Original Fic "Metamorphoses" (PG)
Title: Metamorphoses Summary: Erm, a vampire love story? *cringes* Wow, that kind of sounds awful, doesn't it? Not rated, but prob PG 13 or something, if that. And unbeta'ed. Sorry. Well, self-beta'ed. Original fic.
Metamorphoses
The dawn comes up over the swell of the Atlantic full of fiery promise. She perches on the bare rock watching the tide come in, listening intently to the raucous shrieks of the gulls wheeling overhead. She dangles bare toes in the water, the ocean lapping at them gently, and to her ears the water is murmuring its song of tranquility. The new sun sparkling over the waves, the serenely singing sea, the rough rock beneath her -- all of it pleases her immensely, and she closes her eyes to listen to the music more closely.
This, of course, is a memory from Before.
My name was Kiera. The name meant nothing, no meaning that I knew anyway, save for my mother had liked the way it had sounded. Kiera Connolly. A good strong name, she often said, as if a name was something to which I could lash myself in a storm, immovable as the earth itself.
My mother was a strange woman. It is a hard thing to say, for I loved her, and to say such of a loved one is always hard, but strange she was. She told me once she was cursed with language. When I was quite young, I thought perhaps she meant something like Dutch or Russian. I didn't know about the hushed words of the very trees, the occasionally annoying chatter of birds. My father thought she was simply crazy, but he too loved her greatly, and she caused harm to no one.
Before she died, she told me I would know language too. I simply nodded my head, watching her wasting before my eyes from the cancer that was all but eating her alive. I was all of ten years old. Loved her I did, but I must admit I thought she might be a little bit crazy too.
Until two years later, that is, when I awoke quite suddenly one spring morning to the robin at my window chiding me for sleeping past dawn.
Naturally, then, I knew when the Travelers were coming. The gulls whispered to me of these strange people coming across the ocean in threes and fours. Gulls are talkative birds, but often liars, and I would have given their chatter little credence save for I had felt a sort of disturbing undercurrent in the world myself. I was sure that what the gulls told, however fantastic, was the truth.
But for myself, I did not know what it was that I felt. More than anything, it was a conspicuous absence, as I could not help but be at all times aware of living creatures. It had become as natural and as much a part of my life as breathing. This was not a talent I had requested, but I refused to take it lightly. This sudden sense of not-there-ness disconcerted me greatly.
A ways out on the ocean she spies a small fishing boat, hardly more than a dark speck bobbing gently among the waves. She smiles to herself, a small secret smile. She has come to know this particular boat quite well, from its faded and peeling paint to the weathered hull scarred from too many storms.
She squints her eyes to look for him even as she knows the boat is impossibly far to do so, just at the very edge of her sight. Yet she knows he is there with his nets. She can feel him, feel his life.
The Travelers arrived up the coast only a few hundred kilometers from our village. I spent my days restless, anxious with unease at the emptiness emanating from them. I had almost no one with whom I could share my fears. Even my family -- thanks to the Gift -- regarded me as eccentric, if not slightly mad. I had only my father and two older brothers, none of whom could begin to comprehend what the Gift was, much less what it meant to me.
What it was, was understanding. It was a knowledge of surrounding life that could become either a comfort or a curse. My mother, who had finally succumbed to her cancer when I was twelve, had known it as a curse. When she died, alone and pain-wracked, I had woken screaming from my sleep, incoherent and inconsolable. No one had needed to tell me of her death; I simply knew.
Even so, the Gift had been a mangled blessing. Our village was really quite isolated, perched nervously on the tip of a peninsula, bound by limitless ocean on one side and wild tangles of forest on the other. It was good to wake each morning to a land fairly bursting with life. Now the Travelers were turning the Gift against me, giving me fear, leaving me with worry and disquiet in my heart.
Neal was the one saving grace in my life. He was a young fisherman who lived on the outskirts of our village. I had met him entirely by accident when I was fourteen and he seventeen. I had been laughing with the gulls; he had been watching me. I felt his gaze and turned, all laughter quelled.
Partly I had been frightened. I had no friends from school, often shunned outright because of the Gift. I knew their parents told them to do so, for I had occasionally overheard them. I waited for the scorn and derision that I knew must follow Neal's discovery of me.
"They know you," he said softly, meaning the gulls.
I was silent. Sometimes that was best.
"They are lucky," he added after a moment. "I think I might like to be as lucky."
"Why aren't you making fun of me like everyone else?" I blurted out. "Aren't you afraid of me?"
He pointed to the circling birds. "And why should I? Are they? Don't the birds trust you? Besides,” he added, "I am not everybody else."
I said nothing. I knew vaguely who he was. To not know someone at least by sight was an impossibility in a village our size.
"I'm Neal," he said, filling up the silence. "You're Kiera, right? Most everyone does seem to know a little bit about you."
"Do they?" I demanded hotly. "Well, they're wrong. They don't know me. Or anything about me. And I don't want them to!" Tears had begun to threaten at the corners of my eyes. I turned swiftly to my bicycle, which lay in a careless heap nearby. Neal's hand shot out to grasp me firmly above the elbow.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that. Truly. I would like to know you," he insisted. "Properly, I mean. We could at least try to be friends."
I pulled my arm free, glaring and silent.
He sighed heavily. "Alright. Have it your way. See that path?" He pointed east. "Half a mile up. The blue one on the left. If you decide you want someone around who doesn't think you're crazy or a monster, well, now you know where I live."
He strolled off. I watched him go, mulling over his words.
After a few minutes I righted my bicycle and pedaled home, his brief touch still burning upon my arm.
It was a season of storms that year. Rain beat unceasingly on our roofs; promethean waves furiously battered our harbour. Storms had always frightened me somewhat, so when the onslaught briefly abated I rode out to find Neal's home.
He did not seem at all surprised to find me on his doorstep, wet and bedraggled, almost in tears and chilled to the bone. He fed me hot chocolate, patiently listening as I told him of the fishing boat caught in the storm yesterday. The men were not just lost, I said, but had drowned. I explained haltingly how I had known, how I had felt the sea take them.
Neal waited until I had finished before he spoke. When he did, it was to console me, to swear he believed me. And I believed him.
It was a good way to begin a friendship.
"And what is this?" he exclaims teasingly, wrapping strong arms around her waist. "A delectable young maiden in my kitchen?" His lips find hers easily and she is enveloped in his scent, an oddly pleasing mixture of brine, sweat and the sandalwood soap she buys for him. He tastes enticingly of salt.
Reluctantly she pushes him away. "Go and wash," she laughs. As he passes, he takes her hand and brushes a brief kiss across her knuckles. His blue eyes sparkle devilishly at her and she knows that she loves him.
Nineteen now. Five years have flown by since she first met him by the rocks. They are to be married come spring. She loves this man in all his moods, from the quiet, thoughtful one who listens and does not mock, to the teasing, playful man who has gone, finally, to wash before supper.
For him, she would do anything. For him, she thought she could even die.
I cooked often for Neal. He was not bad at it himself, but I enjoyed doing for him. I loved him. I wanted to take care of him. Our wedding was impending, and I looked forward to caring for him as his wife.
Then the Travelers came.
"What do you mean," he asked between mouthfuls of rabbit stew one evening, "you feel nothing?" He could not truly understand the Gift either, but he tried.
But that was just it. I didn't know. All I gained from trying to focus on them was a nearly overwhelming dread. I was afraid of them, afraid for us.
"Perhaps," said Neal consolingly, "they'll not come here. What are we but a small fishing community? We've nothing here. Whatever it is they want, they'll be much better off looking elsewhere for it."
I wanted to believe him. Every word he said made perfect sense. There was nothing here, and we were such a very small village. Yet I knew the Travelers would find their way here and beyond. We would be to them as a herring to a shark -- a mere tidbit, inconsequential.
Although it is still early in the evening, it is already quite dark. Storm clouds have been gathering all afternoon and the sky is now black with them.
She curls up on the hearth to look for Neal. He is late returning, hours late. It is not particularly cold tonight, but she keeps the fire blazing anyway. It only seems to make the darkness deeper.
She tells herself that she is being silly and childish to worry so. Of course she would know if anything happens.
She fears this nothingness from across the ocean, these Travelers who have within them no spark of life. For months now she has felt them coming, the cold darkness of them edging nearer. She fears more with each passing day, and with each falling night. She fears especially for Neal, who is not yet home. She prays he returns to her safely, and soon.
And then it happens: a sharp tug at her heart, a light going out. Oh no, not this, anything but this. The rapid dwindling of a heartbeat, the quelling of life like a drowning man succumbing to the ocean, one brief exquisite pain like a suddenly severed limb. And then nothing. Oh God, nothing at all.
She is feeling Neal die.
She kneels by the hearth and the raging fire before her does nothing to warm her now. It cannot cauterize this wound.
This she knows as sure as her name: the Travelers have arrived after all. And the Travelers are death.
The death toll was frightening. Years and years worth spanned only a week. I mourned Neal as best I could, and with what little strength remained, I mourned what had befallen my village, my home.
I dared not leave the house. Nearly everyone save me had gone. Many had died, but some still had managed to flee, leaving their belongings, fearing rightly for their lives. There were some who believed it a plague, and maybe it was a plague of sorts, a plague of certain death.
I huddled within the house, lighting no fires against the damp and chill, venturing nowhere, keeping myself as far as possible from the windows that were shuttered anyway.
And so I hid for three days.
An icy hand falls upon her shoulder. She looks up, knowing. Neal is looking down at her, serious-faced, pale as the moon. He is drenched from the drizzle, which falls outside.
"I have been looking for you, love," he says quietly.
It is wrong. This is all wrong. She gropes desperately for his life-spark but it is gone. Yet here he stands, speaking to her as if all is well.
"Kiera," he says, turning her to face him. "It isn't really so bad, not like you think. Just different. Like magic. There is so much more to me now."
She struggles for words, for the breath to form them. "I can't feel you," she finally gasps.
"Well, no," he acknowledges. "I imagine not. But don't you believe I am real?"
"I felt you die!" she cries in anguish. "You can't be here. You can't; it's wrong."
He smiles at her a smile that somehow manages to be both tender and ghastly. She can see now the pointed tips of the fangs, the glint of crimson in his eyes as he leans closer. She tells herself it is just a reflection of the firelight, but she cannot make herself believe her own lies.
"I think," he says, with just the smallest touch of reproach, "that you know better than that. I can tell you that they -- I mean, we -- are more powerful than you can imagine. And immortal."
She wants so badly for this to be a dream. "You are a vampire," she whispers, dazed.
"Why, yes!" Neal agrees. "We are that as well!"
Was it so simple, then? That Neal could be taken from me and then be so abruptly given back? How shocking: that I, placing always such emphasis on life, now surrounded by death. Even the man I loved coaxed me toward it.
"But," Neal had admonished me, "we are not dead. We are Undead. Immortal." He paused, considering. "How can you fail to admire such power?"
I was afraid of him now, yet I loved him still. I knew he would kill me; it was inevitable. Once I had sworn to let nothing part us, but that vow had been made when death had been irrevocable. And here he was, inviting me to become as he now was, to be a killer, a bringer of death.
A vampire.
"Look at me," he commands.
"I cannot," she whispers, staring fixedly at his feet. He is dripping on the floor.
One cool finger tilts her chin up to face the deep blue eyes she once knew well. No devilish sparkle now, just a faint malicious gleam. His eyes are luminous, the pupils huge. They become her sole focus, and his voice is far away.
"Yes, see, you're looking at me now," his voice drones on. "We need not be parted, not ever. A little thing like this can't conquer us. We can be together always."
"Together," she mumbles. "Always..."
"Yes, love," he croons. "Always and forever, but you have to let me help you, let me do what needs to be done."
His eyes are impossibly huge. It is an enormous relief to let him take charge.
"It's easy, Kiera, no pain. Close your eyes and trust me."
Her eyelids droop of their own accord and, as if in a dream, there is a slight pinprick at her throat. And then her own life is ebbing away.
I let him kill me, of course.
And I let him change me. I was so near death that I did not know what he did until it was too late to stop the change. When I came completely to my senses, I knew, I knew and I was sickened.
I was like him now, like all of them. Abruptly I realized I could feel the presence of the other Travelers -- but nothing else. All life-sense was gone, and in its place was the darkness of the others. Apparently, too, I was no longer alone. They could all sense like me, including my beloved Neal.
"Was this what it was like for you alive?" Neal had asked me. "Was this how you talked to the gulls?"
"It was a part of it," I admitted. How could I hope to hide anything from him? He would only have sensed a lie.
"You shouldn't miss mortality so," he explained loftily. "You're far superior now. We all are. And you'll no doubt be hungry soon. You won't have to feed every night, but you can't put it off forever." He uttered a harsh bark that might have been a laugh. "Even if you do have forever to wait."
I was aghast. "Will I have to kill someone?"
"The sooner, the better, love."
"What have you done to me?" she screams.
At her feet lies the body; once it had been a man. Drained now of its blood, it is but a husk, a shell, hollow and useless. She is appalled. The very worst part is the slowly growing realization that she had wanted to kill him, craved to do it.
Her companion crouches impassively a few meters away. He feels no qualms about the business at hand, but simply watches her with clinical detachment. Soon his unfaltering gaze begins to make her uncomfortable, and she wonders, has she done it wrong?
"What do you mean," he asks lazily, "what have I done? Simply that which was necessary, of course. To keep us together, love. Don't you yet know that?" His condescending tone flows over her like syrup, like a stream, like blood.
"Must they die?"
He laughs. "But of course! Why not? They are cattle to us, love! We are superior. Always remember that we are superior."
Although she automatically nods in assent, she is faintly disturbed by this.
Superior to what?
It did not take me long to understand Neal's feelings. We do wield immense power; we could live forever. But where Neal -- changed forever in a way I would never have thought possible of him -- enjoyed it, I felt pity for the mortals on which we preyed. Pity, however, was not enough to halt my hunger or my ways. And how does one turn away what one can freely take?
Survival won out. I think perhaps fear heightened the flavour, making each hunt exhilarating, intoxicating.
So it went on, and on.
We traveled. We had to. Time has little meaning for immortals, but we never stayed in one place for too long. We are not ruled by clocks or by calendars, but by hunger. Years slip by in an eyeblink; we defy age. We thumb our noses at mortality, and spit in the eye of Father Time.
It is said that god-complexes such as ours brought destruction in ancient times, but we conveniently ignore the legends. We were never a holy race. We are unnatural creatures born of darkness and depravity, of destruction and death. We do not live, yet refuse to die. And it is precisely these inhuman qualities that incite us to deify ourselves.
Neal was wrong in one respect. We can live forever, but I do not think we are truly immortal. We can be killed, and I have seen it happen, but it is an arduous task to accomplish. Fire, for example, is the surest method. Carelessness destroys many inexperienced ones who, often forgetting their new nocturnal nature, do not realize that the sun's fire is the surest death of all.
Believe me when I say that it is only forgotten once.
It is wrong what we do. It is a means of survival, perhaps the only one we have, but that does not make it right. I do not know if I can kill again. How many years now has it been? Twenty? Fifty? A hundred or more? I neither know nor care; all I know is that it is enough.
Neal has long since been lost to me. He has been known to tear through mortals as through a smorgasbord, occasionally fasting a week or more and then ravaging small villages whole and single-handedly. He has new like-minded companions now, as fearless and ruthless as himself. He does not care for me as when we lived. His only loves now are the hunt and its quarry.
I long for the natural death I cannot have. In another life, I might have died peacefully in my sleep after a day of entertaining grandchildren in my garden. It would have been far preferable. I do not understand my reluctance for suicide when I have so many deaths for which I must atone.
The sun will be rising soon.
I have said that we are Travelers, and so travel I did. I moved all over this continent and others throughout my existence, following the scent of mortals, going where the hunger led me. But now I have returned to my home or what in another life was my home, perhaps for good.
Suicide is an absolutely moral issue, but I cannot think of morals now. How can I, a murderess, be ethical? How can an executioner have scruples?
The dawn comes up over the swell of the Atlantic full of fiery promise.