The Lie of Kindness

Fool. What they think; what I am. A road to nowhere. Warned, again and again: the woods too cold, too dark, so deep in winter. None left now to show me the way.

Warmth. A dream, forgotten in the dark, where the trees whisper, the shadows smile. Shivering, entranced by the fire...by faces I once knew, the lie of kindness.

Whispers on the wind, laughter beneath the earth. A hole in the path, eyes in the dark below. Flying, though eyes and laughter follow, though the dark will never let me go.

Flying, a phantom himself; something ragged, something bleeding. “Get out of here, fool.” The shadows follow.

They see. Light dying at my back, day a forgotten dream. The shadows I trail; the blood and pain; what the wild will love me for, when all else is gone.

Tomorrow...if tomorrow ever comes; if there ever was such a thing as dawn or light, maybe they'll find me. Or the night and the woods will go on forever, until I'm just another shade; bones in the boughs.

“No one would dare,” he said. Now I know why; the spirits of the Wild Wood following, mad invitation in their eyes.

“Soon you shall forget...” So the cold moon sings. How can I believe her, after what her children have become, the feasts they hold in her name..?

Rising...a frozen, breathless thing. Laughing with the shadows, no longer afraid. A new terror for the meek to tell tales of, to appal the children of day.