The infant's cries rang silent throughout the dark, misty alleyway. The woman lay huddled, quivering and broken as her contractions slowly increased in duration and intensity. Her cries for help echoed with more morbid reverberation than the infant's non-responsive birthing as the blood on her hands glowed with the red siren pallor of a death, still undeclared. The woman, fumbling, took the infant by the heels, vigorously smacking its backside with the force of a mother's instinct-but still, no sound.
She cradled the babe in her trembling arms, praying but if even for a faint wisp of breath to be suspired onto her mascara-streaked and rouge-mussed face. As she attempted for a second time to grant animation to this ill-fated child, a voice, disembodied and strangely androgynous rumbled and sizzled through the alleyway like hot, molten lava: "Is anybody alive in here?" it inquired, just as quickly retreating. And it was only then that the stillborn child stirred, still for the time being mute, but forevermore crowned very much bright and alive. Yet despite the answer to her heavenly supplication having been made manifest through the child's fruition of bearing, would both Mother and Child would henceforth be left, in question.
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