The Demon Child

Luna chased after Cozy Glow. The girl moved surprisingly quickly despite her short legs, and Luna was left following sounds and glimpses over anything concrete. A flash of colour disappearing behind a corner, a tinkling peal of laughter, the sound of steps against the floor always somehow muffled and quiet no matter where it came from.

The whole house was awash in light. It was like someone had taken the Sun and placed within the walls themselves. Luna followed Cozy around, down every corridor of the upper floor, until they reached a set of wobbly foldable stairs leading up to a trapdoor in the ceiling. Stairs that should have been closed, hidden away. Luna barely caught a hint of Cozy's pink legs disappearing into the attic, and slowed her chase as she reached the bottom of the stairs.

At least the girl had nowhere else to go. She'd be able to talk to her up there, hopefully. She was still upset. People weren't supposed to look inside the attic. She did not keep it clean. It was old and dusty and full of abandoned things, and painful things. Things not meant to be seen. But she couldn't let a child run around in there and risk hurting herself. Luna swallowed, took a deep breath, and climbed up the groaning metal steps.

The space at the end of the stairs was deserted and cold. She looked around. The ground was grey, almost white, covered in dust, and it stretched as far as her eyes could see. All around her was darkness, pure blackness hanging like fog over the grey in every direction. Above her there was a light in the sky, yet she could not see its source. It was just there, shining down on her yet bearing no warmth.

Luna was cold. No. It wasn't even cold. There was nothing around her. Not even air to feel cold against her skin, just a hollow vacuum devoid of heat and life and joy. Frigid, yet unable to sap any of her temperature as it couldn't touch her. There was no air to breathe. Luna felt her lungs grow empty and her diaphragm stop. She wasn't breathing any more. It felt natural. She realised she hadn't been breathing for a long time.

Cozy came towards her with steps that made no sound, leaving dainty little prints on the ashen sands around them. Her wide pink gown hovered just barely above the ground, and her frilly shoulder puffs were completely immobile in the emptiness she moved through. But she spoke, and Luna heard her words despite everything else. "Welcome home."

Luna understood the meaning, though she knew it was more a prison than a home. It made no difference at that point. Cozy Glow began to walk away, and she followed behind her. They moved through a gallery of forgotten dreams and might have beens, old memories and fantasies rising up around them like living paintings she could have lost herself in if she'd stopped to admire them. But she was pulled forward and they all shattered behind her, barely giving her the time to recognise them as something she'd once known before they were lost again. It didn't matter. They were there because they were dead, just like she was. They were there because she'd put them there.

The cold light that came from nowhere in the sky cast a shadow on the barren surface of her palace of exile. Luna admired it as she walked, a darker spot on the grey that formed a shape too vast for her to comprehend. To her it just looked like a stain, marring the surface of her home. Perhaps someone might appreciate it when looking from afar. Perhaps someone might find beauty in it, but to her it was only a source of pain.

Cozy led her to a tree, and an open grave beneath it. Luna stared into the grave, but did not recognise the woman inside. Her body was immaculate, unblemished, and unreal. It seemed almost transparent, more like a vision than anything physical. Her open eyes were calm lakes reflecting the light of a full Moon, and her hair was dark like the emptiness of space. Her dress was coated in starlight, and raven wings lay folded at her sides. Luna knew she had known the woman once, seen her somewhere a long time ago. But the more she looked, the more the corpse would fade. Luna looked up.

Her face was a mask, and she felt it slip and shatter soundlessly at her feet, exposing her polished skull beneath. The tree was built out of scythes, the snaths embedded in the ground and the blades jutting out to form a canopy of branches. From one of the branches hung a rope, and at the end of the rope was a little body of a girl Luna had been, a long time ago. Luna fell to her knees and screamed a soundless scream, as tears fell upwards from her hollow eyes and floated like weightless diamonds in the cold light.

Cozy Glow floated up on her delicate hummingbird wings, and cut the golden rope around the child's neck with a pair of scissors. She held the body gently as it began to fall, and carried it to Luna so the dead woman could embrace it.

Luna held herself with quivering arms, and looked at the pristine face of the girl she'd been, preserved in the cold hollowness of the oblivion she'd cast it to. It looked just like the woman in the grave. Luna held herself tighter and gave a breathless heave. Cozy stood beside her, looking towards the horizon they had come from.

Time passed, though time had little meaning there. It was all past and a future that hadn't been, wasn't, and couldn't be. Luna cried until she had no tears left to cry, and screamed until her sadness turned to rage. Rage at what she'd lost and what she could have had, and what should have been hers and the world had taken from her. Anger at the world for the life she'd never lived.

Then Cozy spoke again. "I cannot give you back what you lost. There is no justice for what happened to you. But you can have your revenge." She raised a finger capped by a golden nail, and pointed down the path they had trodden to get to the tree.

Luna raised her head and turned. Fire was rising from the hole she had emerged from, and smoke and ashes with it carried aloft by the air it warmed. She looked once more to her young dead self, then rose and let her little body gently fall within the grave of her fantasies and dreams. She turned towards the fire, black hawk wings spread in rage, and the dark mask she wore was one of anger and hate as she stormed onwards, kicking up the dust of her memories and scattering it to the cold light that shone over her prison.

Cozy Glow looked on, and laughed without restraint and without a sound.