The lake glistened behind her, waves cruelly whispering those white lies into her mind – those that you tell a child as they wander around, their path only downward into the depths of hopelessness. They were meant to console a poor, wondering soul who didn't know what not to ask; but perhaps, when the viper's fangs pierced all veils of fog, it was too late. The white curtain had hidden a rotting corpse, and all they could do was weep for their lost innocence. The mirror always showed a twisted reflection that no white lie could conceal; in a strange, eerie light, one that seemed to shine upon the ground yet never show a shadow, perhaps blissful innocence was twisted. She saw glistening hints of it in the wind, fangs and thorns, tendrils that choked poor dreams to death until their carcasses fell – the light of a candle only lasts so long, and in the dark, with the moon's murky glow, perhaps she simply saw the tides of a river churn in rage and despair, twisting every word and every child's joy into something more sinister. She remembered a few words from a better time, scrawled in scratches upon the fabrics and a scar upon the wood, soft as flesh and just as delicate as the skin that a bullet pierces; the skin of innocence – there had been smiles of a laugh – one that echoed in the flow of light among a cavern of doleful dread – it was marked in the shadows in her mind – those of where his arms had lain. Limp. Powerless to stop it. The mark they had left perhaps was a melody that fled from truth – no white lie could cover the eerie glow of gloom lurking – among that river lurked cruel words of sinister, insidious whispers. Those that the river snatched away in a choking, cruel grasp. The last, wavering, sickly breaths as the light died down. Then the apparition of life peered through, and the corpse of joy was left limp. When you gaze into a mirror a while, every blink and every small, glinting shiver of light in your eyes – in the eerie light, somehow the river twists it as it churns. Only small flecks of truth were scattered throughout the dull, pulsing echo of light as she looked upon the shelves, whereupon lay books. Revelations that left the decaying innocence to fall under the weight of sudden truth. The golden yarn amid a woven tapestry that was as light as the crow's white feather, yet shattered the mirror, and left the face twisted, the spirit it once had replaced by hollow dread.

Every scratch bled melancholy and left the slow wander through the house bleak, full of lingering sorrow that seemed to ripple and fade into nothing, before wavering and stumbling through the cruel, wicked tides to ripple through once again as the tears fell, the thorns among the cold biting and scratching like an animal freed from a cage, only to miss the security of the gloom. Of not knowing, she supposed. Of not seeing. But the tides tossed every shred of earth before her, every truth that could cause the bookshelf to sink beneath the shores of light and joy; and surely, she whispered to herself, this was the very image of woe in its purest form – not blotted out by tears or drowned out by the wretched sobs of heartbreak and grief – not diluted in the river of bittersweet sorrow. Everything stripped away, all residues of feeling left to weather in the cold and the rain – this felt as if it were simply the image of a chamber of hollow winds, bleak agony scraping away the shell of flesh as the joy inside slowly decayed, devoured by despair. Even in those cushions upon the ground, which had once seemed so full of elegant, fleeting comfort; crows always haunted death and grief, remained unspoken as such woes as this were lamented by the wretched soul. As the river of cruel light beamed through, churning, a carcass was carried. One which left the crows to run toward it, their beaks leaving scars upon all comfort – leaving even clouds a bed of nails and thorns. Now those cushions were simply silken threads, frayed and hollow in the cold, dreary glare of moonlight, full of menacing dread of that looming threat. Every word she heard was just an echo passed downstream by a hand of such graceful writing, leaving serpentine ink to flow across the page, delivering to her just a false, white lie, twisted by the tide as it was passed downstream. Placid faces never once wavering, the shadows seemed to call for her, pull her toward them; their faces were that of a child – innocent, pure, so much so that the shadows the light of their joy left appalled her as she fled their vile complexions. They seemed to beg her from the rotting, weary wood. Then she saw it – a single book upon the shelf; she had sold all the others but this one lingered, a reminder of better times.

Books, she supposed, her mind swimming among the doleful cries that wept tears upon tears over the bed of the corpse, carried downstream by those vipers of deceit, were just words scrawled upon the page, crooked reflections of light turned to shadows that could dance with a different wave, one that crashed, one that danced with the delicate steps of white lies, one that flowed into cascading tears. Into the shadow it fell, the tumbling joy down with it as the fog of paper engulfed it. And there it was forgotten. Every shred burnt. Down to a single ash. The apparition of a flame after the tides of biting winds, thorns hidden among the whispers that scratch away the skin revealing decaying flesh – and after the flame's throat is cut, perhaps it simply turns to that apparition of light; as she stumbled and grasped at the rotting wood, she almost saw a ripple of grief in the reflection of the joy that once was – the tear that falls to put out the flame. And tempts forth the viper to poison its prey.

Every trace of the weary scrawls of a distant figure were simply a grim dance – she could stumble through the forest, searching and clutching at the bark, residue of despair and the growth of hopelessness as it loomed, the flower upon a grave simply growing into a dreary pulse of that waltz that she saw upon the wavering fog. One incessantly halted with the winds biting at every attempt to flee the truth, to hide in shadows. Hope was simply that grim dance, for as long as it grew, thorns intruding on every veil that hid a grotesque, decaying skeleton covered in ashen flesh, it would simply hold the hand of a blood-curdling screech of agony, the blinding lights that kept the moments of a smile to the sharp point at the end of a viper's fang. That jagged edge of sorrow that lingered at the edge of her vision, always blinking but never vanishing like the ashes in the winds of time – a desert will always watch the traveller perish, and their ashes join every other shred of woe that glinted in the eerie tides of light that streamed into the page and lit the eyes of the serpentine ink in malice. Those corpses lurked still in the fog as she stumbled through the blind hopelessness, monsters left to burn the forest to those embers. She saw them in the dust upon the page that flickered as she breathed on them and fled only to fall to the ground – to the soil and the gravestones. And yet every step was filled with grace as she watched the fog engulf her sight, gathering in a veil of carelessness that simply drove her forward despite the tears that began to toss a curtain over her sight. They were the wretched tears bled in hollow grief, for memories erased, for joy that vanished, simply forgotten and cast to the abyssal silence to decay and fade into ash and embers. Then, as it jolted her back to the moment where she began to weep over a thin blanket of paper, she almost stopped where the full stop lay. The path lay ahead in veins of possibility, and perhaps something inside her broke away, swimming among grief, and left her wandering away. As another throat was slit. Toward a smile that felt as if it were tentative, about to waver and fall. But woe glinted despite her sure-footed steps, and the screams faded. Her vision cleared.

But only for a moment as the glint rushed past her in the dull, hollow moonlight, and even the ink, with its fangs that pierced the blur of weariness, began to fade. As she wandered away, she once again wavered toward the sure-footed stroll of rhythmic waltz – that pulse was an incessant reminder that the silhouette lurked still; it always did, never once flickering as she wandered towards it. Even the dance of woe, as the dread of knowing – of the vile foresight that lurked in every shred of cruel light – halted, paused by the downpour of rain that dissolved all ash into one field of woes. And the knocking at the door echoed in her mind, almost piercing the fog of tears, of the page that disguised so much wavering for just a moment. A ripple of remembering the smile – the roots tying to each other so that a smile was a display of joy, not of malice. But the waters could be tossed to the ground, and yet the fog was phlegmatic even among the shreds of perishing ashes. The vipers who struck with fangs that held agony in every speck of blood upon their glimmering yellowed surfaces would cast before her vile, cruel images of great, uneven fields of once thriving flowers and grass, life expanding to hope. Then all seemed to fall quiet. Monotony of clocks ringing out like funeral bells between the two lines on a field that had once been so full of possibilities. Of hope. Of a true light that was never twisted in the crooked complexion of desperate cries and screams and wails of children. And yet now the lines upon the page were a dance of cruel lassitude looming with the dread that fizzled out before peering through the clouds as the bayonets charged forth – all the incessant cruelty of corpses strewn across the fields. She couldn't tear her gaze away from the horrors, only stare in shock. Before she was snatched away once more by the knocking on an ancient, crumbling wooden door – the great trenches in the fog simply echoed monotony, piercing through the terror of seeing that image once again. And through the cracks streamed a deafening roar of ravenous vipers hissing, seeing the weary widow in a state of quivering sorrow. Out they came from behind the door, lingering as the knocking echoed still. The door quivered. Terror seized the stream, swiftly dimming the moonlight with clouds – she couldn't see them but they were there. Lurking. Grinning. Insatiable hunger for flesh twisting their intentions.

She stumbled away to approach the lurking threat of a face that could be anyone – an identity stripped away by rambling forgetfulness, or perhaps even a shadow engulfed in vipers of an ink-black hue, shadowed in confusion, and yet the gloom was not opaque. It glimmered with a truth that peered through, yet never showed its complexion with all its scars and flaws, its wandering tendrils that followed a blood-curdling scream. Those petals of a rose simply covered the silken blood that spilled among the grass, the poppies smiling as they danced a melancholy waltz of innocence, not knowing that beneath lay a young, quivering smile, not quite drowned out by the pecking of crows on the carcass as it decayed – not quite peeled away as the dread lingered, the fog still covering her vision despite the book being far in the corner. She supposed the complexion on the other side must be somewhat the same. Stumbling, grasping to hold onto a passing piece of debris that spoke truth and hope as the eerie light passed by. And she supposed the knock was an echo, simply an incessant dance in her mind followed by a scream. Then everything halted abruptly.