Aubin
Aurillian
Posts: 64
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Post by Aubin on Dec 3, 2009 23:25:26 GMT -5
"I don't believe it is natural," replied Aubin dryly. "But the Autor, the being that created us, was not, I believe, natural."
He remained against the wall but withdrew his hands from his pockets. His arms crossed over his chest and he frowned thoughtfully. "I drink blood, yes. We all do. We require it. And there was a time, long ago, when I killed for it. Early on, hundreds of years ago, our society was far more brutish. We were living to survive. So, yes, I killed. Hunted and killed. It was better, for me at least, to end a victim rather than let it return to its village or family and come seeking vengeance."
"But humans and vampys have an accord now. Your own government works with ours, both factions in fact. Many humans serve as hosts to specific vampyrs. Illiam feeds this way, for example. Personally I don't like to know my food by name. Your people's advances in science have been a great relief to me. Now I mostly purchase my meals from your blood banks. Although there are times...." he grinned, a small hint of fang showing. "Well, let me be frank, there are humans who get off on being fed from during sex. Who am I to judge?"
He tilted his head to better inspect her. "You haven't run away screaming, I've noticed."
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Aurelai
Aurillian
Queen
damn I wish I'd used a condom. o.O
Posts: 32
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Post by Aurelai on Dec 4, 2009 2:55:14 GMT -5
“I'm still considering it,” Vae responded honestly, which produced a faint blush on her features. It wasn't that she had any delusions of being brave; she could never sit all the way through a horror movie and still stayed up the whole night if she watched even part of one. But between Aubin and herself she felt there had begun a kind of understanding so to admit to being afraid of him in particular did embarrass her a little. She didn't know how that made him feel. Her eyes contained an element of apology at the admission.
“I...” she began again, but changed her direction midway through the thought. “How...?” She laughed softly at herself as the words still wouldn't come. She paused to consider more clearly before she spoke again, then asked, “So I gather there are many of you. You said most of the people at the poetry reading were. Are there so many that... that is, is there ever a time when I'm not in some kind of danger?”
Her eyebrows were knit as she considered the possibility that the impending death she now faced openly had always been waiting in the wings much closer than she ever knew, and, worse still, that it might be haunting her friends wherever they were right this instant. It was bad enough to know that within a few months she would be leaving her loved ones whether she liked it or not; it would be ten times worse to know that the comfort and joy they brought her might at any moment be extinguished by less noble vampyrs than Aubin or Illiam.
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Aubin
Aurillian
Posts: 64
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Post by Aubin on Dec 4, 2009 3:29:53 GMT -5
Vae's admission, tentatively given, made Aubin smile. He liked the girl's honesty and while he wouldn't have blamed her if she had taken to her heels immediately, he found this answer, so genuine and unedited, endearing.
"Theoretically, yes. All humans are in constant danger, technically, from my kind. But realistically...no. There are still some who hunt and kill their victims of course. But they are all Brudjan, or at least I have never heard of an Aurillian doing so in recent years. The host system is much less work and mutually beneficial. Those at the most risk at those who risk the North quadrant. Even Aurillian vampyrs are not safe there."
He touched his neck and, cautiously, pulled down a corner of the gauze so that Vae could see the wound beneath. It was healing of course but someone of Vae's training should be able to tell that no mortal could survive such an attack.
"You haven't fled. And yet you haven't asked to obvious question. You are a conundrum, Vae."
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Vae
Human
due to patient/doctor confidentiality, I can't tell myself anything
Posts: 47
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Post by Vae on Dec 4, 2009 3:49:32 GMT -5
It was her chance again to be completely taken aback by something Aubin did, this time as she stared in wonder at the gruesome wound that had been afflicted on him. Unable to stop herself, she took a step forward, touching his shoulder lightly to indicate that he not move as she tilted her head to get a look at the wound. “Good God, Aubin,” she said in shock. She didn't know what he did to piss his attacker off, but she could definitely say that she would never venture into the North Quadrant again, and would warn Mannie, the only one of her acquaintances bold enough to try, to stay away as well. She shook her head, retreating again, as she looked at her new friend with some concern.
“What's the obvious question?” she then asked, mind still wondering at his survival. To her, the most obvious questions were those she asked, but maybe the was another her mind had avoided because deep down she simply didn't want to know.
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Aubin
Aurillian
Posts: 64
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Post by Aubin on Dec 4, 2009 4:54:00 GMT -5
Aubin lifted both brows as he pressed the gauze back down. "I would have thought," he murmured, "that you would be asking if we made vampyrs like the stories said. 'Created our progeny from the living? And how that would work with someone like you. A human already dying."
He considered her quietly, his mind reaching into hers cautiously while his eyes read her expression. "But you didn't think of that, did you? It hadn't even crossed your mind to inquire, much less attempt to beg what so many polite circles call a 'favour'. I could save you for all you know. Stop your dying by, ironically, killing you. And much more mercifully than the cancer. Vampyr bites can be, as you have seen, violent. But they don't need to be. The humans who serve as hosts don't do it out of promises for the future after all. Done with care and tenderness it can be pleasant, sensual. But you...you never thought to ask."
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Vae
Human
due to patient/doctor confidentiality, I can't tell myself anything
Posts: 47
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Post by Vae on Dec 4, 2009 14:12:09 GMT -5
“Oh.” Vae realized that this was the obvious question, and wondered then what it said about her that it didn't come to her first. “You're right,” she confessed. “I didn't think of it at all.”
She knitted her eyebrows, though even now that the idea was presented she realized that it didn't appeal to her. She explained, somewhat haltingly, “I suppose I didn't think of it because it doesn't really fix my problem. I'm not so much afraid of dying as I am afraid of losing my life. But I will either way. Even if I could,” she paused for words, “transform myself, I still wouldn't be able to, to become a surgeon, get married and have kids, see my friends graduate, or be at my parents' golden anniversary in the islands like they've always planned.” She shook her head at all of the memories she would never create, no matter how she died. She shrugged, and for all her seeming acceptance and the ease with which she discussed her own mortality, she admitted, “I don't want to die.”
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Aubin
Aurillian
Posts: 64
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Post by Aubin on Dec 4, 2009 16:13:31 GMT -5
"I know."
And know he did. He had approached death with reticence as well. With terror, even. Aubin had been among the last of his people to succumb to the disease that had ravaged Valir. His then studio, inherited from his master, was located on the outskirts of the city. The distance from the city square had saved the populace from enduring the smells that were associated with canvas and paint making and had provided Aubin, his master, and the other apprentices freedom from constant interruption. When the plague swept through Valir it had kept Aubin and his apprentices safe from the initial outbreak but nothing more. As he watched each of the apprentices slowly sicken and die his terror of the wasting disease grew. He buried his employees, his parents, and, eventually, all of his neighbours. When the disease finally reached him there was nothing to do but wait and suffer, curled on the dirt floor in his own sick, as terrified of death as he was of the dying process. When he had been reanimated he had not seen the second chance at life as gift. He had seen it only as a second chance to die again, slowly and in as much pain and misery. It had taken him years to accept his new state as anything else.
He reached a hand out slowly, trying hard to not startle her. He was reasonably sure she wasn't going to flee, but caution seemed reasonable. He rested the extended hand on her shoulder.
"I am sorry Vae. Very, very sorry."
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Vae
Human
due to patient/doctor confidentiality, I can't tell myself anything
Posts: 47
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Post by Vae on Dec 4, 2009 18:17:35 GMT -5
She nodded, trying desperately not to feel his kindness too much, not because she was in any way afraid of him but because if she did she would cry. And she was sick to death of crying.
She supposed she was about to surprise him again, make herself more of a conundrum. Because the most obvious courses of action were to run or to ask to be made a vampyr herself, a third could only make her more of an oddity. But she wasn't afraid of Aubin. He had never presented any danger to her with ample opportunity. And she wasn't yet so resigned to her death as to want to give up life, so she wasn't interested to know about the turning. But his unique history didn't change nothing between them; indeed one question now took paramount importance in her mind and, unable to meet his gaze, she overlooked how painful reliving his own memories might be in a bid to alleviate the fears she still had to experience some day.
"What's it like?" she asked, eyes still downcast until she at last forced her gaze to his face. Aware that she might not like what she had to hear, she still pressed on, "What's it like to die?"
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Aubin
Aurillian
Posts: 64
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Post by Aubin on Dec 5, 2009 15:31:57 GMT -5
Aubin wanted to lie. He wanted overwhelmingly to lie. It would be much easier to do so. To tell the girl that death, though frightening to think about, was neither as painful nor as terrifying as the living tended to suspect. He could, he knew, trot out the old familiar line about white lights and a final sense of peace. It would be kinder. But while Aubin could be kind he could not lie, at least not about this. He met her eyes and sighed.
"It is terrible, Vae. Vicious and nasty and brutish and animalistic. There is no sense of relief. No heavenly host. Your body ceases to function. You feel it fail, bit by bit. It differs, of course, depending on how you die. In my case is was slow. I knew it was coming and I succumbed to a disease that was not kind. It might have been easier, maybe, if I had not been alone. But everyone I cared about had long since died. Everyone, period, had died. Or thereabouts. Had there been someone else, had I died in a bed instead of on a packed dirt floor, had I had something, anything, to deaden the pain, it may have been a different matter. You should ask Illiam, his experience was different. He may be able to give you more comfort."
He fell into a moody silence for a moment, then glanced at the girl almost recklessly. "I can make it quicker. When the time comes. If you want it done, just done with, faster, and less painfully, you can ask. I won't deny you that."
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Vae
Human
due to patient/doctor confidentiality, I can't tell myself anything
Posts: 47
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Post by Vae on Dec 5, 2009 17:07:50 GMT -5
Up until that moment, Vae could honestly say that it was the loss of her future, rather than the fear of the moment of death, that had caused her the most grief. She had accepted death as a normal and natural part of life since her beloved grandmother had died when she was a young girl. Even when she learned that it was staring her in the face, death, in it's abstract form, didn't frighten her. But Aubin's firsthand description, more terrifying than any imagined experience, at last conjured that deep, paralyzing fear that most people would have experienced at the start. His offer to make the end quick and easy would later appear as the kindness it was meant to be, but in that moment of shock it only heightened the sense of fright that had taken root, and for the first time since his admission of what he was she saw him for all the ghoulish possibilities his kind represented.
She made an indistinct sound somewhere between disgust and exasperation, her hands lifting and then falling as she struggled not to make the move that she knew would hurt Aubin most. But she was human, and her emotions for the moment were too much for her, so she did what he had originally suspected she would do and walked away from him. Her hands were shaking as she lifted the back of one to her lips, hesitating at the mouth of what she used to view as her home which now felt like a foreign place host to any number of terrors. She turned towards her apartment, deliberately avoiding the questioning looks from the people turned monsters at the poetry reading from whom she was incapable of hiding her thoughts.
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Aubin
Aurillian
Posts: 64
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Post by Aubin on Dec 5, 2009 18:38:09 GMT -5
In body, Aubin stood unmoving in the pool of electrical light. In mind, however, he travelled with Vae as she made her way home. He did not read her thoughts, although he could have. Instead his mental presence swirled around her, radiating a clear message to any other being capable of sensing unspoken thought. This one is mine. Touch this one at your own peril. This one is protect by the vampyr Aubin. Like it or not, Vae had been touched by Aubin's protection for at least one night and while he was not the strongest or deadliest of vampyrs he could easily crush many of the younger, new-bred vampyrs and bring down unfortunate forces on others.
He cut his eyes to Illiam who had come at some point to stand nearby. They regarded each other quietly, two disparate personalities that somehow remained endlessly drawn toward one another.
"You shouldn't have told her," said Illiam quietly. "She can't handle it. She never could. Mortals are weak on their own and that one is already dying."
Aubin shook his head. "No, she can handle it. She is handling it now. Just at a distance. She needs time to process is all."
Illiam looked unconvinced, but nodded. "If you say so. Now come, your absence is beginning to draw attention." He held up a hand, cutting off Aubin's no doubt sarcastic reply then leaned forward to kiss the silenced lips. Taking Aubin's hand he led him back to the party where, he knew, Aubin would do nothing but ruminate on Vae.
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