and straightened up to his full height, You...you mean to say that you called me and I'm wasting your time?

Indeed did Luthric mean it: somewhere in the peanut that was his brain, he absolutely believed, to the core of his being that his time was being wasted, "I called you when the wood shifted from my shoulders, I called you when I needed you to help set it aright.  You did not come.  You came after the load fell.  What good does it do me then?"  He waved his hand at the mess.  "You understand how long it takes to set a load and to get it half-way home.  It will take the same time to load it again.  I don't need you now, you may go."  He waved his hand again, this time at the tattered robes of Death.

The latter could not take it anymore.  He rose even higher, as if he was holding some of his power back.  He appeared to grow girth where he did not have it before.  Even his scythe seem to thicken.  His skull, devoid of the emotion of men, took on the colour of anger at least.  He stabbed the staff into the earth and the entire forest shook.  Animals broke from the thickets and the birds from their branches.  Luthric couldn't but shield his head with his arms.

"What's all that for, man?"

I am no man, Luthric Selrach of Arthrias.  I AM DEATH.

"Aye, I know.  I figured by yer wont that you are who you say: bones and all that guff.  And yes I'm of the guild Selrach, but don't say'n that I come from Arthrias."  He spat.  "I don't hold no cause for that town that disdained me."

Listen...

Luthric turned his crooked back and sighed, "Nay, you'd not understand.  I'm a woodsman that no one even knows is here.  I could have died there, that's why I may," he turned and gave Death his right eye, "...may have called upon you in a moment's whim."

Death sighed and seemed to understand Luthric.  He nodded his staff to the lot of wood.  "You're going to help me?  After I've wasted your precious time."

Death sighed once more and rolled his head.  He nodded again to the wood.  Luthric staggered over to it and bent over, awaiting the load.  The shrouded figure hovered toward him and made motions with his hands.

"I'd thank you, but I could have done this myself, you know."  He scowled with the self-satisfaction that all boors hold for themselves when they believe they've gotten over on someone.  Luthric Selrach of Loneliness, I never came here to take you away.

"Yer damn sure of that."  Luthric scowled and waited under the load that slowly fell upon him.  He grabbed out to both ropes that evened its load across his back.  His knees bent with it.  His knees bent even more.  Then Death let the load go.  Luthric felt his back's bones crack under the weight.  The load was made more by thrice.  It's as if he took an entire old beech and laid it across his back.  He saw Death float away from him, ne'er turning back once.  Luthric stumbled forward with the weight: it wouldn't matter which way he leaned, the load was perfectly upon him to crush him if he let it out.  He would die soon.

Death turned and began to fade away.  If a skull could wink, Luthric felt this one would.

La mort et le bucheron by MarcSimonetti on DeviantArt