There was a woman who lived in the woods. She sat by the fire on that long winter\u2019s night, her young son cradled in her lap. She sang him songs and told him stories and said don\u2019t be afraid, until he fell asleep and she sang no more.<\/p>\n
Outside, under the fullness of the moon, in the deepness of the snow, the boy\u2019s father gibbered and howled and screamed and begged and battered his bloody fists against the door.<\/p>\n
She looked at the boy, his sleeping face angelic in the flickering fire\u2019s light, and she looked at the door, and imagined what snarled beyond. She wondered if this was all there was; violence, now, and in her son, yet-to-be. She wondered what use was love. All this love.<\/p>\n
__________<\/p>\n
Notes:<\/p>\n
1. From August 2014<\/em> There was a woman who lived in the woods. She sat by the fire on that long winter\u2019s night, her young son cradled in her lap. She sang him songs and told him stories and said don\u2019t be afraid, until he fell asleep and she sang no more. Outside, under the fullness of the moon, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[111,20,112,21,23,22,62,113,110],"class_list":["post-219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-thousand-and-one-tales","tag-a-long-winters-night","tag-a-thousand-and-one-tales","tag-bonnie-prince-billy","tag-fairy-tales","tag-fiction","tag-folk-tales","tag-night-time","tag-the-sounds-are-always-begging","tag-winter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":221,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219\/revisions\/221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n2. Inspired by one of the verses in The Sounds Are Always Begging by Bonnie Prince Billy And The Cairo Gang<\/a>, from the album The Wonder Show Of The World (2010)<\/em><\/p>\n__________<\/br>Support An Accumulation Of Things<\/a><\/h3>If you like the things you've read here please consider subscribing to my patreon<\/a> or my ko-fi<\/a>. <\/br><\/br>Patreon subscribers<\/a> get not just early access to content and also the occasional gift, but also my eternal gratitude. Which I'm not sure is very useful, but is certainly very real.<\/br><\/br>(Ko-fi contributors<\/a> probably only get the gratitude I'm afraid, but please get in touch if you want more). <\/br><\/br>Thank you!<\/i><\/br><\/br>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"