Archive of Our Own

The being that Lilith called “father” was notoriously difficult to get along with.

It fit, of course. The Crawling Chaos did not lend itself well to stable relationships, or tact, or diplomacy; he was not prone to friends, or acquaintances, or even basic civility. He did not have allies, except of the most tenuous sort; he did not reach out, network, communicate.

That was why it made her so very, very angry that he was the first to know.

“Shub is gone,” said Nyarlathotep, the Black Pharaoh, as casually as if he was commenting on the weather.

Lilith frowned. She had not expected to find him here, amongst the spires of Kadath (a place she knew he loathed and a place she often went to for peace). “She’s dead?”

“Not dead,” he said, his eyes focused intensely on the shifting image in an icy glacier. “Gone.”

“She can’t be gone.” Lilith slunk forward, trying to get an eye on what he was looking at. “Gods don’t just disappear.”

He stepped away from the ice; this human frame was so much smaller than her, but the power it carried with it was so much more, and she all but leapt back and out of his way. “And yet she did,” he said tersely. “Do you know anything about it?”

“The Great Mother can’t be gone,” said Lilith. “That’s absurd. Did you do something to her?”

The perfectly shaped, plush human lips curled into a sneer, and somehow he managed to look down that aquiline nose at her. “Question me like that again, and I’ll rip out every tongue you have,” he said, and Lilith decided to flee before his temper got worse.

#

The being that Lilith called “father” had not been a good one to her. He was cold. Distant. Her spawning had been a surprise to him, and an unpleasant one at that.

That was why it made her so very, very angry to see him speaking to the orphaned young of Shub-Niggurath.

The Dark Young in question was huge, easily the size of an entire city block; several of its maws cried plaintively toward the sky, big sad sounds that made Lilith grind her teeth.

Nyarlathotep sat on one of its branch like legs, gently petting its barky hide, speaking in gentle and soothing tones. “And what else did you hear, little one?” he cooed, and it was perfectly sweet and perfectly leading, and Lilith glared hatefully at the scene from the crook of the tree she sat in.

Mother didn’t want to go, cried the giant infant, but there was this… This strange magic, so big, so strong, like she was falling away, and then she was gone, and we were all alone. Big blubbery tears dripped down its bark, pooling in a muddy little pond beneath its stomping rhizome feet. What has become of her? We want Mother back.

“It is too early to tell,” said Nyarlathotep, who had razed cities for a lark, and his smile was warm, and Lilith hated him. “But make no mistake, I will be—”

Did the Great One not want Mother here anymore?

That made Nyarlathotep freeze, and Lilith froze in turn.

“I don’t think that’s the case at all,” Nyarlathotep said, his smile a mask of gentility, “but I will be investigating. Mark my words, little one.”

Oh thank you, great uncle, said the Young, and Lilith bit her tongue so hard it bled.

#

The being that Lilith called “father” was feared by mortals and by the gods in equal measure, but he bore one title that meant all would listen to him.

The Messenger of Azathoth.

It did not surprise her that people went to him for answers. When strange things with little explanation happened, he was the one most likely to know the reasons behind it.

That did not mean it didn’t still fill her with resentment.

Lilith lurked in the background as Outer Gods tittered and mused amongst themselves. “Are you sure that this wasn’t the Dreamer’s will?” The Darkness burbled, its reach long-stretching but somehow tense as a bowstring.

“What is the bloody point of me being the messenger if you’re not willing to listen?” Nyarlathotep’s voice was light, playful, but there was such promised violence when he shifted onto his hip that his errant sibling flinched backward instinctually. “If dear old Dad had wanted Shub gone, He’d have let me know, and none of you would be asking me these stupid fucking questions.”

“But you don’t know why she’s gone,” said someone who, frankly, was not very important.

“Nope!” Nyarlathotep smiled; it was not a gesture of friendliness or cheer, but a vicious bearing of teeth. “Does anyone else have any stupid-ass questions I’ve already answered, or are we done?”

The assembled gods murmured and departed without needing any further encouragement.

Nyarlathotep watched them go impassively; his smile remained, a rictus grin, but it did not meet his eyes.

Lilith watched him carefully.

“You need something?” He asked, his head swiveling backwards at an unnatural angle.

Lilith took a breath. “Surely someone has heard something,” she said at last.

“Not unless one of those pretty little dreamers you keep poking around with has dreamed that dear old Shubby should Black Go-at away,” he said, glib. “Anything you’d like to add?”

“No,” she said, and hunched. “You’re afraid.”

He scoffed.

“You’ve taken this personally.”

“I don’t,” Nyarlathotep said, every syllable clipped, “like. Not. Knowing. What’s. Going. On. And frankly, pumpkin, the fact that I don’t know should be making you a lot more nervous.”

“What does it matter?” Lilith snapped. “So the Mother has—”

Suddenly he was there, a hair's breadth from her nose; Lilith yelped and stumbled back in a flurry of suddenly-materialized feathers and fear.

“Gods do not just disappear,” said Nyarlathotep, deadly serious. “And gods of Shub’s caliber? They don’t. Just. Go. Something happened to her. Her kiddos are still here, and all of them are pretty fucking upset about it—the fact that the universe as we know it is still turning? Kind of a big fucking deal since, I will remind you, she is a god of magic and fertility and one of the fucking cornerstones of how the universe runs.”

Lilith trembled. “What… What does that mean?”

“It means,” said Nyarlathotep coolly, “that she’s either not really gone—or that something, somewhere, has taken her place. And, quite frankly, I’m going to fucking find out.”

He was gone before she could respond, and in hindsight, that might have been a blessing.

#

The being that Lilith called “father” was deeply powerful. She knew this; behind his japery and his flagrant disregard for his siblings, he was one of the more powerful creatures that existed in the universe. She wasn’t entirely sure exactly where he stood in the pecking order (there were a few beings that he seemed to at least begrudgingly respect, after all) but that also meant that not a lot of people knew exactly what he could do.

Nyarlathotep seemed to prefer it that way.

Either way, Lilith was surprised when she heard his laugh ringing through the empty halls of the palace of Kadath.

The laughter of Nyarlathotep was a horrific sound, wild and chaotic and completely absent of any mirth—it was the immolation of the universe, the violent crash of particles in the heart of a sun, a sound like broken femurs and spilled blood and salted earth.

He was on the floor, his hands pressed over his eyes.

“Father?” Lilith ventured.

“Humans!” He howled. “Fucking humans! You want to know what those useless little—they summoned her, forced her into a host, and then killed the bloody—” He dissolved into another peal of shattered-glass-cackling.

Lilith stared at him. “But that’s… that can’t be—”

“Oh, but it is,” he said, sitting up suddenly. “We got lucky—for whatever reason, those morons didn’t get all the Shubbies in the great wide world; multiverse theory, you know.”

“No,” said Lilith, “I—”

Nyarlathotep was not dissuaded. “That’s why everything’s been running smoothly still. Talked to a few others of me. We were able to piece it together.” He got up and began to pace. “I didn’t know the little bastards could do that. Horses loose in the hospital, with the nuclear launch codes. Ridiculous.” He shook his head. “Damn Dad for liking them so much he keeps dreamin’ them.”

“There’s no way a human could manage something like that,” said Lilith. “It just doesn’t—”

“Make sense?” Nyarlathotep’s head snapped in her direction. “Take that up with Pops. Somehow, those useless little worms got it in their head to pull Shub-Niggurath out of her rightful place and cram her, alls of her, into the body of a human to… rule all over them, or some shit. I don’t fucking care, it’s stupid human bullshit, as per the usual. What pisses me off is that somehow they were able to do it, but then when some other useless little worms shot the host in the head…” He scowled, and resumed pacing. “It’d be easier if Yog would return my damn calls. I’m sure he knows what the fuck is going on. He’s gotta be beside himself, that chronically-absent dickhead.”

Slowly, subtly, Lilith began to shake. “What does that mean for us?” She said quietly.

Nyarlathotep froze. “I don’t know,” he said, and did not answer any further questions.

#

Ultimately, there was nothing Lilith could do. Life moved onward; Nyarlathotep stalked around the universe like a stressed and territorial cat, and the pantheon of arrogant, supremely powerful gods moved forward despite the glaring hole in their ranks.

Lilith was not one for family, but she found it a bit sickening.

When Lilith was small and newly spawned into the universe, there were many things she did not understand. From her very beginning she had understood that the one who spawned her did not like her, and did not desire her presence. She’d looked to him, nearly-formless and new, and he’d not so much as granted her a name. That, of course, was just; that was the way the universe worked. That was why she’d been so confused when she’d found herself in the domain of the Black Goat, surrounded by her Young, and though they could have stomped her to pieces and snuffed her life like a candle, instead they brought her to their mother.

Lilith had stayed there for some time. The All-Mother knew many things, magic among them; it flowed from her like milk.

The Black Goat was, perhaps, the first parent that Lilith had ever known.

She’d also frowned and disapproved when Lilith kept encountering… them. The strange little apes that sang bizarre songs, that changed the Dreamlands with their slumber. It was so easy for Lilith to step into their lives, to change the very fabric of their dreams. From the nightmares of humans Lilith had created monsters, and she was overjoyed.

Shub-Niggurath did not understand, and was less pleased with Lilith’s new hobby. “The more you interact with them, and call to them,” she’d warned while nursing one of her newest young, “the more they will pursue you. That’s a lesson your father hasn’t quite learned yet, and I’d like to see you understand it before they vex you past the point of no return.”

Lilith scoffed. “Nyarlathotep dislikes everything. The humans would annoy him regardless.”

“The humans annoy him because he keeps giving them opportunities,” said the All-Mother. “The problem is that he enjoys playing with them far too much.”

“Why not play? They’re naught but insects,” Lilith scoffed.

“Dangerous insects,” said Shub-Niggurath. “The Great Dreamer has not created another being who can alter the Dreamlands in such a way. They can harness magic—and they utilize it for their own ends.”

Lilith stared at her. “They’re just humans,” she said at last. “I’ve been speaking to Nodens—”

“Oh, dear,” the Black Goat muttered.

“—and he says that they’re curious little creatures, but ultimately harmless.” Lilith scoffed. “He said that the Dreamer created my father to annoy himself, like a tongue pressing into a broken tooth.”

“Your Father is not meant to be taken so lightly,” said Shub-Niggurath. “He is the Messenger. He enacts—”

“My father is vexed by the same insects that I have come to dominate,” Lilith boasted, her skin rippling with satisfaction. “I do not worry about his opinions on such things.”

It was only later, standing in the glade she’d once spent time with the Black Goat and deeply mourning her absence, did Lilith understand just how right the missing god was.

#

Nyarlathotep was spending much more time in Kadath than he had previously, which made him easy to find.

“I should’ve just killed ‘em all,” he said lightly; Lilith was unsure of if he was speaking to her or to himself. “I can access a lot of information, you know. Told ‘em there was some treasure in the wrong cave, had some idiots walk back with lungs full’a bioweapon. Whispered the right things in the right ears, got ‘em all to blow each other up.” He turned, eyes boring into her. “You like bats, don’t you? Stick a bunch’a them full of rabies and set them loose in all the population centers. That’d solve the problem.”

Surprisingly bleak. “But then who would you play with?” Lilith asked.

Nyarlathotep stared at her before laughing like a bag full of razor blades. “Play? You think all the bullshit—you think I’m playing with those vermin?”

“Like a cat does with its prey,” Lilith challenged. “Why else do you encourage them?”

He laughed. “You’re blaming me for this. That’s what I’m hearing, right?”

That was not what was happening. “Father, I—”

“Don’t,” he said, all humor gone from his voice. “Don’t start that shit with me. Not right now. Do you have any idea what all of this means?”

Lilith took a step forward. “I—”

“I do not encourage them,” he said coldly. “Whatever nonsense Nodens has put in your head, I need to make it very fucking clear to you, right now, that I am all that’s stopped those gifted little rodents from using their uncannily good grasp of magic and whimsy from completely fucking up the universe.” He paused. “Fucking it up worse, anyway. Shub was bad enough.”

Lilith threw up her hands. “Who the fuck else would they even bother?”

“Azathoth’s bleeding—how can you all be so fucking dense?” Nyarlathotep shrieked, his fingers curling into his hair. “Why the fuck would they bother Shub? Why not? What stops them from summoning literally any of us at this point, and then with a single press of a trigger they delete us like an overzealous editor and the control-eff function!”

She’d lost him. Somewhere. “Father—”

“Next it could be any of us,” said Nyarlathotep, and he made a sound… It might have been a giggle, if there was any humor in his expression. Instead it was like a nervous little tic, like the thread of whatever the Crawling Chaos called sanity was on the verge of snapping.

Lilith took his hand.

Nyarlathotep stared at her. His face was completely devoid of expression, which perhaps was even worse than the sound he’d made before. “It could be any of us,” he repeated, and suddenly he was gone.

#

Lilith did not believe him, of course. They were gods. Even as bad as it seemed, it looked like humans hadn’t managed to eliminate every Shub-Niggurath, and so whatever power they’d managed to cobble together was lacking.

That is what she told herself, anyway.

Nodens was equally unimpressed. “They’re just humans,” he said after the two of them had enjoyed a rather spirited roll in the hay. “They’re curious little things, but ultimately harmless. What happened with Shub was an accident; they surely didn’t mean it.”

Lilith stared at the vaulted ceiling of the cavern, so high above even them that the glowing fungi that clung to stalactites looked like stars. “They’ve been dreaming awful things for quite some time, now,” she confessed. Perhaps if she’d said something to the Black Goat… “Destruction. Brothers turning against brothers. Weapons that turn the air to acid or blow their bodies to bits.”

“So they’ve discovered war,” Nodens said.

“They’ve known war for some time.” Lilith frowned at him. “This is different.”

Nodens snorted dismissively. “You’re too young to remember some of the scuffles we had in the early days.”

She scowled. “I am not.”

“The Blind Idiot follows patterns, my dear,” said Nodens, ignoring her. “In our early days we ripped each other apart, ripped the very fabric of the universe to pieces in places, and on occasion made some very stupid decisions. Humans have known war most of their lives; first they smashed each others skulls in with rocks, then hacked each other apart with blades, and now they explode each other. This happened with those foul creatures before on Earth and the shoggi, and before that it was Cthulhu’s spawn, and even before that our lesser cousins were squabbling over territory and sending their children to kill each other and somehow, despite all of that, the Dreamer has not allowed our destruction to happen.”

Lilith sat with that for a moment. “What fascinates you so about them?” She said instead.

Nodens gave her an appreciative glance. She’d been fascinated with him for some time due to his own choice of a humanoid guise; two legs, two arms, two eyes, though she knew the beard surrounding that mouth of flat teeth was really a nest of feelers and stinging graspers. It wasn’t that dissimilar to herself, how she’d taken that shape and altered it to her tastes and needs. When Nodens opened his mouth his strange feeler-beard split apart in a grotesque mimicry of a human’s smile. “What is there not to be fascinated with? You give a human a bit of attention and they throw up temples. They sing songs of you and teach them to their children, and worship without knowing they do so for ages and ages. They’re also rather fascinating to look at; so strangely efficient in their own way, so unsuited to every environment, and yet they persist onward. Utterly fascinating!”

Lilith sat up, trailing her claws down her shin. “And their grasp of magic?”

“What of it?” Nodens reached playfully; Lilith shifted away. “I will admit their persistence and ability to influence the Dreamlands is interesting—but other creatures can use magic too.”

“No other creature can dream new lands into the Dreamlands,” said Lilith. “That is significant.”

Nodens groaned. “Gods, you’re beginning to sound like Nyar. Come back to bed.”

“I think I will take my leave.” Lilith stood, shook herself off.

“Oh, don’t be like that,” said Nodens. “They’re just humans.”

She’d never seen it so clearly: Nodens mimicked humans, wore a parody of their form and watched them like performing bears, but he did not understand them.

Not like the being she called “father” did.

Lilith gave him one pitying glance back, spread her wings, and was gone.

#

Lilith paced. The air hung heavy, charged, like a storm about to break and with no bright spot on the horizon. She had not seen Nyarlathotep in weeks.

That was, of course, not unusual. Nyarlathotep came and went as he pleased, controlled by none but the Blind Idiot himself, and would have mocked her for her concern. Searching for him was a fool's errand, and summoning him tantamount to suicide. If he wanted to speak to her (and that was a big ‘if’) he would let her find him.

She searched anyway. It was pointless, but perhaps the intent mattered—even though it brought her no solace.

Finally, though, she found him: on Kadath, at the empty mountaintop clearing where the lesser gods of the Dreamlands once danced and played, now empty. Save one.

Nyarlathotep was quiet. Pensive. He looked over the expanse of the Dreamlands below them, mouth and eyes tight.

Lilith didn't understand. “Father.”

“Offspring.”

Ouch. Lilith approached anyway. “What troubles you?”

He did not glare at her, or scowl, or rage or laugh or any of the things he was supposed to do.

He looked…

“You always seem to find me when I’m having a shitty day,” he said, turning his attention back to the Dreamlands spread out before them. “It’s really fucking annoying, y’know. Sometimes you just want to sit and brood in peace.”

“You have been missing for weeks,” she said. “Months, perhaps.”

“Jeez, like I can’t have a hobby?”

Lilith’s skin rippled. “I… do not… enjoy seeing you in distress.”

He scowled, then, but his heart wasn’t in it. “So leave.”

Lilith stepped beside him, turning her own gaze over the expanse before them. “No.”

He sighed, but there was none of his usual performance in it; no exaggerated drawn out wheeze, instead a sound that was better suited for quiet contemplation. “A lot of the others don’t think I care,” he said. “They’re suckers, all of them. They’ll believe anything I tell them, even as they disavow me and scoff and pretend like I’m just some…” He groaned, running his hands over his face, his fingers into his hair. “The crazy thing is, pumpkin, the really whacked-out, bizarro, overly-nonsensical truth is that I do care. They think I don’t care that Shub’s gone. I care a lot about her being gone, and not just because her absence gives me a hell of a mess to clean up. Shub was… I respected her. Might have even liked her, if I can like anything at all.”

“I know,” Lilith said softly.

“And all that, all this wailing and gnashing of teeth from her kiddos… I don’t do kids. Never have, never will, doesn’t matter if I’m rocking cradles or setting them on fire. But that doesn’t mean I’m just fine watching her kids suffer.”

Well.

Lilith opened her mouth to speak. Closed it.

“Hm,” said Nyarlathotep. “See, even that? That thing you just did? I don’t find joy in it. It’s the cold, indifferent truth, and neither of us can do shit about it, and ol’ Azzie didn’t see fit to dream me up with enough sadism to really get into it. Instead I got a grim sense of duty and the t-shirt. It’s bullshit.” He threw his hands out. “All of this? It’s all such bullshit. And then, on top of everything else, it turns out that humans can just… delete you from existence. So even that one bastion of common sense, that the only thing that can upset the greater functioning of the cosmos is Pops or one of us big leaguers, that’s now gone because his silly little blorbos figured out they can not only kill one of us, but all of us.”

“Not all,” Lilith pleaded. “You said that some iterations of the Black Goat survived.”

“By the skin of their fuckin’ teeth,” Nyarlathotep said with a smile like a death mask.

Lilith sat next to him, pale and lithe, her skin rippling like rough water. “Father,” she said, cautious. “What happens if… if all of one of us dies?”

Nyarlathotep looked back out on the horizon. “Well,” he said. “I did a lot of snooping. Looooooots of talking to other mes. As far as I can tell… Well. Pops will probably get upset. Might even wake up.”

Lilith’s eyes went wide. “No—”

“Best case scenario—in my opinion, anyway—is that if another one of us big players gets erased, whatever piece of the universe we’re propping up just ends up unraveling the whole thing,” he said with a shrug. “Like a cheap sweater.” He looks back over the expanse. “That might be a good thing, actually—probably a return to the formless chaos for all of us.” He sighed, almost wistful.

“That sounds horrific,” Lilith muttered.

“Mm,” said Nyarlathotep. “That’s right—you were spawned after ol’ Yoggie decided to muck up the universe with timelines and reality and atoms and shit. You don’t remember what it was like back when everything was nothing, all the time.” His eyes… “Everything was the purest essence of chaos. Squirming, writhing between each other—thought and feeling were one, sensation and nothingness and pain and pleasure all consumed into a single blissful existence. It was…”

A tear slid down his cheek—then two, and then more, crystallizing into ice when they hit the ground.

“It was pure joy,” Nyarlathotep whispered. “No strife, no suffering, no stinky little apes, no loss—just joy.”

Lilith trembled. “Father…”

“I know that what I’m saying sounds terrifying,” he said gently, “and frankly, you’d be stupid to not be at least a little spooked. It’s gonna be a big change. But no need to worry; I’ve got a plan.” He tilted his head up, facing the stars, tears staining the linen shirt he wore. “I need you to know that I’m not doing this for me. I’m doing it for—”

A sound, like a page being torn into a book.

Nyarlathotep turned. Lilith whirled.

A man stood on the expanse of Kadath. His face was a perfect mirror of Nyarlathotep’s—tear streaked, his smile wide, hair mussed. Ice crystals crunched beneath his bare feet, which left smears of blood in their wake.

“Hiya,” he said, breaking into that familiar glass-shatter cackle, not even wiping at the tears that slid down his face. “Great minds think alike, yeah?”

The being Lilith called Father cast one last glance in her direction. “Fucking RUN.”

Lilith didn’t have time to cry out; the twin Nyarlathoteps lunged at each other, power building and breaking, and it was all she could do to throw herself off the edge and catch the air under her wings as the very fabric of the universe shrieked and thrashed and at last, with a crunch that was felt more than heard, finally went silent.

#

No one believed her.

She’d wept, wailed, torn at her dark hair. Nodens had comforted her in the Underworld, letting her pace and rage and try desperately to explain. He was horrified at first—what possible being could kill Nyarlathotep?

In time, though, he’d investigated—and came back with a sigh. “He’s fine.”

“No,” said Lilith.

“I saw him,” said Nodens. “He seems to be in fine spirits. Asked how you were doing.”

Lilith’s entire skin went spiky. “He what?”

“I told him you were upset. He said you snooped somewhere you didn’t belong and got a smack on the wrist for it.” Nodens shook his head. “Asshole. I almost wish I hadn’t bothered, you know he and I don’t get alo—”

Lilith, of course, did not hear the rest—the wind through her hair was too loud.

#

She knew the god she saw was not her Father.

He had her father’s face; his mannerisms. His broken-femur laugh. He looked at her brightly with her father’s manic eyes and her father’s wide smile and waved at her with blood-stained hands.

She knew. He was wrong, all wrong, a sick parody of the one she’d known and dreaded and loved from a distance, and she hated him, and he knew that and it only made his smile wider.

“Hey there, lovebug,” said the imposter. “Was wondering when you’d swing by.”

“You killed him,” she whispered.

He shrugged. “You ever heard the one about the seven billion cooks and the soup?”

“Don’t patronize me,” she snapped. “You…”

The imposter tilted his head. “You don’t seem too good, kiddo.”

“You,” she snarled, “are not my father.”

His smile widened. “You know, I was wondering why he was so easy to kill,” he said. “It took barely anything. I’ve fought others with half the power for way longer. But alllllll I had to do was mention you…” His eyes narrowed. “Never thought one of me would go… soft like that. So I suppose I’ve got you to thank for that, pumpkin—if you hadn’t been there, if he hadn’t been distracted…”

He threw his head back and laughed like a forest fire, and Lilith fled—and when she had to stop running, she figured out a way to keep going.

Life, somehow, moved on anyway.

Lilith withdrew. She ignored Nodens’ summons. She ignored the other gods, who heard from Nodens that she was acting out and who tried to intervene. She stepped through timelines, to confuse, to make it difficult to follow her, and at last she was left in solitude; but she did not stop.

Perhaps it was because she hoped it wasn’t true. Perhaps it was because she hoped that somewhere, she’d find a pocket where her Father still stood, still scowled and still rolled his eyes and wasn’t—

Lilith ran, and she did not stop.

#

Lilith drifted.

The dreams of human beings were unpredictable, but there was comfort in that. She stepped through their little worlds, her touch turning nonsense into knives and fairy tales into oppressive woods. Under her supervision, pulses quickened, breaths hitched; people stirred in their sleep, brows furrowing, groaning. Some writhed, breaths hot and loins straining.

None satisfied.

Lilith drifted—through countries, through centuries, following nothing, seeking something.

The house was small, worn. The coals in the fireplace had long since gone cold, and an empty whiskey bottle lay abandoned on the table. Inside the master bedroom two sleepers lay in an ugly little bed, dreaming ugly little dreams. The woman’s were of somewhere far away from here, from this hovel and its inhabitants; the man’s were endless drudgery, providing him no rest—and even less when she got close, desperation and desire responding to her divinity as surely as if she’d woken him and mounted him.

She could step in; she could steal the mind of this man and wreck him, whisper secrets to the woman and lead her to ruin, but what was the point?

The other bedroom was small; a high window cast moonlight across a cradle, the shadows making dark stripes against a light blue blanket. Inside a small figure lay, tiny fists balled, though he was curiously silent.

Humans this young did not usually have dreams. Their little minds were so soft, so unformed.

She saw flashes still. Blurry figures that came into sharp relief when they got close; loud voices and then apologetic whispers afterward. It was a tableau she had watched a million times—from the perspective of the parents. Never the helpless little thing they held in their arms.

Never before had she been given such a gift.

Oh, they cared for him, even as they struggled; oh, this little baby resting in his crib, his tiny stomach sour from being a touch underfed and his tiny heart aching from being a touch underheld, still had something so very, very precious.

Lilith leaned over the crib. The child shifted; fussed. His breathing grew a bit stilted. She could do it; a single touch and she’d steal away this child, like humans had feared her for in millennia past.

Perhaps she would—but here, in this dim room, consequence lay before her like a tapestry. She could take this child, yes—and the woman in the master bedroom would weep, but in the depths of her heart she’d be sick with relief. The man was more complicated—his mind was an ugly little knot of possibilities, some of idyllic fishing trips and whittling lessons and a stern clap on the back, and some of lean winters grown leaner and screaming that whiskey only made sharper, of a hope for escape and the resentment of pure innocence—

She trailed one of her nails down the babe’s forehead, leaving a wavy little pattern in the sparse reddish hair there. His breathing steadied.

Not yet. Not while this little one had so much pain and fear and suffering left to give her.

For the first time in what felt like millennia, Lilith smiled. “My favorite.”