The sow rooted somewhere among trunks and roots that jutted from the damp soil.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQNXUw9W8Lx
I heard it before I saw it. The scraping, the grunting, the snapping of branches. It had no idea that the night was my domain.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrLwBK1P0CX
I slipped through the undergrowth like a cat. Unarmored, in my cloak. I needed no weapon. My hands were enough.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUSGy8QW8Pk
Wild boars are stupid, but dangerous. For humans. For me it was survival.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1injy8DRwF
The wind came from ahead, smelling of fir and resin and of the warm blood that pulsed beneath the hide. It raised its head, an old boar, strong enough to tear a village child to pieces. Then it kept digging.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8A24MZVWUt
Three long steps away.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡALXE5wjNwT
Two.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyGv54lkHst
I lunged before its head could lift.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlcBgquOWYB
My hands seized the bristly fur at its neck. It roared, kicked, tusks flashing in the moonlight. They are stubborn beasts, but not stronger than me. I threw it to the ground. A short struggle, then my teeth in its throat. The blood came hot and metallic, spurting into my mouth, tasting of fear and rage.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPe3SLTLO33
Not my first choice, but it quieted the hunger.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXevjx4lHcu
The boar thrashed, then grew limp. The forest held its breath, as it always did when I drank. I let go, wiped my mouth on my cloak. Watched the final twitching. I had what I needed.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡg3XwFF2Zvv
For now.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwYAlBchVus
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Whoever has slept enough through the day knows how the silence of night resembles a stage. Every sound counts, every rustle means something. Daytime is nothing but chatter.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡs1DL66HNdv
I walked on, fir scent in my nose, cold air on my face. The metallic taste of blood would linger for a while. Satisfied, I turned back. Morning was coming soon. I pulled my cloak tighter.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2LBP3WFVWn
The forest was still. Nothing stirred, not even the creatures that usually scratched in the dark. They knew the scent of danger. Humans rarely do. Sometimes a vagrant wanders into my territory. You smell them from afar; sweat and cheap spirits. In a pinch a fox will do. Anything with blood that the forest offers. Years as a vampire make you flexible when it comes to survival.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2pV7DXkISD
My human life ended abruptly. It happened so fast I never even met my sire. The vampire who made me called it mercy. I call it cruelty.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZc0hzp06jM
I knew that when the first birds began to sing it was time to return home. A reliable sense of time had long abandoned me. Years drifted by, hour after hour, day after day, while I myself did not know where to drift.
Then suddenly a sound. Jarring, like a wrong note in a ballad. At first faint. A whimper. Pitiful yet relentless, as if it had no idea how misplaced it was. Like a pup too stupid to die. Frowning, I followed the sound. It grew sharper the closer I came. Curiosity outran thought.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqh7u89yqTz
I expected a wounded animal. A youngster perhaps, abandoned by its mother, too weak to live. Something nature in its brutality had cast aside.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbHhNXNCnlv
The forest swallowed the light that even the moon could not push through the fir tops. Damp needles everywhere, soft moss between roots that rose from the earth like snares for the careless.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPvXslUc98P
I was almost right. It was no animal.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqiJeRQFZIl
But it changed the life I had known until then. A human infant. Squirming in a wicker basket that looked as though a drunk basket-maker had woven it in haste.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhKu2B5ixra
You were like a bad joke. Chubby-cheeked, wrapped in a tattered blanket that stank like wet animal hide. No place for a baby. Yet here you were.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGnCaKwDdkI
You did not even notice me. My brows drew together, as they always did when I did not understand something at first glance.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6ENM4GKiS6
I knelt and searched the basket for an explanation. A note, a letter, anything. Nothing.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWgnVcTewnC
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I could have ended it then and there. One move, no more noise, no responsibility, and best of all, no place in my memory. The thought came so fast I did not even question it. The impulse was purely instinctive.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMlwi9NDtpU
But then I hesitated. And it unsettled me. I, who had gutted men for the slightest provocation. I, who had snapped women’s necks because they shrieked like sparrows.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4z6F0PFnpo
I hesitated. At you, a screaming bundle. I saw something I did not yet understand.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAzPwCbgbzb
It was not compassion. I am no nursemaid. But I saw a project, if you will. Like wine that ripens in darkness. Some things need time before they are of use. You were weak now. But humans grow quickly. A sharp mind, a strong body, clay to be molded while still young. Something can be made of them if one has patience.
You stared at me with those far too large eyes for so little sense. That is the trick humans survive by. I hate it, because it works. Unfortunately even on me.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡs9ddVBflbF
“What could you become?” I muttered.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXvUIFjeuLs
My voice seemed to calm you. Slowly your crying ceased.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiV1lafa9QY
God knows how long you had been in this forest. Likely nearer to death than to life. Of course I knew you understood not a single word I murmured. Perhaps it was better that way. Most of the words I would ever speak to you were not ones anyone should hear.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1ZMMI8Cc0X
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And then it happened. That flicker of recognition in your eyes. Primitive, blurred, but there. You had sensed me. Something in you knew someone was there. The cold of my body, the darkness that clung to me like a shadow. All that should have frightened you, had your newborn brain been capable of fear. But it was not. Instead your sobbing faltered. Then it grew silent.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoUt3MXVjjT
The dead needles beneath my boots cracked like brittle bones. My eyes studied your face in the pale moonlight. I could have crushed you with a single finger. Instead I traced a line across your cheek.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ787jNkLC6t
“You do not even know what I am,” I whispered. You stared for a moment as if you had sensed something. You pressed faintly against my hand. You sought warmth. Understandable, but foolish. I have none. Yet you found comfort in mere nearness. That was a kind of humanity that stilled me for minutes.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡa9KzpVewB6
Then I wrinkled my nose. My eyes narrowed, a crooked smile crossing my lips.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8Kt08Sy3j5
“So be it. We make a pact. You… will grow… and I will see what happens when darkness raises a light.”303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRhjYe3UGM3
I took the basket, mechanical yet careful. My black cloak wrapped around you like a shadow consuming a flame.
The path home wound like a serpent through rocky ground bordered by firs. You weighed almost nothing. As I walked through the forest, I now carried a purpose, rare among my kind.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡX1OA5p6vMY
My cold body swayed slightly with each step, and within the folds of my cloak you finally slept, completely.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDDoNmvuCmn
It was bizarre. You were so pitifully mortal. 303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡs3QVRFaawE
And yet, in that small body beat a heart that knew no betrayal. No bloodshed, no lies. Only raw innocence. For one like me, that was more fascinating than I would ever admit.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLkDEb1hUyx
I pulled my cloak tighter as I left the forest behind and approached the place I called home. An abandoned house, long smothered by ivy and weeds. Hidden and broken enough that no villager would dare wander here.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡY1m30cB7cd
Once a house consumed by plague. For me it is House Hedera. I care little for Latin phrases, but ivy clings to whatever no longer moves. It outlasts men. That seemed fitting.
I claimed the manor when I wandered the lands from Rosegrad. Not a castle, but suitable enough for a creature like me. Cold stone, overgrown with ivy, mostly dust and rotten wood within. Of course I never bought it. At that time plague raged everywhere in Vargarin, and the family who once owned it had decided to die out together.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡglN4Gr2sq3
The family lay upstairs when I arrived. Father, mother, child. Their bodies covered with boils, some still filled with pus and blood, some burst. Their fingers black as ink, the stench sickly sweet. I vomited into a corner before setting to work. I was polite enough to bury them behind the manor. No flowers, no grave. I was only a pragmatist with a shovel in need of a fixed abode. With time, a patch of grass grew on their grave. Later daisies, clover, dandelions spread. As though death itself had decided to mask misery with a touch of aesthetics.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIlFNDUHmcQ
Simple farmers call such flowers weeds, maids pick them for toothaches or lovesickness, and the rest trample them underfoot. But I saw: death is a poet; from their graves the flowers grew all the richer. Perhaps plague corpses simply make the soil especially fertile.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGAwB8IvAZz
“If you fall sick, you are on your own,” I murmured into the night, “I am no wet nurse.” Yet I held you tighter than necessary.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡi49AVmDvsy
There was something about you. No beauty, no strength. You were an ugly child, your face squashed, a black uneven fuzz on your head. More a promise that something might stir if I let you live.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYEhGhmP2A8
The years before had been nothing but emptiness.
When I reached the manor I walked through the entrance up to the second floor into the master chamber. The house smelled of old stone and mildew, the stench of death long gone. Dust everywhere, the windows dull. The scratched wooden boards creaked with every step. Moonlight poured through a window, laying like a veil upon the faded bed. I set the basket there.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhPzJl4jipF
No coffin. I sleep in ordinary beds, as I always had as a mortal. Whoever thinks we prefer coffins has listened to too many tales.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtUSI1fRQta
As long as it is dark, I sleep anywhere.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhPYwHzg33V
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Only after placing the basket on the bed did I check what I truly had before me.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡR7qBmE2bxc
I unwrapped the meager rags. A girl.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdEnspuflTS
That gave me pause. Girls grow faster than boys, they say. And if they are not kept stupid, they become the most dangerous manipulators there are. That is an advantage. Provided they stay loyal.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡig9gfEzNKl
It was calculation. I looked at your wrinkled face and thought: if I let you live, I will make something useful of you. And for a fleeting moment, the kind that comes to every vampire who has been alone too long, I pictured what I might make of you once you were a woman.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYsVsZaNXhu
Other bloodsuckers forge plans when it suits them. I do as well.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCeuIgi6UaR
But before anything concrete could take shape, I smothered the thought.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEFCdZx3WTQ
Not out of morality. I had discarded that somewhere between my turning and the plague. It was a reflex, my body resisting. I had learned to heed instincts when they scream loud enough. Like the disgust that rises when you smell sour milk.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7Im64J4Wzu
So I left it. Some doors are better left closed.
I sat in the only chair in the corner. Legs crossed, chin in hand. As if before a painting, I stared at the basket. Watched your small body breathe. So tiny. And yet alive.303Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMA25uI26nG
“Sleep well, girl,” I whispered into the darkness. “You are now the only light in my world. Do not burn too bright.”
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