THE SHADOW

On a night ripe with sea breeze, a peculiar shadow sits in wait on the sand of a dark beach, watching a woman stroll down to the water to drown her infant daughter. The shadow shivers as the water creeps up to the woman’s ankles and then to her knees as she treads deeper into the surf.

He followed her here from her home, slipping through the evening shadows like a ghost. He's been ancitipating this moment with equal parts dread and excitement since long before nightfall.

Behind him, the land rises over pair of forested mountains. The small island-nation of Malais, a bustling city composed of many white buildings, hums with activity far above, but the ports are deathly quiet, reassuring him that his mission will not be interrupted.

Silently, he unfolds from the sand, rising into the shape of a thin, angular man. Over the wind and the crashing waves, the woman does not hear him as she sneaks up on her from behind.

Without fanfare, she dips the bundle she’s been clutching to her chest into the water and holds it there. Her expression is grimly determined, but it is not sad. Her apathy toward her own child makes the shadow seethe with hate.

He says nothing as he wades up behind her, whips out a silver knife, and slits her throat with equal lack of feeling. He cuts into her shallowly enough that it will take some time for her to bleed out, just long enough for the carnivorous merfolk who live in these waters to smell her blood and come racing for a taste before she dies. It’s the best revenge he can think of, yanking the bundle from her hold and taking it into his own, shoving her into the water without remorse, and retreating with a smirk as she flounders.

By the time he is back on dry land, she screams as the city's infamously carnivorious merfolk rip her apart. Their echoing wails of delight are music to the shadow’s ears. They sing their joy like the whales of the deep as they feast. Blood quickly stains the shore, but the shadow is too distracted to care.

He undoes the bundle. Inside he finds what he’s expecting, a spluttering baby with burning red eyes and steel-colored hair. He pats its back to dispel the water from its lungs, then flips it back over and holds it close to his chest, drawing darkness from the night to cradle it gently.

The baby breaths lightly in his embrace, but it does not cry. The infant's silence chills a part of the shadow he didn’t know still existed--not for worry that the infant might die, but for the abnormalness of a quiet baby. As he glides through the darkness away from the beach, flying from shadow to shadow clutching precious cargo, he has only one thought on his mind:

I hope the fox likes you.