A heavy wind lashed at the windows of the home so fiercely one would worry the glass would soon dislodge from the panes, but for the racket it caused the only noise between Toriel and Frisk was the crackling of the fire in the living room. It had been snowing and storming for a few days now but the fire, that fire, it caused some nearly-reverent sanctuary within the small house the pair lived in. To step inside the hearth was like a blanket draped over tired, road-weary shoulders, like a mother’s embrace after a day of sorrow in the school yard. Wholehearted, warm orange glow cast over the room and chased the harsh white light of the windows, and for all elements could wail and howl and freeze, to Toriel and Frisk it was the world whole filled with warmth, and dryness, and comfort, and compassion.

They were fixing dinner and it was the third night in a row they were making pumpkin pie. They both liked the meal but both were growing tired of it now, but neither could brave the storm to reach the store. Perhaps tomorrow it would ease. For now they worked side by side in their refuge, Toriel teaching Frisk the final, subtle perfections to this particular recipe. Over the past year Frisk had become an admirable chef. They were, Toriel smiled to herself, not approaching the magnificence of her meals, but Frisk was proud of themself as they had recently been promoted to ‘food preparation’, working with the raw ingredients instead of just mixing and whisking what bowls Toriel handed to them.

Frisk’s job at the moment was de-seeding the pumpkins. Toriel was slacking, forgoing her part of the recipe to observe the child at work. There was a look of fierce self-respect Frisk wore while performing a task that always drew her observation. Nothing less than a job done wholly would satisfy Frisk. Toriel, personally, liked some of the pumpkin seeds to wind up in the pie. A hint of crunch and a taste of bitterness contrasted and balanced the sweetness of the meal, she thought, but for Frisk, no, Frisk had been told, ‘de-seed the pumpkins’, and by the Earth and Heaven, Frisk was firm that not a single seed would be left in the fruit and with knife and spoon and greatest care would remove every offender.

There was so much she had to thank Frisk for and even after a year could not think of the way to approach it. She could not even begin. Perhaps the child was far too young to hear it, perhaps that was just an excuse she allowed herself to always postpone to the next month. To not even mention the lives saved and the horrors of the underground banished, but for her, a child, to live with a child again. To teach and to care and to comfort, to demonstrate a life well lived, to instil value, by all her soul to be a mother again, a blessing untimely ripped from her. Every night they spent cooking together these thoughts flooded her mind and near every night she needed to turn from them to pad dampness from her eyes.

Frisk finished the second quarter-piece of pumpkin and took up another. With that same impressive single-mindedness like that of a surgeon they split the half to precise quarters, then to eighths, with practiced metric reached for their small spoon, and turned to carefully replace the knife and slid the blade into Toriel’s flank.

With that, the goat-mother’s life was ended. With an action that took no more time than a heartbeat and no more effort that turning on a television set. Her life was snuffed out and she had not even realised. Toriel had gone back to preparing food on the kitchen counter, lost in her thoughts about the child, and the flowing arms of her robe obscured the view of the handle protruding from her abdomen. She hadn’t even felt the call of pain. After a moment, she faced frisk, only dimly noticing Frisk had stopped their work.






“My child, is something the matter?” She had said to the little one standing before her, though the only words to pass her mouth was a slurred “Ch.. mm.. matter?”. By now a powerful tiredness sank heavy on to shoulders, along with a vague realisation of wrongness. Something was offensively, intolerably wrong with her Child. She was their mother, and a mother could tell these things. She studied their face and was taken by sadness, as staring at her was a look reading ferocious, although also fiercely reluctant, determination, a look she had seen many times years prior, and one she prayed Frisk would never have to don again.

Frisk reached forward and withdrew the knife and the awareness of what had happened reached Toriel’s consciousness. A lifetime of nicked and sliced fingers taught her the pain a knife gave was a sharp and piercing wail of emergency, from the pointed end to running the keen edge, but this was not correct, or only superficial. It was a hammerblow, the swing of the sledge landing upon her stomach. Spreading from the wound, queasiness crept through her organs, organs that had no business to be nauseous, and such a dominant nauseousness it was that befell her as though those organs were not only ill but now reviled being in her body altogether.

With the nauseousness came weakness of limb.

“Ff.. fri…”

Toriel made a slumped fall to one knee and reached a hand to Frisk’s shoulder, who stepped a half pace away and the hand drooped to the floor.

“My child…”

Toriel didn’t recognise the visage on Frisk’s face now. Her vision was heavily blurred and somewhat quavering, but her child stared at her with eyes burning of coal and wore a maliciously grim smile she couldn’t quite place in her memory. Perhaps she recognised it but it didn’t matter. Panic had crept in to her mind now as she became fully aware of her reality and that panic sharpened her mind to only the most important actions of the moment.

“Frisk.. I… I’m sorry, frisk…”

She crawled forward a step to reach Frisk. Visions of first rescuing the delicate little one from that damp cave paraded in her mind. Short lived days in the ruins. The end of suffering in the underground and a glorious emergence into sunlight with a hug she wished she would never have to break. Somewhere there, and she couldn’t place the moment in her mind, she had failed this child. Dust filtered through her fingers, pouring like an hourglass from the wound in her side. She lay on her side now, not aware of having slumped further. Tears welled in her eyes of sorrow matched only by one other moment in her life. Where had she gone wrong? What had she done to this innocent child? What had incurred this wrath upon her?

Though her voice was barely a breath of whisper, Frisk, or the demon wearing Frisk’s skin, stepped forward.

“Sorry? You’re sorry, old woman?”

The phrase had apparently taken the creature aback. It had even wiped the malevolent smile from its face. The look of plain, remorseless curiosity that replaced it was perhaps of no reprieve to the dying mother but at this point she could not discern more than a fleshy blur looming above her.

Two children she had been blessed with in life and two children she had let down. It was her charge to care for Frisk, and somewhere she had failed so catastrophically it had birthed this authoritative hatred taking place in her home. She spoke in shallow exhalations, and her child sat down beside her head. Toriel stared at them with fogging eyes, her mind clutching desperately to her last vapours of consciousness, scrabbling and searching urgently for something to atone for, praying that if she could only know her wrongdoing, give name to it, perhaps she could be forgiven, perhaps it could quell this animosity. Dust poured heavier from the perforation and darkness circled her vision deeper. Don’t judge others you meet by your time with me, Frisk.  Carry on well, Frisk. You can move past this. It was a mistake, I know that. I’m sorry. Just be good, will you, Frisk?

she could bring no answer to mind

Her thoughts left her in a dim, receding anxiety, before she faded, and slept, and likewise the Demon departed Frisk's body, leaving Frisk alone in the warm room, with the knife, and a pile of dust swirling on the floor, and a half prepared pumpkin pie on the kitchen counter, and a heavy, confused sob building in their throat.