She speaks of death.
The grand finale.
The end of all endings.
The beginning of nothing.

"I'm going to die tonight," she declares.
Healthy girl, hardly ever pestered with influenza or infection.
How can she call for death?
Twice her age couldn't even summon the eternal night.

"Don't talk."
"Never speak of such things."

"Tonight, I will die."
She says the words to taste them.
To feel a gravity she has never known.
Dark foreboding.

To never again see the Sun.
To never again walk the Earth.
To never again worry, nor laugh, nor feel indifference.
To close black eyes and remain.

The mother shivers.
Her womb aches.
Death to my own?
Death to my every pain and joy?

Electric currents circulate throughout the body.
Neither painful nor pleasant.
Will she die?
She could never picture her own future.

Radical notions permeate the mind:
A snake, an angel, blank emptiness.
The vanishing of a line.
Something ancient.

The covers are drawn.
She crawls inside.
Recites a prayer.
Closes her eyes.

Who came that night?

Morning rises.
She still sleeps.

Enter mother.
Standing tentatively at the foot of the bed,
"She still sleeps. Have her words come to life through death?"
Is the moment of uncertainty a prelude to grief?

She stirs.
Awakens.
The mother looks at her eyes:
Blacker.

Deeper.
She died that night,
She was born again.