I know the smell is terrible here.  I don’t like it any better than you do, but it’ll be gone by morning.  I just wish the girl had not seen the thing.  You’d think she would get over her fear of it when she sees me decimate the foul thing just by the proximity of my presence.  I’m sure she heard it sizzle, like a bug caught in a zapper when it got too close to me.  If only I could figure out a way to fry the thing without raising this awful stench.  But that’s the way it is you know, wiping out a pest is always messy.

I love to watch her when she is sleeping.  Our children always look like angels when they are asleep.  That is when we see the true face of the child—the face without the mask.

If only I could touch her.  Hold her on my lap as I did when she was small.  Oh how I miss those days.  Her long hair hung in ringlets to her shoulders and tendrils here and there framed her face.  Sometimes, I want to smash this window-pane.  Reach in and lift my child out of there.

What does it matter what I want to do?  I could do anything.  But I won’t. 

I remember when her first sibling was born ages ago.  Knowing the dangers of my kind, I bound myself to certain...laws.  And one of them was that no matter how much I wanted to break the window—and I had not experienced wanting as I know it now—I would not, ever, do it.

That is why I fashioned the brass key.  I call it brass so that you will understand.  It looks like brass and feels like brass.  Actually, the key is fashioned from elements that do not abound on your planet.  More about that tomorrow.  Get your rest and meet me here another day and I will tell you about the key.

To be continued