This was not the painted image of the goddess that Sophie had seen everywhere throughout the city, nor did it resemble the clay figures sold in the marketplace. This Kali of black stone, with her long, grotesquely protruding golden tongue and her three huge glaring red eyes, must be, thought Sophie, the goddess at her darkest and most fearsome, the One Who Causes Madness. This was not an image of the deity in terrifying human form, but an image of terror itself, come down from the first days of the world.
(From Sophie, in Shadow, Thistledown Press, 2014.)
