"Sweet Mother,"

(A child's desperate plea.)

"Sweet Mother,"

(A paused visitant's reminiscing acknowledgement.)

"Send your child unto me, for the the sins of the unworthy,"

(Condemnation fervored from lips that the grace of innocence has left abandoned.)

"Must be baptized in blood and fear."

(Agreement empathized in a moment of inhuman curiosity by one who has no reason to make themselves known but is compelled to do so.)

"I knew you'd come."

It may have been curiosity, or perhaps an opportunity that glimmered too sweetly that brought these two to this single moment. This atramentous affair is one of a youth's errant assumption and a monster's silence forming falsehood. A lie whose tendrils thicken as brown eyes rimmed red spill liquid hope into the robes of a masked eidolon. The candles encircling the room do not pierce this deception and there is no one to correct the misconception, the only witness deceased and stolen before burial, and thus it continues.

"I waited so long, praying and stabbing over and over." It is a lament that precedes a tear soaked story that leaves its teller trembling and vacant. Desolation has turned this youth from the light, his seclusion a sacrifice in the face of misery, but now there is company for that melancholy. Company that pats his head and listens to his every word intently. He confesses everything in hopes that the figure he clutches at with death scented hands will understand… will take up his cause.

The apparition says nothing, for it was not its desire nor intent to ascribe itself this mantle. It came here seeking another… seeking the very being it has now been mistaken for, the last thread from which a lethal legacy yet lingers. But the voluminous hood inclines in acceptance, its wearer ever patient and always adaptive. It will undertake the task he has asked of it and bide its time, for sooner or later it will get what it wants.