Time withered Hetty into malignancy.
The Art fell from her skilled fingers.
Her grand designs subsided into half-hearted malice.
Galatea mourned and commanded.
Hetty took an apprentice.

He was a young boy.
He was whipsmart and knifevicious.
He was an atheist.
Galatea took him to Herself.

Hetty felt her moment approaching.
She prepared a cauldron.
Into its steel mouth she placed everything she knew.
It was to be fed into the city water tower.
In this dispersed manner she hoped for immortality.

She set the boy to watch the cauldron with strict instructions not to taste the broth.
Like all magic brews it had only one charge.
The boy stirred the long wooden spoon as the heat pressed him down.
The cauldron boiled.
The potion hissed and spat and burned the boy’s finger.
He popped the finger in his mouth.

In this manner he found God and terror.
“Oh, dear,” said the boy, and turned into a hawk.
Galatea shrieked in her tower.
Hetty snapped awake at her side.
She turned into a shooting star and overtook the boy.
He knew wisdom and turned into the falling rain.
Hetty wailed and fell to the earth.
Galatea wept below, arms open.