At night the house is quiet: tucked on a ride, built into the rocky side of one of those low, slopping mountains. A muddy, dull night light in the hallway shines against three doors, two closed tight and one slightly ajar. On the ground level, behind another shut door is Adalheid's goal: safety. But she's stuck at the bottom of the steps. Before her, the dinning room opens up and everywhere she looks she can only see shadows - hiding bogeys.

Under the china hutch, behind the credenza and most surely in the shadowy doorway over the shoulder of her grandmother's portrait on the wall - everywhere she looks, something is hiding and waiting. Her little hands tighten around the gut of her stuffed bear, sweaty and cold all at once. The longer she stands there, still and unsure in fear, the worse it gets. Until finally, she makes up her mind and throws the bear into the room, aimed at the darkest and grimmest place most likely to house bogymen and cold, wet hands waiting to grab her as she runs past.

It's the tap and clatter of the bear's plastic eyes hitting the wood floor that wakes Caleal up in the room at the end of the hall. And it's the pounding of Adalheid's tiny feet that keeps her as much. The bear's sacrifice is noble. He has done his job and held off or scared away what she's so afraid of and the little girl runs past and down the hall unsnatched and unharmed. She fumbles with the knob, having to try twice to get the latch open with her sweating, numb hands and let herself in.

Behind the door, her mother is already up. She's pulling a robe over her shoulders and the flutter of movement and the shape of her already up when Adalheid expected no one forces a bubble of a scream from the girl's throat. Caleal reaches for her with that sweet look of honest concern on her face (the way her brows knit together and her eyes go brighter, while the corners of her mouth tip down just barely). She closes the gap between them in just a few steps and as Adalheid curls and folds against her mother, Caleal lifts her up. Her feet leave the floor about the same time that her cheek comes to rest on her mother's shoulder.

Great, wet tears let loose from the corners of Adalheid's eyes, staining the shoulder of her mother's robe darker. Caleal moves away from the bed and Robin, who's very likely awake by now. She grabs a throw from the back of one of the room's sitting chairs to drape over the shoulders of the little one. She doesn't ask any questions, just slowly paces the empty space in the room until the girl is quiet and calm; until the warm tears turn cold and her eyes drift shut. Her voice is low and even, the lullaby more spoken than sang against Adalheid's temple: Sleep shall take you where the lilies star the quiet pool with light. Where the winds are whistling mild, glad to greet a weary child.

It doesn't take long for Adalheid to forget the bogeys, not like this: not with her face so close to her mother's throat, with the smell of her hair all around her or her sweet voice and those words she's known since before she can even remember. She forgets the cold fear and the dream that woke her up. When the girl's body is heavy and her arms dangle off of Caleal's shoulders, she slips back into her own bed with her a dead weight on her chest.