Understanding the Death-Scent... a Reaper Road brief

As the wind shifted, the scent became apparent to her. It preceded any visual cue of Death. This wasn't the smell of blood or decaying flesh, but rather the aroma of newly disturbed soil. Like a grave that'd been dug but then opened up to rainfall. A cloying sweetness followed, thick and heavy like spoiled things left to rot undisturbed. Then came the foul smell of flesh, unceasingly roasting under the sun. It left a metallic, nauseating taste clinging inside her mouth. It was like the lingering, intense sensation of biting your tongue so hard that it kept oozing. She had smelled dead deer on the side of the road in Iowa before. This smell, though, was different and hungry. As if it was waiting for...something else.

Death itself didn't smell like anything. Spirits that crossed The Veil were usually organic and quiet. Gentle, like falling leaves in a river, and consumed by the flow. Death- Scent remained when something prevented it from reaching the final destination. If something kept it from completing its cycle, she could immediately tell. To Nova, it smelled like theft. It was the smell of unfinished goodbyes, journeys interrupted, and souls that couldn't move on. 

She didn't hunt people who died. She hunted offenses against Death itself. Things that twisted the usual order and kept the dead from their passage.