I took four years to build my castle among the reeds. My brothers helped occasionally before they went away. They believed I was making a little den for my toys. It never seemed right to tell them otherwise. Not that right and wrong were still a fathomable concept to me. Now they were a distant memory. The spirits would help me. They would show me the way.

          My ignorant mother thought I was a ‘free spirit’ and that a perfect little princess could be made from my dark hair and knotted eyes. She believed that I could be made to mimic her. I would not be her little doll. I was not attached to little strings. Close the door on the past and open to the future. But I closed the window on my puppet master and fell to the ground of reason and justice. I became free and empty.

          My soul fled to the heavens, my body left to rot beneath the soil. Only then did I discover what I had become, what I would now be for eternity. I am the whisper through the forest, the movement in the mirror when you look away. I am not free. I am imprisoned in a million lifetimes of revenge. Without love and without desire. I am the ultimate creature. And yet I am fraught with the same tears and failings that my saviours displayed to me in everything else. My spirits have left me and I must spend my years finding another conflicted child to inhabit and destroy.

          When you awaken I will still be here. I will always be here. I am Elodie. I am your nightmare. And this isn’t my fault.

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