Demon Dream - 1. Prelude

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Demon Dream

Prelude:

Once, when an old woman came to perish

As truant exile on a barren plain,

Her fragile limbs snapped, not letting her rise;

So in the spiteful dirt she writhed in pain.

All the fear she still composed, feared this death.

Being cut off now, she fought that unknown;

Though it drained strength and stole the time still left,

She fought for it, for what else had she known?

Remembered, past memories began to rage,

The woe of life, a moment to endure:

From father who sold her, she ne’er forgave;

To the man who took, ne’er thinking to love her.

Only a life of toil unrewarded

By child or hope stung her dying thought,

And all the dreams condemned yet unfilled

That the younger heart of hers had once sought.

Her husband, dead some twenty years ago,

In a fever’s fire, sailed on like a sigh.

Smiling in happy wonder, he passed on,

While she now contended hard not to die.

An unseen thing stirred and drifted in the air,

Drawn from the Heaven Shelf down to her strife.[1]

Her fear of death delivered her a hell

In semblance of a deal for mortal life.

Old and alone, a woman came to die.

In a heartless room, the night of her brain,

Crept wonder of what life had signified

But drudgery and love betrayed through pain.

In a dream from which she should not arise,

Her savior whispered, and a compact swore.

Fretting, she took it that life should not end;

She feared death, but woke more doomed than before.