The Cursed Collective - Changeling

Hush, hush, baby don’t cry… Mama won’t know till the dawn runs dry. Hush, hush, cradle won’t sing… The fae took the child for a changeling. Trade in the cradle, switch in the night, The eyes look wrong but the smile bites right. Blood runs colder when the cold wind sings, That’s not your child — that’s a changeling. Barbed-tongue rhyme in a bramble-bed hymn, Slip-shade fiends where the dark grows dim. Snatched from the crib by a frost-born hand, Left with a husk you don’t understand. Cheeks too hollow, voice too sharp, Bones too brittle and a hunger in the heart. Cruxfixes and hexes when the lullabies break, And the fae slip in with the child they take. Trade in the cradle, switch in the night, The eyes look wrong but the smile bites right. Blood runs colder when the cold wind sings, That’s not your child — that’s a changeling. I crawl through the rafters, I creep through the thatch, A babe in the crib, but the face won’t match. Teeth like milk but they glimmer like glass, Hands too thin for a child that fast. I whisper in the walls when the mother can’t sleep, A counterfeit cry when the shadows creep. Whispers weaving where the fae folk hide, It laughs like a child but it’s dead inside. Barter for the breath of a mortal-born kin, Changeling grin with a hunger within. Roots grow restless where the bargains bleed, Every fae pact plants another seed. Take what you love, give back the lie… The cradle still rocks but the real babe died. Changelings singing in the hollow of the trees, Fae don’t ask, they just take what they please. Trade in the cradle, switch in the night! The eyes look wrong but the smile bites right… Blood runs colder when the cold wind sings, That’s not your child — that’s a changeling! Rock the husk, the real one’s gone, The forest keeps what it feeds upon. Rock the husk, the cradle swings, We feast on tears when the changeling sings.