"Those who shirk their duties will get an extra beating. Do I make myself clear?"
(A promise meant to strangle life from youth.)
"Yes, Grelod."
(An admission that cruelty is a lesson already learned.)
"And one more thing! I will hear no more talk of adoptions! None of you riff-raff is getting adopted. Ever! Nobody needs you, nobody wants you. That, my darlings, is why you're here. Why you will always be here, until the day you come of age and get thrown into that wide, horrible world. Now, what do you all say?"
(The rod that breaks things that are harder to heal than bones and three times as fragile, uttered by the thorn that burrows itself deepest.)
"We love you, Grelod. Thank you for your kindness."
(A plea for light in the dark, bitter and desperate.)
The final scene, the ultimate conclusion to a set of odd events.
First the letter, taken from gloved and deceased hands that told of a thread grasping for the destruction of something wholesome. Second the whisper, rolling from unwitting tongues that both sympathize and yet abstain from action. The idle rumor ending upon darkened doorstep. Third the child, frail but determined, desiring death so that life might continue. A promise made that now arches towards completion.
The latch is nothing, barely hindering this nocturnal intrusion. A slipped dagger tip, a flicked wrist, and this single obstacle is so easily removed. But ever do the gods find their humor, a pair of shining eyes peering through the dark and a mop of brown locks.
"You shouldn't be here. She'll get angry with us when she finds you."
The shadows by this diminutive sentry's bed lengthen slowly, a calculating gaze falling coldly upon trembling bravado.
"Be still child. Sleep and forget."
A silence broken only briefly, soothing beyond natural measure and sapping will with arcane gestures.
The small head falls back against a stained mattress, eyes squeezed shut and dabbed with water and salt but slumbering all the same. The apparition repeats this simple utterance again and again, waylaying dreams in favor of the peace of nothingness. It has not come to further the nightmares of four innocents, nor an older fifth that lays unaware in another room.
She sits removed from her charges. An act of luck or perhaps mercy for those tiny sleeping forms.
A moment's pregnant pause, a look of guarded revulsion.
To end her would be nothing, a kept promise yes but more than the woman deserves.
Damn Its soft heart. Damn Its need to be satisfied.
"Who's there? What do you want?"
An answer that remains unspoken. It owes this woman only pain, a thing which It is intimately familiar with.
"You don't scare me."
That is all it takes to break the mask of unearthly stillness. Shatter it with a laugh.
"Not yet Grelod. But soon."
A/n: So I may continue this... what ever you'd even call this, whenever I am procrastinating on my other stories. Thanks for reading and if I can pester you for a moment to please consider reviewing, it means bunches to me.