She was quite scared. The other children were playing, and they took no notice of her. But she sat in the corner, and the ground stirred, a lazy late-morning yawn of the shadows that chilled her to the bone. On her lap sat Mom's lunch in a paper bag, containing peanut butter and jelly and apple slices turned soft brown by the oxidation. Shaking in fear, she forced herself to eat one. Then another. Until the juice-stained baggy was empty, and all that was left was the sandwich, so pliable like wet sand at the beach, or maybe tissue and cartilage.
Sensing the shadow beneath her legs gathering its senses to speak into her ear the next message, she crouched and allowed a fiber of black light, thinner than a strand of her fine blonde hair, to whip across her cheek. It cut like piano wire, and it drew blood. The thing whispered, incomprehensible playground chatter playing tunelessly across her brain: nagathlsanayandakraggar. A child's excited babble, or an adult's faraway reprimand, she did not now. But it spoke clear, at least, in her own head, what it was she must do.
Now it wanted to leave and watch.
Anaiasalmnagurdermurgurder.
Yes, they were playing now, in the sun. It's touch pressed with the utmost caution against her temples, feeding her and feeding from her. A quicksilver sensation, like an egg cracked across her skull, filtered softly in and out against the din, sun-shadows making it wince, and her wither.
Al tyem kilkilikill.
"Of course." None would dare defy it. "Yes, I will... yes, I promise. Cross my heart, okay?"
And then, when the thin branch retreated down to its hiding place beside the bench, the untouched sandwich probed by curious flies, she picked up the ball from where it had rolled into the gutter. Lovingly, she brushed the mud off of it, throwing it back to the loud boy. Up in the sky, it was evening, and the moon, new and devoid of light, crept slowly amidst the gossamer clouds and the flight of pale-winged Staravia. All the midnight creatures were singing as she touched them, and the shadow greeted them in response.
An odd ebullience rose up in her small body as they carted her away to the island bathed in moon shadow, the presence trailing behind. Yes, she was looking at the moon now. Yes, she was free.
