Autism was yet to properly be explored by specialists of the day and, even if it were, Severina was hardly blessed with the psychological expertise to propose such a diagnosis. For all her materialistic leanings, however, the vampiress was a connoisseur of sensual pleasure. Not quite so hedonistic as to find former thrills mundane, but certainly a seeker of the enjoyable.
And here was a being who exemplified the exact opposite... Someone who perhaps Severina should regard as a lost cause. Instead, she perceived the girl as an opportunity. A potential student-to-be of the senses.
Tutting, Severina lifted a finger of her unoccupied hand, wagging it it before her in the air. "This simply will not do," she admonished, as if to a new puppy still being house-trained. "It is not that you cannot feel. You simply lack the proper... Stimulation."
In relative seclusion, there would be no immediate witnesses to what came next and Severina whirled with a killer's instinct, pinning the young woman against the nearest wooden post; fangs lunging for that pretty throat, like a shark after goldfish.
And stopped a heartbeat away. Severina flashing a knife-like smile and then, slowly, retracting those dagger-teeth with a purr of amusement. Relaxing the grip of a would-be murderer.
She was teaching.
"And what did you experience, just then? Without warning, raw and pure... A sense of self-preservation? A tickle of alarm, no matter how slight...? Pleasure and pain, elation and fear... If one may be felt, then so might more. Or was still there nothing? No part of you affected?"