Death happens every day. She knows this. An empath can’t live every day with everyone else’s emotions crawling in and out of her consciousness, or she goes mad — but the knowledge of it is always there. Life, going on; joy and grief and pain and anger and hate and love. It’s always there.
But sometimes, it takes someone so hard — dying. The absence of it, the grief of it, the shattering of it, it takes them so hard. And she has to hear. The way you can not be hearing the sounds of the road that passes your home, until something goes terribly wrong, and then you can’t NOT hear it.
That’s happening now. Somewhere, nearby, just now, someone has died, and it has ripped apart the folk who cared for that person. It’s a beacon of dark light, loud as a shout. Irresistible.
This is what she’s for: pain, and the helping of it. It’s the only thing she’s for.
She just doesn’t know how, here. All she can do is stand there, because how else do you help strangers other than witness?