Chapter Two

I woke up that night, but though I was crying I did not want to wake my parents. I remember that feeling very clearly, somehow- and so I just lay there, gazing at the ceiling with but one image etched against the inside of my eye. It was not that of the rich, high wooden ceiling of my bedroom.

What I saw that night- and many other nights as well- was this. I saw a face- the face which I'd later start labelling as her face- and it scared and fascinated me at the same time. It was not a face of anyone I knew, and yet it was. It is, even after all those years, still hard to explain. And now I think of it, hard to describe as well. I see her face in front of my eyes as I write this, and yet I find it hard to write down any words that will ever do her justice.

Look- she was not beautiful, you see. Let that be clear. She wasn't some kind of idealistic vision of an angel, born inside of the mind of a young child. She was real. Her face was interesting- though I did not realize that as such back then- but not pretty- pale and rather angular as it was. Her eyes were dark green and big, fearful, too- but that was perhaps understandable seeing the circumstances which I would only later understand. Her hair was black, though, and it was thick and very long as well- and the only part of her that I, being a three-year old back then, did not think very frightening, despite its colour.

I wanted to get her face off my mind, but I couldn't.

I did not sleep that night.

-o-

And yet as time passed, I started to get used to her. At first, whenever I woke up after such a dream, I used to pull the thick, tartan blankets over my head and remain hidden under them until dawn- but slowly I started realizing that she would not hurt me. She was sad, yes, and angry as well, but that anger and sadness was not directed at me.

In the end I almost smiled in my sleep as I felt her familiar presence- and yet I didn't. Because with the sympathy and realization also came the worry. I was a serious, calm four-year old by then, and I started pondering. When people cried, they were sad, I had learnt. Mother had cried at the funeral of my Granddad. So the bizarre woman with her green eyes and her angular face was sad- but why?

It would take me many years to find that out- and it would take me even more years to understand it. But one day I would- even as a young child I knew that. One day I would understand it all- and at four years of age, I sincerely looked forward to that day.

-o-

The woman with the green eyes bowed over the parchment in front of her. Her black hair was kept neatly tied against the back of her head by a small, golden, embroidered cap, so it did not bother her, and with a concentrated twitching of the corners of her mouth, she once more dipped her quill in the small pot of ink beside her.

She'd thought about writing a will at first- but bitterly and, unfortunately, realistically, she had realized that despite all her riches and the money she had never wanted, she had nothing to leave her daughter. The girl would have to live life on her own, and despite everything- her status, her money- it would become a dangerous existence too.

And yet the dark-haired woman did write something that night. She did not think she could ever manage to leave the earth behind without at least some material proof of her- relatively short- existence. She had loved life and love too much for that- not without sadness could she say goodbye to the world. She wished she could- she wished she could leave her life behind with the benignity and peace of those who had accepted their death- but at the same time she very well knew that she did not have the temper nor the spirit for such a calm surrender. She had always been a fighter- well, then she would die as a fighter as well; She knew that- she accepted that, but sometimes she wished it could be otherwise.

And with one, soft stroke of the quill in her hand, the woman-in-grey started her last letter.

"Oh Death, rock me asleep."