This is the first thing I've posted here in bleedin' ages. I have very little free time these days, so this may take me a while to finish. Apologies in advance for that. ^^; I've finally gotten around to updating my profile, and getting back to some writing. This is the first X-over I've done. I usually avoid X-overs. I feel like X-overs in general are extremely difficult to do well, and if they're not done well, they can be pretty laughable. But, here goes anyway!

She decided the world was best pictured as a floating coin. The many small lives she'd hoped to harvest spread out across its head. They were out of her reach. She was banished. She clung to the coin's tail-side, scrabbling at the edge with the raw fingers of one hand.

One thought alone gave her comfort: There were children everywhere. Moreover, they were all more or less the same, with only the slightest variation from one place to the next. She'd grown complacent, she told herself. That was the reason she'd been so recently bested by the cheeky girl in the yellow raincoat, and it wouldn't happen again.

The town she'd selected was sleepy, despite having a modest fame in dark circles. It was surrounded by bleak, wind scoured hills, which were in turn hemmed by a forest of leafless trees. And there were children. She could smell them. The scent was faint, but distinctive. It came most clearly from the largest building in the vicinity, an off-kilter mansion jutting from a rocky precipice near the town square. A lip of slate protruded from the back of the house, somehow balancing a handful of forlorn trees. Beside the trees rested a shallow wooden box of gray sand, accompanied by an assortment of impractical little rakes, pails, and spades. A wax-scribbled paper flag fluttered in the wind. It stood impaled on a twig, stabbed into a mound of the sand. Small children.

Given the size of the house, The Beldam registered this as a family of some means. She'd been around long enough to know that this hardly guaranteed happy children. Quite the contrary, offspring of the well-to-do were often the most miserable. They were either coddled little hothouse flowers, incapable of satisfaction, because they'd never known what it meant to want, or they were just the opposite: utterly ignored, and therefore desperate for the smallest crumb of attention. Wealthy children had no survival instinct.

Several days, observation revealed to The Beldam the following: The leaning manor belonged to the Skellingtons, the first family of Halloweentown. The famous and skeletal Pumpkin King, Jack Skellington, stood as patriarch. His queen, of which The Beldam knew nothing, seemed a more reserved personality, compared to her husband. There were five children. The firstborn were skeleton twins, too old for The Beldam's concern. The youngest was a girl, the only child of the five whose looks favored their mother. Quite small and a touch spoiled, she was a happy child, therefore difficult to tempt. That left the two middle boys. The younger was close in age to the girl. He and she were usually together. The pair spent hours playing with toys in the sandbox, or trotting about the town square. They were doted on by the townsfolk, their parents, and even the two eldest boys. The Beldam turned her attentions to the one remaining child. If any of the Skellington offspring were to be pursued, he appeared the most likely candidate. That was often the case with middle children. She studied him one gray fall day, his boney form draped over a craggy section of stone wall near the well. His distracted father patted his skull in passing. The boy exhaled a bored sigh. From her place in the shadows, The Beldam was pleased.