A figure sat at a desk. It appeared to be thinking, or at least it looked like it was thinking because of its stillness and posture. It was wearing a black robe and sat staring ahead in what looked like thought. It then looked down and continued reading a large black book on the desk that had the appearance of looking like it would weigh more then a lead cinderblock. A few moments later it reached out and picked up one of the many hourglasses on the desk. Being careful not to move any of the sand inside, it then looked at the bottom where a few hastily engraved words said "HANS GRUBS". Hans Grubs had 5 days, 4 hours, 59 minutes and 19 seconds left. It then picked up another hour glass with the inscription "WASANA MI" on it. This hourglass had exactly 9 hours, 21 minutes and 49 seconds. The figure sitting in the chair sighed and placed the first and second hourglasses on the desk before shutting the large book while making sure to place a bookmark on the selected page. There was a few moments of silence before the figure slumped in its chair.

"UGH." The figure said dully as it continued its slouching. The dark robed figure was currently extremely bored and it was having a problem. There wasn't enough pony's dying and apparently he was foolish to think that ALOT more pony's would have been dying then one every five to six days, sure his job was still a full time one because of all the wild life that died all the time but he liked pony's because he could actually talk and have a real conversation with someone. But in equestria, Harmony was everywhere and Harmony made dullness for him because of it keeping a pony alive longer and it made life boring, no not life, DEATH, and Death was tired of doing nothing but reading the five-thousand books he owned in his library all over again, so he did the logical thing and decided to get some more books. Maybe he might even find someway to fix the problem he had currently been having, but first he decided he would take a nap...

Zzzzzzz...

CUCKOO!!!

"GAAH!" Death yelled as he was awoke with a start when the horrible sound cut through the still atmosphere of his sleep, he flailed about angrily searching for the wretched annoying sound that was far too loud and also extremely annoying now as well.

Death eventually found the source of the sound and it turned out to be the CuckooClock on the far wall, the clock had its head poking out and once was was black and looked like a raven but it had been eventually painted pink and now it had the visibly depressing appearance of a squashed flamingo, every so often it would twitch and sort of make the sound of a sink garbage disposal being turned on. To him it was the essence of madness, annoyance, frustration and every other word of the sort, and He hated it.

"WHY?" He simply stated glaring at the clock and it simply responded with a twitch.

"WHY DO YOU NEVER CEASE TO ANNOY ME?" He desperately asked while inwardly hoping that somehow it would actually answer his question.

"Coo?" The clock simply squawked back to him as if it was actually listening to his desperate questions. After a few moments of silence and the occasional glare from death meeting the wall-eyed stare of the clock, he gave in.

"FINE. I GUESS I WILL BE GOING THEN." Death practically yelled at the clock in a angry tone and with that he got up and walked over to the hourglasses to pack the two ones he had examined earlier, He did have to collect Wasana Mi's and in due time Hans Grubs after all so he couldn't be late of course.

Death was about to walk out the door when he noticed he had picked up the wrong hourglass instead of the intended one of Hans Grubs. He frowned or would have if his face was able to. Death almost never made a mistake like that and last time he did was a couple hundred or so years ago and that was a misfortune that did not go unpunished, those unfortunate souls either would wander forever in confusion as to where they were or come back as a undead also just as confused. So he eventually came to the conclusion that he was extra irritated today and had gotten sloppy, he was however glad that he had noticed before he had made the mistake and so without further ado he decided to place the hour glass back on his desk before picking up the one he was supposed to in the first place. Just as he was going to place the hourglass back on the desk, there was the loud sound of the garbage disposal starting up before a loud shrieking noise hit his earholes, causing him to nearly trip in surprise and fall but luckily he managed to catch himself in time by grabbing the front of the desk in front of him, Suddenly in what seemed like horrible slow realization he lifted his hoof to his face and stared at it in horror with his mouth agape realizing that this was the same one he had been holding the unknown persons hourglass in...

Crash!!! was the resounding sound as glass Shattered, Crinkled, Splintered and smashed across the black tile floor, spreading the sands of someones life time everywhere. Then as the last bits of glass settled and the sands of time stopped moving there was silence, quiet pure silence. Death stood stock still for what seemed to him like hundreds of years and after only slightly registering what happened, he quietly walked over to the closet and opened it before then taking out a dust pan and cleaning the shattered remainsoff the floor and dumping the contents into the trash can in the corner. He stood there for a second before slamming the closit door and leaning against while making a clicking sound from his trembling.

"W...WHAT DID YOU... EVEN JUST... DO?" Death quietly whispered to himself. Suddenly his trembling stopped and he slowly looked up at the small bird that had been watching the whole seen from the other side of the room in its small clock house. when it noticed Death staring at him, it decided this would be a good time to retreat into its home. The bird was not fast enough however and was suddenly hit in the face with a large bony hoof significantly squashing its appearance a little which only added to its already crushed look.

After mushing the small bird within a inch of its artificial life, death stopped and decided to push the upset bird back into the doors of its small home. He then concluded that he should definitely try to find out what had happened when the hourglass had smashed on the floor, because honestly he didn't have a clue. It was the first time something like that had happened in his career as death and while he didn't know what happened, he also believed what could have happened had killed that person. I mean it was obvious right? It probably just killed he or she right, of course!

"HA!"

Or did it? He really didn't know... it could've done anything. This has never happened before, not even sense the beginning of creation. Now that he thought about it he was actually kind of surprised he had never happened to drop one in his eons and eons of his life time until now. So now he had no idea what would happen or what it would cause but, there was always the hope that that person died. After awhile of thinking he decided that he would find the person that would probably die and collect them if they did, walking over to the trash bin and opening it, he then took out the base of the hourglass and read the shattered name on it.

The name read: "P NK E DIAN IE"

He didn't have any idea on who this person was from first glance but he knew the middle name was a Dian and he had come for many of the dian family before, they had one common thing among there family, they were all very good at things about rocks. He had never met one who didn't and was waiting for the day he would and while he collected them when they died he had learned a lot of information about rocks that no one needed in there lifetime, unless if you were a dian. He did learned a few cool things every once in a while but not often, what was important now was that he new where to look for the dian who's hourglass had been broken and with that thought in his skull he walked out the door to find the rock farm that the dian's had worked for generations. He would also Reap the two souls thats time had been coming to a close for.

Hans Grubs was asleep when he heard a loud ringing sound, it was his alarm clock. He got up drowsily from his bed and searched for his glasses on the nightstand. eventually after a few moments of blind luck he found them and put them on his small head were he felt they belonged. Now that he could see better, he walked over to the side of his bed and fed the alarm clock, to most this would be strange and definitely not normal but for moles, crickets were a common form of alarm clock. The “Alarm Clock” would rub its legs together and make a ringing sound every morning to wake the mole and in return the mole would feed it. It was a symbiotic relationship of sorts. After the cricket was content and went back to sleep, he clapped three times and suddenly a light flooded the room from a small “Lamp” he had crawling on the ceiling.

Another symbiotic relationship he thought to himself, he fed the lamp too before grabbing his leather jacket with his large claws and putting it on. For breakfast he slurped up a long wet worm and opened the door to the outside of his house, before stepping out however he thought about a lot of his decisions in the last few months. He concluded that his training the bugs to do useful tasks and feeding them in return was a bit of a hobby and to some other moles a obsession and with that he stepped outside. “Outside” for a mole would be another inside for the a pony because of the underground neighborhoods they commonly lived in. The neighborhoods looked like exact replicas of the ones pony's have except there was a roof and a lot more dirt. Outside of these neighborhoods was the pony equivalent of outside but to moles outside of the neighborhoods was space. To a mole going out there was exactly like going into space because as beautiful as it could be with the colors, smells and sunlight, it could also be cold, empty and dangerous.

Strange creatures lurked outside of the neighborhoods and strange giant animals flew in the sky that would without a second thought swoop down and eat you alive. Thats what most of the moles believed but of course there was always a mole somewhere that would go out anyway and either get eaten or comeback terrified. However to most of the moles on the planets surprise, Hans Grubs had come back Rich and that had made moles rethink about never going outside and to Hans that was a good thing. He liked new ideas and all the sorts of fun or not fun results that could happen afterward, however it had turned out that it had been a bigger deal then he realized, after all he had thought, he did go to space. When he was asked about what space was like he had responded with “Alien, Strange and Unimaginably Weird”. This wasn’t apparently what most of the mole reporters had expected or wanted for that matter and after asking a barrage of more questions one had popped up that was actually a good one.

“Did you meet any sentient creatures?” A lot of the moles had stopped there scribbling on there note pads and were staring because of it being such a terrifying thought but at the same time everymole was curious anyway and waited for his response. He remembered the pink haired creature that had taken care of him when he was tired or hurt and for other animals for that matter, After some time of waiting and a few moles in the audience fiddling with there claws, he eventually responded to every ones shock:

“Yes, I did see a sentient creature.”

Everymole was terrified, scared and didn’t know what to think. Some of the adults were not believing what they were hearing, some of the children were in awe and smiling at the possibility of life. It was a new age to everyone, to some he was a hero for what he had done and to others his “ideas” were blasphemous to there religions causing mole uprising. Eventually things started getting out of claw and there were several terrorist mole attacks on some of the more important mole neighborhoods, after that moles had become more afraid but also more imaginative on what space was like. Art had changed from beautifully painted portrates of moles into what moles imagined space being like and the third largest mole neighborhood had allowed some claw picked moles start training in mole combat so that if there was another terrorist mole attack then it could be stopped before moles were hurt. Fighting had not really existed but was invented none the less as they went with the flow of practice fighting. Eventually the mole world was so different that if you went back in time, everymole would have been yelling at there future selves about what were they even doing!

After Hans Grubs had stepped out of his door and had walked down the hard dirt road, he thought more about his family and how they had been proud of him but also sad about what had happened with the mole world’s bad reaction. He thought about how he had stopped going up into space, how he had started training bugs as a hobby to get rid of a lot of his stress about the whole thing while he waited for it to blow over. Grubs assumed the world hadn’t been ready and it was his fault that it paid the price for his mistakes. Suddenly he felt a pain in his chest as he continued walking down the road and he fell onto his small nee’s. As he scrunched up holding his chest he knew what was happening, he was dying of old age and it was happening right now on the road. He had always thought he would die with his famly around him. Hans Grubs was not surprised really, he had lived for 6 years and five months which was ancient for a mole. Former hero and space explorer Hans Grubs with his last breaths prayed that his family would do alright without him and with that thought he died.

-

Hans Grubs woke up feeling amazing. He had never felt this good except for when he was a child and like a child he ran around in a small circle about 60 times for the fun of doing it before actually thinking about what was going on. Last thing he remembered was himself dying which to him was a real shame that he couldn’t have at least said goodbye to a few of his old friends first. However he was interrupted by the sound of clattering and turned around, to see the most horrible sight! It was entirely made out of bones except for the black robe that covered a large portion of it and it was holding a large scythe of impossible sharpness but besides its horrible visage, it was apparently struggling to hold the scythe with its long bony claws that it apparently had no idea how to use.

“GAH! I ALMOST GOT IT, DAMN I WAS SO CLOSE!”

Suddenly it didn’t really look that scary to Hans now that he new Death had a hand problem of some sort and was struggling to even hold his scythe let alone control his hands at all…

“AGH! STOP POKING ME IN THE EYE!”

“Ahem?” Hans Grubs coughed out loud to get Deaths attention and after a few seconds more of him struggling to control his hands, he looked up finally noticing the mole that had been waiting patiently all this time. death suddenly looked quiet embarrassed about his difficulty with holding the scythe.

“ERM… HI” Death mumbled looking down at the scythe he had dropped on the floor in his attempts at holding it.

“SORRY THAT YOU HAD TO SEE THAT. I NEVER QUIET GOT USED TO BEING A MOLE YET.”

“I can see that. Now are you going to kill me or what?” He said exasperatedly to Death. Death looked a little upset after he said “kill” but after a few moments he sighed and picked up the scythe with a little less difficulty and wobbling over to grubs he held the scythe high in the air before swinging it down and taking the mole to the next life, and with that Hans Grubs vanished.

Grumbling a few curse words, Death tried to continue holding the scythe but dropped it again onto the floor and then just stood there staring at it.

After a few minutes longer Death took the end of the scythe in his mouth and started dragging it to his next person to collect.

Author's Note

Huzzah! Here it is and this is my first attempt at a story!
Hope you enjoy!

Please submit your thoughts on it below in the comments, it would really help!