Title: Sun Child. Moon Child.
Character(s): A Vampire
Folklore Used: Vampire Lore
Rating: G
Summary: A vampire elder, muses on his life ... urrr, unlife.



He missed the sun.

He had never thought that such a thing could be possible, but there you are. He had thought that the night would never loose its glamour over him, and for a long time that's how it was; it was wonderful ... magical even. In those early days, if he hadn't had others with him (helping him to adjust to his new life), he probably would have burned up a thousand times. There were times when he would just stand out, under the moon, and he would have sworn that he had heard it singing to him. It was always a melodious lullaby, beautiful and slightly addictive, and he would stand out there, until the sun started to come up; it didn't matter if he was in a field, under trees, or in a valley, he would just stand. But it would never be inside a building or cave, since he didn't think that he could truly appreciate the sound of the moon, if he was inside an enclosed space. Yes, it was probably only in his mind that he had to be in open spaces, but that didn't change his attitude. It took years before he truly appreciated the benefits of being in enclosed spaces, or how important it was to know when the sun was coming up (and where you were in relation to it).

But that was in the beginning.

In most others, it wasn't the song that they went crazy over (and they generally paid much more attention to the movements of the sun, wanting to remain ... "alive" ... as long as they could). They let the thirst drive them, and there were those who left a trail of blood and bodies in their wake. In those instances, the elders would have to get involved, giving them one chance to change their ways. If they refused to be more discrete, to make it harder for the humans to detect their movements, they would most certainly get involved. Even with the warning, some did exactly what they wanted, refusing to stop drinking wherever and whenever they wanted, not caring if they were found out (because how could any human really stop them). In those instances, they would have to be taken care of, and that was something most didn’t want to have to witness (and only the most brutal wanted to participate in).

Among the humans, his kind had always been thought of as monsters by the vast majority of them. Sure, there were those who found their whole lifestyle fascinating, but they were the minority compared to those who thought that he was what went bump in the night. He had been one of those oddballs, in his youth ... when he had still been human. He heard the stories of the vampires, and thought that their lives were amazing. Who wouldn't give up disease, age, and toil for immortality and imperviousness to pretty much anything that would've meant the end to his human life? Now, he would always be young, never be sick, always be strong. The thirst was a viable tradeoff for the rewards of his new life.

But that was back when he believed that the thirst would've been the worst part of the tradeoff. Then, he started getting enamored of the moon, and that lasted for a long time ... longer than he would have thought. And even now, the moon still enchanted him, but nothing close to like it had before. Mainly because he didn't have time to be enamored of it as he had when he was still a newborn vampire.

Ever since he had been accepted as an assistant to one of the members of the Council of Elders, his life had made a drastic change. In those early days, he was nothing more than a gofer, getting whatever it was that his master needed. And even though his master was the most junior member of the council, he still had more to do than he thought that he might have.

He hadn't been sure how he had gotten such a position, since it usually went to someone much older, and with much more ambition, than him. But apparently, one of the senior members of the Council had appreciated his attention to detail, when documenting the downfall of Rome. And over the years, he had risen in the ranks, until he became the junior member of the Council himself. He had never really enjoyed it, as he would have much rather have had his nose pressed in some sort of book (whether he was reading it, referencing it, or writing in it). But his penchant for books, and his impeccable memory, became known throughout their world, until people began to become dependent on it. They began to say that if he didn't know something, it wasn't worth knowing, because they had become so accustomed to him knowing the answer to any question that they might have (or at least, having a very good idea which book or scroll the answer was located in).

Eventually, over the long ages, he rose in prestige, and in rank, until he finally became the second in command of the Council. He never would have thought, in his early years, that he would have risen to such a position. Even now, it was still something of a shock to his system that he had made it to the place that he was, whenever he paused to actually think about it.

And in the course of that time, he had begun to miss the sun on his face. He remembered that there had been a time when he would have been able to go out into the sun, without fear, and he remembered that it was warm and bright, but he couldn't remember how it actually felt. He had been in the dark for so long that all memory of what things were like had left him; there was only the knowing that things had been different once, and the feeling like the things that had happened to him when he was still human, had happened to someone else. It almost seemed like it had happened to someone else, someone other than him, since he had change so much over the millennia. Not changed so much in the way that he was no longer an oddball (that was still the same), but everything else about him was so very different.

Again, he started to do things that he used to do in his youth as a vampire: he would stand in fields, and under trees, staring up at the moon. But now, even though he still heard the song (that same lullaby that he had always heard), it did not hold the same weight with him ... it had lost all of its addictive power. So, he would stand out, waiting for the moon to set, and the sun to rise, knowing that with his rise, the burning would come. And he would stay out for as long as he would dare, feeling the burn, feeling part of himself turn to ash, before he found the shadows and allowed himself time to heal.

This went on for years ... decades ... and no one stopped him this time, because he was so very discreet about his new addiction. No one even suspected what he was doing, even when they came to him mere hours after he had burned himself. There were those who remembered him in the early days, and thought that this was just a relapse to those times, with his standing out underneath the moon and losing track of time. None had any idea that what was done, had been done intentionally.

But then, one early morning, he was caught.

It wasn't by anyone of his own kind; it was by a human, one who had been so much like he had been ... or at least how he had thought of himself before he had changed. This one had the look of one who was fascinated by the thirst, and the life immemorial.

And that's when he got an idea.