Author's Note: I recently just binged the show and wanted to do a little piece because honestly, I couldn't resist. I wanted to work on a small project. Although I included a main OC, I'll try to write in the character POV'S in later chapters as the story is not completely OC-driven - so you have your typical pairings.

Also I really suck at summaries.

There are six who have made encounters with me. Or rather, six who have made exchanges.

One sought to pour her love into her child.

So I took her womb.

The other beheld his sought out future.

So I took his sight.

The other wished to feel his mother's warmth in her caress.

So I took his body.

The other desired to leap towards their mother, and bask in their brother's embrace.

So I took his leg.

And I took his arm.

It is a cool, quiet night in Dublith. The only sounds that befalls on Rumi Cooper's ears are the running of the tap and clanking of spoons beneath her, the warm presence of her children playing from her left, and on the right is silence. A queerily peaceful silence that she had hoped for which was the absence of her fervently preoccupied husband. A sigh escapes her as she watches from out the kitchen window - how the vast field stretches towards the horizon and how the dry grass dances underneath the starry autumn sky.

Even after finishing up she finds herself gazing through the glass. Everything seems so quiet outside, as if the world is still and empty, save for the graceful sway of the grass. It is so eerie, yet simultaneously so peaceful. A sigh escapes her while a squeal emits from one of her playing children. She turns around, a hand on her hip to assert her authority yet a warm look in her eye.

"Oye. You two. Let's see which one of you can run the fastest to bed, eh?" she utters, leaning in to the two while they only stare at her with beady brown eyes before their legs got them running. Rumi watches the two small figures getting upstairs - one quick on her feet while the other toddles in every step and lags behind, shouting the unfairness in the situation to the elder of the two. Rumi smiles to herself solemnly at the bustle of their lives inside, and takes another glance through the kitchen window - the world still as a beautiful painting.

The murmur of her eldest is clear as she stands out their bedroom. Rumi softly opens the door to peak inside, and finds something warming her heart.

"... the little boy sits confused. 'You will sing for me?' He asks the blue bird who nods.

'As a favor, for all what you have done,' the bird says and he sits peached upon an tr-"

"Perched, honey," Rumi corrects her daughter, now leaning against their door frame. She watches the two, the younger snuggling by his eldest's chest underneath the covers the book staring at their faces. "Not peached."

"Oh," Maya says, looking back in bemusement at the book. Her eyes scan the page before sheepishly grinning at her mother and lifting the book in offer.

"Well...only for a while, until your father gets back," explains Rumi before getting underneath the covers, warming up next to her children who patiently wait for her to recount the tale. Miles, her youngest, climbs without a word over his sister to rest his head upon the warmth of his mother - deaf to the protest of his sibling. Rumi heaves a breath and picks up the tale, and the night goes on.

If only, she thinks, she could freeze time then.

Now a year later, the flowers feels almost soft in her curled fingers, and so she gently places them down. The cold gray stone stares at her and it feels as if it almost burning through. With her fingers tracing the engraved words ' Miles A. Cooper' , the recollection comes running to her.

The screeches of the car still synchronizes in her ear. It was funny. It never seemed so loud before but then, it seemed to drown her own anguished screams. She remembers the lifeless body and how a crimson stream slid into the grass, staining the earth. And in that moment, nothing existed, and she crumbled along with the reality around her.

A tear manages to escape the eye and run down her cheek. He is five years old now. Is… was. Referring him in past tense only made him feel further away from her. Quietly a hand slips into hers, and Maya squeezes it tight. Yet Rumi hasn't sensed a newfound aura in her daughter.

She sits mostly in the kitchen, or in the study - anything to keep her remembering from her late son's birthday, her hands working almost automatically around the house. Not a minute to rest, she does this till the horizon swallows the sun and the moon shines down on them. But what that night would bring was unbeknownst to her.

Keeping busy around the house or the study works to some extent. Maybe being engrossed in a book would suppress this feeling of sorrow at an early demise, and anger at a needed departure of her husband. He claims that if he furthers his research there might be a light to the end of this crumbling, unceasing tunnel. That Miles, her sweet child, would find his way to her arms again. It sounded impossible. After all, the dead cannot be brought back to life. Resurrection was thing of fiction and myth.

But if it could bring him back.

There is a sudden wrack of guilt. Trying to keep her mind occupied has kept her sidetracked from what she had left. She hadn't seen Maya anywhere around her, and a feeling of dread stirring in her chest bemuses her. What was this ominosity?

And as if on cue, a scream erupts from upstairs and before a thought could form in Rumi's mind, her legs run upstairs. It was every step she took that a thought struck in her mind light a bolt of lightning. How could she be so neglectful? Why did she allow herself to wallow in her grief so much that it blinded her? And then a more grim thought: That scream did not sound like her daughter.

It sounded grotesquely inhuman.

Rumi nearly slams the door open and what she sees she cannot believe. It almost does not feel real. The well-known circle on the floor did not feel real. The terrifying creature resembling a deconstructed human that is beyond mangled did not feel real as its hollow eyes bore into hers. The blood pouring out of her daughter's mouth did not feel real as it stains the floor, still dripping as she cries in involuntary silence. As deformed as the body is, Rumi can tell who it's supposed to be. And it breaks her ineffably as the tiny rotten arm is lies lifelessly outstretched towards her - as if crawling back to her warmth once more. It did not feel real.

Or rather, she did not want it to be real.

It is a quiet, cool night in Dublith. The great brick walls of the Cooper house soaks the events of tragedy that has occurred within it, while outside the earth lay still and empty.

The other of the six wished to recount tales of wonder to her little brother.

And so I took her tongue.