The Locket
He'd always had the locket. He couldn't remember a day its gold chain hadn't been wrapped around his long neck.
It was important to him somehow, he just couldn't remember why. A girl's picture was inside. She was a cute little thing with wide eyes and glossy black hair. She almost looked like him. If he hadn't known better he would have said the little girl was his daughter.
But that was impossible. He'd been around for almost as long as there had been people to be afraid. He was Fear personified; the Nightmare King; the Boogieman! Pitch Black scared children for kicks, why on Earth would he have one of his own?
Yet, he could never bring himself to get rid of the thing. He'd fist the accursed locket up and be ready to toss it into the eternal darkness of his lair when he'd remember the inscription on the inside of it.
"I love you, Daddy."
The message had been engraved into the opposite side of the locket in a gentle, curving script. The girl had obviously had help. Based on the picture of her, she would have been far too young to hold an engraving tool steady enough to make the inscription herself.
He'd lower his hand, open up the locket, and stroke the well-faded picture with his fingertips. Maybe that's why he kept it. He'd been alone for so long, that the little message of affection warmed his heart and made him feel less alone, even if the message was intended for someone else.
She looked so familiar to him. If only he could place her.
She couldn't be his child. He wasn't like that pesky Jack Frost. He'd never been human. He'd been made when humans had started jumping at their own shadows and had started weaving tales of a dark demon who lived in the shadows. He'd come to life when enough people started believing the tales.
He'd never been anything more than the Boogieman. Hadn't he? Then why did his dark heart seem to break a little when he looked at the girl's picture? Why did he feel a tear streak down his pale cheek?
Alone in her grove, Mother Nature turned away from her looking glass pool and the image of Pitch Black that reflected back at her from it. With tears in her eyes, she whispered to the wind, "I love you, Daddy."
Oops! I made angst. "Rise of the Guardians" is not mine. If it was, I'd be making a boatload of money right now. I make no profit from this. I just had an idea and I needed to write it out.