Disclaimer: I neither claim ownership of the characters or ideas of Avatar: the Last Airbender,nor profit from the posting of this fic.
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The Face-Stealer
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And so to punish the flesh-eater they stripped him of his face and gave him the mask of a woman to wear over his bones. His limbs split into a thousand needles like a splintered branch and though he wept for the pain they said to him, This is only a fraction of the pain you have caused, eater-of-flesh. And they sent him to the darkest place of the world of spirits, where no man could fill his gut.
How hungry he was there in the dark. So hungry, clicking his many needle feet on the stones of the earth. A thousand-thousand years, and how empty was his gut, how stark the bones of his face.
What had he to do there in the dark?
He listened, and learned, and with the passing of another thousand-thousand years he sent out the faintest of whispers: come to me, child. Beloved child. Wanted child.
Listen. Do you hear him?
He calls to you.
Follow his whispers to the darkest place of the world of spirits. He calls: precious child, darling child. Go to his cave. What is there to fear?
He comes to you with the soft clatter of needles on stone. His face is so beautiful. So white, so smooth. Such red lips, such dark eyes.
Child, he says. Child, how soft you are, how plump.
Child, he says. Child, how sweet you are, how kind.
Child, he says. Soft child. Sweet child. Give me your face for I am hungry, so hungry.
He drops his mask.
Child, he says. How loud you scream, child. How your mouth twists, child.
He breathes in your skin, eats up your bones. He is hungry, so hungry. The sweet weight of your eyes, the length of your tongue, the tiny folds of fat that line your mouth: how tender, he says, how delicious. He fills his belly.
Child, he says.
My child.