Prologue:
"You can't think that I'll stay there for very long. Little girls don't believe in the boogeyman forever." Pitch snapped irately to the sky. The moon loomed high and large, contradicting everything Pitch said.
"Don't think some child will change what I am." Pitch said angrily. "I'll go, but believe me, Old Friend, nothing will change but that little girl. She'll turn into something darker in my presence, and I know how much you treasure pure children." Pitch turned and dissolved into the dark.
"I don't know if there's anyone out there," Little Cally Moonborne prayed into the moonlight. "But I would appreciate if someone would listen please." She closed her eyes tightly because somehow she knew that prayers worked better when you had your eyes closed. "I would like someone to come and watch over me. Sometimes there are scary things and I would like someone to help me be brave please." Cally resituated herself on her little knees next to her bed and clasped her hands together because she had remembered that was important too. "I don't need an angel either, if you don't have any to spare. Tyler at school said there aren't angels anyways and that if there were they wouldn't help a stupid little girl like me…and I," Cally looked up as a slight summer breeze ruffled her curtains. "I just don't want to disappear like the little girl on TV did. Daddy said she was kidnaped and that bad things happened." Cally closed her eyes again not wanting to cry and not sure what else a seven year old could say to God, or even if God was there listening. She wanted to believe, she really did, but Mommy never said she had to. Daddy said that he stopped going to church a long time ago. Cally thought maybe God had disappeared. All she knew was she needed something to believe in. She didn't know that she needed someone to believe in her too.
Pitch stood in the shadows of the little girl's room. She was praying beside her bed, eyes clamped shut and hands pressed together.
"Is this what you wanted me to see?" Pitch snorted at the moon that hung outside the window like a ghost. "A little girl looking for God?" Pitch chuckled darkly.
"I promise I'll never stop believing if you send someone." She said wiping at the tears that were leaking from her little shut eyes. "I'll believe forever, I promise." Pitch frowned at this oath. She was too young to know what "forever" meant, let alone to swear something forever. Pitch watched her get up off of her knees and pull down her little lacy-white nightdress. She then turned to the shadow where he stood and looked straight through him. Pitch cursed under his breath, he used to be powerful, feared, now look at him, forced to babysit some child.
"I hope you're happy, Old Friend." Pitch lamented to the moon as he slipped behind a cloud. The little girl climbed into her bed and sat there watching the dark for something to appear, waiting for some answer to her ridiculous prayer. When she finally fell asleep, cast away from wakefulness by the Sandman's golden sand, Pitch waited and touched the gold, turning it black with a nightmare. It was all he could do to pay the moon back for his pain. Pitch wouldn't change who he was for anyone, let alone a small girl who was so quick to so quick to nightmares.