"Oh, you're back again," The darkness crooned.

The smile in its voice was palpable,

"How long have you come to play?"

Vidya's arms outstretched before her as she stumbled into the blackness -- feeling for the walls of the familiar inky coridor.

Almost instantaneously, pools of light flooded around her, illuminating the thick muddy walls and swamp-like paths. Everything she touched began to glow.

"What a brave child..." that voice mused, "If you need help with something you should ask, girl. It worries me. Humans usually have no problem with asking things of me."

With the newfound light, Vidya's eyes raised to the far wall where one could fully swallow that brutal image of Death. Its massive frame was perched, like usual, in a throne of blackened branches. Wispy shadows hummed from its very being, swirling and murmuring in soulless encantations. Its shoulders sunk into a boney slouch, adorned from forearm to neck with long dark feathers and a crust of opal crystals. Its eyes were glassy and its head hung heavily from the weight of a spikey ebony crown.

Vidya ran to the figure. Fearlessly, she raised her hands above her, a routine she'd come to develop. Compared to Death, the young girl was smaller than a thimble.

"Brave..." Death tutted again with a chuckle before outstretching a long spiny hand. Vidya hopped into the hand's palm then stumbled back into a criss cross position as Death raised the surface to its face.

"You haven't got much time left, little one."

It murmured once eye to eye with the child.

Vidya played with the black cavernous trenches of Death's palm absent-mindedly.

"I fear you'd be better off with me than those monsters who claim to rear you. I would certainly be more merciful than that hell you come from."

Death searched the child's exposed chin.

Vidya's tiny arms were marked in dark mosaics of blue and purple -- green-yellow blotching around perimeters of the bruises that had already begun healing. Her white eyes stared emptily for all that she could not see and her small ears had swollen shut, promising her nothing but the weary whispers of Death.

"If you must always insist on going back you should at least run away. Lest you find people who will treat a child properly. If these demons loved you they'd stop enlisting me as your sitter. You don't understand how tempting it is to spare you that life -- I've really grown fond of seeing you."

At this, little Vidya's face broke out into a spontaneous smile -- full and toothy. Her hands raised once again from her sides to above her head.

Death shook its head and sighed before bringing the girl to its cheek so she could stand and embrace its fishered hollows. Then it lowered the hand to bestow a kiss on the hair of her head, already matted with mud and leaves.

"I have the power to rid of those people if you ever commanded it of me. Again, you should learn to use your bravery more selfishly. I hope you are heeding my lessons in these meetings we have little one."

Vidya had returned to her distracted playing.

"I've taken your pain away for now, but once you're back, it will be as overwhelming as the last time. I shouldn't tell you this but you're so stubborn so I'll help you. This time when you awake, you'll be in your playpen. Feel your way out of the room and two doors to the left is your home's garden entrance. Wander out soon after you awake -- those monsters left that door unlocked today. Your new neighbor will see you and sense something is wrong -- she will help you."

Vidya shook her head absent-mindedly.

"Oh dear, don't be stupid, you should listen to me."

Death raised the hand again.

"You'll be going any minute now...promise me you'll do as I say. This is the only way if you won't stay here with me."

Death watched Vidya carefully, relieved when she finally gave a comprehensible nod.

"Goodbye little one. I hope the next time I see you is after you've lived a long and happy life. My favorite little child."

And then she was gone, and the blackness returned to its craft of handling the infinite matters of the dark.