“I don’t think I could ever get used to this.”

A skeletal hand rests on my shoulder and squeezes. “You will, in time. This is your first—you are bound to feel something—but after your fifth or sixth,”

My guide pauses, their black hooded cloak flapping in the stifling heat, scanning the horizon, the destruction. “Well, after then,” They turn to me, nothing but two golden orbs beneath the hood, just like me. “You understand you are here to do a job, that there is no time to feel anything. That it gets... easier.”

I bob my head, but I don't believe any of what they have said is true. How could any of this become easier?

Rubble litters the ground, crumbled and crushed. Grey smoke billows from one of the many damaged buildings, spiralling high, twisting to join the heavy cloud that already blankets the sky.

Flames spit from cracked, glassless windows, bodies of the injured lay, resting against slabs of broken walls and roofs. People, fragile humans, hurry about, yelling, frantic in their search for their loved ones, neighbours, even strangers, people they had merely passed on the street.

An earthquake had shattered the town, along with the lives that lived there.

My guide touches my shoulder again and leads me around a collapsed wall of white plaster—my feet leave no footprints in the dust.

A mobile phone lays before me, a deep crack lining the screen, its once pink and fluffy case now matted and dirty.

It begins to ring; the tune drowned out by the surrounding screams and shouts. The caller ID reads ‘Mum’, a parent desperately wanting to hear from their child to know they are safe.

I wonder where they are and if they know their mother is looking for them.

My guide tugs my shoulder again, over to a crowd who conceal something on the ground.

A dusty white sheet covers a body, a body that is so small, so broken; it hurts to look at—my guide points at it, and my chest tightens.

“They are just a child,” I say somberly, watching the low, trembling rise and fall of their chest.

“You have to. There is a natural order. If you don't, somebody else will have to die,”

I hesitate, then reach my hand to the child’s damaged form, my fingers cold, their body already colder. I close my eyes—tingle's shiver up my arm, moving deep into my soul, and I reopen my eyes to see the child's last breath shudder from their torn lips.

“That was horrible,” I mumble.

“Yes,” Is all my guide says; before they move on, the bottom of their onyx cloak floating like mist over the fallen wreckage.

Someone cries out, and the crowd parts as a man push through, his face smeared with blood, dirt, sweat, his arms waving wildly above his head. He yells again, shouting a name that means nothing to some but everything to another.

A small boy appears from behind a group of people; tears streak his round face, and a drop of red drips down the brown skin on his leg.

The man stumbles to the ground, his mouth wide in a silent cry, his arms out wide, stretching, reaching for the boy. A cheer rises from everybody watching as the boy hurries forward, his shoeless feet slapping over the dust, jumping over the rubble. Their bodies collide with an audible thump, the small boys head, buried, nestled into the crook of the man's neck.

“See,” my guide says, “happiness can be found.”

That’s not happiness, I think; that’s relief. Something families shouldn't have to feel. They shouldn’t have to worry about if they will ever see their loved ones again; they shouldn't have to hold one another so tightly they leave marks.

My guide nudges me. “I know what you are thinking, but some things can’t be stopped; some things have to happen. The best we can do in these times is help ease the pain of those suffering.” They hold out their skeletal hand for me to take. “Come.”