• What am I? This is what I think as I look at myself in the dark rippling water. My reflection is eerily shocking as I see a face, black as the night sky, eyes yellow as the sun at midday. I touch the water with my small black hand, my three fingers dipping lightly into it, reaching for my reflection.
    I get up and look around me; there are only tall swaying and eerie willow trees overlooking a dark and lonely pond. It's night and the sky is cloudy but clear enough to see glimpses of the moon. The moon reflects off the surface of the pond while clouds brush gently across it.
    As I stand, I feel a hollowness in my chest. I bring my hand in front of me and run my brittle fingers across my bony blackness. I feel the absence of what is supposed to be my heart. I feel the darkness inside me. Its pulsing emptiness inflates the shell off my small body. As I glide my hand over my still hollow frame I look up to the moon and wonder. Who am I? I gaze up at the moon trying to recollect anything from my past, anything to remember who I once was or why I'm in this form.
    My memory is blackness, a hollow presence of a caliginous shadow in my mind. I can see nothing but what is in front of me. All I know is that I am not me and what I see is completely foreign. In the shadows of my being is where I now exist. The presence of such would do much to deliver a spine-chilling fear throughout those who come across me.
    I hear footsteps slowly approaching my position. They seem like cold and hollow footsteps falling mercilessly onto the bones of small dead animals as he breaks through the twigs and leaves. I turn to face the assailant of the night and I see a man of light, like a beacon of the night. I cower into the shadows of the willows as he turns to face me, his blade -shaped in the body of a goddess, its edges so sharp it could slice open a diamond with just a mere twitch- points to the ground in front of him as he approaches me.
    He jabs his magnificent golden sword into the earth penetrating the rock with immense ease as he kneels down on it and looks at me. I try to say something, say anything, but I have no voice. I open my mouth and only silence escapes my lungs. As I look at him, I know that I should either be afraid quivering farther into the shadows or be ecstatic just to see another person, but I lack a heart, so I feel nothing.
    I move quickly to stand and the man recoils drawing his sword from the earth and points it at my face. I know I should be scared, but I have no emotion. I move towards him trying to communicate, but he swings his blade in fear. I try to dodge it, but his blade is too swift. The blade slices into my neck and I become lost in darkness.