Palladine is Back

I’m still going! Here is the next installment of my work-in-progress dark fantasy/Gothic novella, in which anything could happen, because I don’t know where it’s going next…

New readers can, if they wish, find where this all began by clicking here.

Cold? Yes, I was. Difficult for a frail young woman who sees her future to be anything else. It was a given that my father would join my mother, and that I, if I lived, would find myself a stranger in my brother’s house, swept aside by whatever wife he would take, as she made a home in which I had no place. And yet… would she have been kinder than my imagining?

We will never know, now.

Sad is the forest around me. It groans and shrinks from my skin. I have never slept a summer here. The fey would drive me off, without sympathy, if I took such a liberty. But I may walk, and in a few hours the trees will forget me, the birds return to their nests.

Palladine Varish. Why cling to the name of someone I only was, and long ago?

I come to a brook, a murmuring of shadows under black trees. There is cloud tonight, anyway. No moon is here reflected, and the water moves painfully, with rasps and gurgling.

I walk into it, feel the sharp stones beneath my feet, and that cold which was once like air being forced out from my body, now a dull tingle that makes me want to flex my toes.

All the night. All of this. It is, and I am, and we will be, and be, and be.

I stand for a time, knee-deep, and the stones small enough for the current to carry zip against my ankles like the small bites of insects.

I am talking to you, to the wind and the dark, because there is no one else.

*   *   *

What odd things we do in the name of good manners, and how it costs us.

When there are guests, there will be dinner, and a dinner must be hosted by the principals of a house. So it was.

I had so few gowns suitable for such an occasion. My father did not strain me by summoning me for presentation to his guests whilst he was at home, and when he was abroad there were no guests. There is no gain in calling on the unmarriageable daughter of a powerful man’s irrelevant dead wife.

There was no reason for me to own fine dresses, and satins had never been one of my father’s gift to me. His kindness was to spare me the indignity of corsets and lace. I dressed as was comfortable, even if that meant my dress would scandalise all but the most sympathetic of aristocrats.

But what I had and had not was not an excuse worth making. My usual costume had no place in the dining room, where I would sit at one end of a long oak table and pick at my food like an ailing bird.

In the end I braved the servant’s dismay and went to the silent chamber where my mother had once slept. Bramlin’s mother had not walked the halls long enough to change much of the house’s contents, so what my mother had left, was left there.

Moths and the damp had ravaged her possessions. I remember that even as a small child I went to that room and hid among the folds of her old gowns, breathing the musty scent of stale perfume, fabric in decay.

If she left papers, they were gone to mould before I was of age to read them. Her treasures and trinkets had rusted, rotted, or been bleached by the sun. The room was a shrine left to ruin, a place in which things performed the act of departure.

It is true, however, that when we must make do, we can only find a way.

Though it left me shivering with a sheen on my forehead, I opened the trunk at the end of the bed, and rifled through its contents, the remnants and wreckage of my mother’s small and lonely life.

Another Piece of Palladine

My continuing project, continued. If you want to see where this started, click here. Or just dive in. This is my first draft, given a once over, but rudimentary and riddled with inconsistency. I agree this is a problematic way to blog, but somehow releasing it like this has been a very liberating experience.

Kazimir and Vavara. When did I know they were not mortals, driven into my father’s house by the breath of an encroaching storm?

Not then. That is certain. The conversation was too much a test on my dwindling strength for me to press them, and I was not then gifted with the skills of a courtier, whose conversation encourages the revelation of one’s full story, without revealing anything of their own.

All I could take in was their physicality. Siblings, both ebon-eyed and tall. He leaned back into the chaise whilst she perched upon its edge, her long fingers spread over her skirts. It was hard to trace their exact parentage, but I recognised traces of desert blood, the fullness of a colouring which frequent illness had stolen from my own features.

Hard to find the same mother in their faces, however. Her hair was like the flame on the back of an arrow in the gloom, impossible to diminish, and they shared neither nose nor jaw.

“And where will your journey end?” I asked them, sipping the tisane one of the servants had brought me.

“The capital, I should imagine,” Kazimir said, looking at me from over the rim of his own cup. The steam wreathing his face gave him the quality of an apparition.

I replied with the greatest courtesy. “I shall write to my brother, if it pleases you. Father will not stay out the season in the revelries, and Bramlin is not yet of age, but Lazare is seen more often in the city than in this house. He will be glad of visitors.”

“Perhaps we will meet your father on the road. It would be good fortune, to meet your whole family,” Vavara said, smiling. She had very fine, very white teeth, a mouth as clean as a cat’s.

“It is possible.”

“There is no lady of the salt marshes beside yourself?” Kazimir asked.

“No. One before my mother, and one since, but now just I.”

“A heavy burden on the lord of this house, I imagine.”

I thought of my father, who would hold my hand in his when I took it upon myself to stroll about the garden, who cut his firm steps back to match my own pained shuffling, and who always returned from his travels with books for me to read, however poor an investment the salt air made paper. Silverfish always wormed into the bindings.

“Life is hard here, for those who did not know it whilst they grew,” I said, and at the insistence of eyes upon me, I looked up to find Kazimir’s dark gaze piercing into my face, as though his eyes could strip weak flesh and find a story in my bones.

Vavara got to her feet, and walked to the window, resting her long fingers on the shutters. Her nails were longer than the fashion, but clean. Pink at the quick and pure white at the white, as though she had just dipped them into baking salt. They tapered most delicately into fine sharp points.

“There is beauty in the harshness of this place,” she said, and in looking out her face softened into a dreamy, child’s smile.

“Yes,” Kazimir agreed, and I knew, though I had known no men but my brothers, that his smile was for me.

“There is small entertainment in this house, but we will dine this evening. If you will please excuse me until then. My strength is not great,” I told them, and stood, more quickly then I would have normally. Straight-backed, for all it cost me, I left them in the candlelit gloom, to whatever conversations they usually had.

Next installment can be found here. 

Palladine Again

So today is the 30th, which means, for the first time in over three years of blogging, I’ve blogged continuously for an entire month! And to celebrate, here is another extract from my ongoing vampire novel, Palladine. Chapter 6 no less!

If you want to start at the beginning, click here. This is a work-in-progress, with a structure, character and plot that seems to be evolving as I write, but my goal is to get something out there, before I have the chance to get too precious about my prose.

Nights have passed. Some. Many, perhaps. Why should I count them?

I have brought us west, over river and moor. No more swamps, not here, where the land begins its incline. The way to the hidden palaces is a climb through and unflinching thicket of spruce pines. A dark forest, from here until those face of the mountains.

Autumn, and there will be snow to deepen the barricade.

I will find no welcome here, but food, perhaps.

The graveyard was long ago, and my strength is one the wane once more. I lick my lips, but there is no copper taste to sate me. Only the lurid memory of feasting, at once disgusting and compelling.

And I must find another cloak. The rot took my black on the road behind us.

When I push into the brittle lower branches of the first trees they break. Small wonder the fey have never had any trouble routing their unwelcome visitors. The tracking of anything in this place is easy.

But I will not try to hide. I am old enough to know the etiquette of this place, and I will pass through it in observance of the customs. I will be eyes, nothing more. Nothing which offers provocation by touch or speech. I will walk without searching, and I will be found when it is suited.

Come. It is very dark here, is it not? Yes, my eyes do glint, as a cat’s, in these deepest of shadows, dilated and hungry, but you will not be lost so long as you see them.

The wind shies away from this place. The thicket reduces it the merest light breeze, and that perhaps is one small comfort. Come. I am walking out of men’s lands, into another wilderness.

Continued here.

Palladine (Continued)

Still going! If you want to start at the beginning, go here, but given how this is a work-in-progress you’re more than welcome to jump straight in. I have made the odd decision to share this work in the growing segments of its first draft, before the perfectionist in me can see too many problems, and never allows me to share it at all. 

I think we’re really flying with this now. It is quite an odd story, and maybe the specifics are still a bit foggy, but I do think I’m starting to know who our girl is, and what she wants. And maybe there is a title for Palladine’s story – Palladine.

Very clearly this is her tale (sometimes I feel she knows a lot more than me), but I’m still undecided. For now, here is some more.

Did you stay? Did you watch my eyes close, my body stiffen and pale, and wonder about the things I have told you? I do not pretend to be a natural storyteller, for all the stories I have lived.

My father once told me I should take up the pen, as a hobby suited to my invalid state. I did, and have, intermittently, but paper and manuscripts are lost to fires, to displacement, and the simple ravages of time. If I have a tale it is in me. I have learned to keep it safe there. Even if I lose the past to madness or the imaginative distortions of memory, still it will survive. My body is the sum of my life, and what has happened since.

But come, do not shy away.

I will stop this rambling, and we will go. The last lavender shadows of the sun are sinking below the horizon. Night is falling, and I am as awake as I have ever been.

So we go, and it is flying. It is ease. The chainmail chafes against my skin, but I do not feel that as you would. It is just flesh on the bones of a thing half-corpse, half-wight. There is a kind of magic about it, my skin. No matter what it is stressed to endure, it will heal faster than that of any living creature. The only scars I have are those I sustained in my human years. The last of them terrible, even now. Look at my throat and you will find no pretty twin dots. It was not Kazimir’s fine teeth that made me what I am, no matter what the myth would tell you.

The mealy line of knitted flesh is thick. No trembling lover’s hand could make such a line, you know.

Find the next part here.

A Novel?

New readers, the following post will make little to no sense. For context, you might want to start at the beginning. (Click here).

Ta-da! It’s back. Palladine’s adventures continue. By this point we’ve established that my protagonist has a few screws loose, but maybe soon we’ll know more about why? 

Chapter Five! The length of this project is seriously in question now, because the more I write the more I want to write. No more series remains the mantra. (I’ve yet to come anywhere close to finishing my forever-ongoing saga). But a novel…? Maybe…?

I don’t know. For now I think it’s best if I just keep writing, and we’ll see.

Out of Faro, and where can we go now? The worst trial of immortality alone is the boredom.

But I will not seek Seraphina. She has her own secrets, and I would succumb to prying for them, if I was not firm about managing the acquaintance.

You should not be surprised by the notion that I have seen most of the world, at some time or another. I have answered most questions I ever had. I have dug up the roots of all my ancestors, and tried to live as they lived in order to understand them.

My mother’s homeland was the desert, she the victim of a political trade, but no one saw her in my face when I went there. The blood which bound me to walk the sandstone of her childhood halls, barefoot, was only a drop in that vast family. I found no memory of her. She was more dead to them than she was to the daughter who first breathed when she did not.

There are no questions to answer there, and though I have told you I had brothers, the Varish clan no longer looks like them.

But these are old memories, and we will leave them.

I have fed, and I am feeling reckless.

We will go somewhere you have never been. Out of the moorlands and marshes which contain the sprawl of humanity. Vampires who are wise avoid dealings with other immortals. They are less a danger than humans, but their odds of harming my kind during combat are considerably higher.

I knew of the Mer during my human years, though I was never so bold (or, for the most part, in good enough health) to venture out onto the rocks.

They are old, those elementals, and in my long years, we have had enough dealings that I know not to step into the water.

But the fey. The fey I do not know well.

I know Seraphina has, from time to time, ventured under their trees, and met them there. We have shared our stories, our intrigues and theory. For the gold light, rather than warmth, she and I have lit fires and talked, as we would have been wont to, had we known each other in life.

Will she resent me, for following up on what she has told me, for not leaving her tales, but chasing them into truth? No more than I resent her for her clandestine stealing onto the black sea rocks, her watching and wondering. To have a question and be seeking the answer is to be a creature of purpose.

We will go. And when we meet her, I will have some new bone to throw our conversation.

But let us rest, before that morning haze shines with the morning. Follow me, back into the wilds. We will find a copse, a set of shadows to shield us until tomorrow night.

There is more! Click here.

Vampires Again

Hello, new readers and old. New, please note, this is a continuation. If you want to start from the beginning, please go here.

Still going! Unbelievably, we’re over 5000 words, which is what I feel to be the margin where a project becomes viable in the long run. 

Where is it going? Please don’t imagine I know, but I hope you enjoy reading along as I discover the path ahead. I have some rather far-fetched ideas for the far-off scenes in the distant future of this novel, but first I must decide what constitutes The Middle. 

Who knows, I might even do it. 

There is a dull glow on the horizon as I leave the town, a purplish smear like the worst of bruises. It will be dawn, soon enough.

In the grass I run, even lighter and quicker than before. Had I a mirror I would see the faint flush of life restored, the resemblance I bear to the mortal I was.

Palladine Varish, the young Lady of the Briar.

She is dead. Whatever mortal cousins she has are descendants far removed. They know her neither by face nor name. She is gone. Stories of her are gone. I am all that remains.

And for that was said of an eternity together, they are gone too.

Kazimir, Vavara.

Now it is just I, I, I. It could echo endlessly through the night and this would not change. I am, and my coven is no more.

My heart’s sister, and my heart.

How long has it been?

I do not dare think.

*  *  *

It was raining, when they came, and I was sick, as ever, bundled up in wool with a bucket of my own fluids tucked below the bed.

The Briar was an odd place, a majestic tower brought low by the squalor of those who lived in it. In summer, the dogged brambles which gave the place its name bloomed white buds, rampant, to the highest windows, but it was not that time of year. All we had were black thorns, and less than half the usual staff. I was a wretched creature, and so the family had left me. Father and my brothers. It was time to go to court, and it was said that I would not survive the journey.

Guests were unimaginable, so unimaginable that the maid had to repeat it.

“A gentleman, and his sister. They have come seeking refreshment.”

I responded with a fit of violent coughs.

Rallying to the task, I found myself too faint for the corset, too pasty for my better gowns. In despair, the servants laced me in mourning garb, and sent me out hunched over my father’s duelling cane. The mirror was death, the bottom of descent.

They were waiting for me in the drawing room, that draughty hovel of a chamber, strewn with several months of cobwebs. The curtains had been pulled back, but the light was thin. It did not enter the room.

I had no strength to curtsey, so I did not. They were shadows in the gloom, two sets of eyes, following me as I limped to the nearest chair, and sank into it, releasing a puff of fungal spores. My father’s house, which lay in the salt marshes, was victim to the most pervasive damp.

“Forgive me. We are not in much state to entertain.”

“There is nothing to forgive,” he said. At the time I likened his voice to the teeth under a sable. Something soft, hiding great danger. “We would not have come, had we known the mistress of this house indisposed.”

“I am not mistress,” I told him. “She is with the wind, and my lord father has gone to the revelries.”

“It seems most have. We have found little hospitality to be had, hereabouts,” said the sister. My head was still pounding, so I made no great effort to pick them out from the gloom, but of her I received the impression of water. Gleaming, and mischievous.

“Generally, there are few travellers to bestow it upon. May I ask what brings you so far into the wilderness?” I asked.

A glance exchanged. A smile. It was she who answered.

“It is from the wilderness we came, from Tharkash. We are on our way to the interior.”

It was not easy to rouse me from my stupor in those days, but this was quite unexpected. I looked at them, shivering, and did my best to hide surprise.

I was spared the indignity of having to muster a suitably neutral reply by the arrival of candles. The youngest of the house boys brought in a candelabra and set it on the table between us. It was scant light, but light enough, wavering in the draught.

I could hear the marsh birds calling, waders and stark white egrets.

A glance, and I looked away, all too aware of my fever-damp hair, and the dull tint of my skin. “I have never met anyone from Tharkash.”

“There are few of us, who venture so far abroad, but my sister and I are much travelled.”

“It must be delightful to explore the world.”

It was all I could do not to cringe from them, the moment those words left my mouth. The pitiful words of a sick girl, due to vacate the earthly plain. In my agitation I started to cough again, the fretful sound echoing through the room. Nothing to be done for it, I reached for the cane in a bid to make my exit, and was startled to have it pressed into my hand by a set of fingers as cold as my own.

“Please, allow me.”

Still coughing, I could make no protest as the sister led me to the chaise.

She sat at my feet, and regarded me with a thoughtful expression.

I remembered myself.

“I will have the fire lit. You are very cold…?”

The revelation that I had neither introduced myself nor been introduced reduced me to fearful silence. “Vavara,” she said.

“And I am Kazimir,” said he.

“Forgive my rudeness. I am Palladine Varish, daughter of the Salt Baron.”

I was an only daughter, though I had two brothers. Each of us had cost a mother’s life, and this bonded us in a furtive, unpleasant way that no one of us acknowledged.

And Father loved us, for all the grief we had bought him.

I still wonder if it might have been different, had he been there when the vampires found me alone in a house of fog and silt.

There is more! Click here.

Continuation!

New readers, please note: this is what the title states. If you want to start at the beginning, go here.

And for those of you still here, first drafts are always such woolly things. I know this isn’t an exception. I’m not really sure why the perfectionist in me is sitting quietly as I share this so unpolished and not finalised, but in an odd way I am finding this cathartic?

I think with this one I just want to plough through. We’ll worry about what the finished product looks like at the end.

Onto Chapter Three, and I’m starting to wonder if this could be a longer project? No more series from my pen I swear. to. God. But a novel? Maybe. 

The hunger is distracting. My senses have come fully awake during the long run, and with them a deeper awareness of my weakness, my frailty. If I do not eat soon my only means of managing this will be to rest, and here, so close to human lands, that would be nothing better than complacency.

I break into a run once more. It is costly, this last show of speed, but every minute I do not feed is a minute in which my strength seeps away into the mist. It is only an echo, but it feels like it felt, before.

My mortal life was one of frequent sickness.

So long ago, but I remember the headaches that would drive me to my darkened room, and the cough, which had me doubled over, coughing phlegm and blood into handkerchief after handkerchief. In such a state of weakness as I found myself, I was glad of death. I welcomed its cold fingers like Kazimir’s. I went to it like a lover, never minding who I left.

I dramatise, of course, since I was given every reassurance of my swift return from darkness, but die I did, and when I returned, it was not the same.

The mist drags on my cloak, wets my hair, but I am glad of its thick shroud. This is no night to walk abroad, so there is a good chance I may go about my business undisturbed.

I enter the town of Faro when the darkness is thickest. The central thoroughfare is cobbled. A fine sight, compared to the mire of sludge and sewage which once ran here. The town gate poses no trouble. Watchman or no, I pass unseen, and walk past houses, shuttered and barred.

I think this is no longer the result of a chill in the wind, but the mark of changing times. I am no longer the only set of teeth in the dark, if indeed I ever was. There have been many wars in my long years. Kingdoms are not restful things. They stir in the dark, sinking their claws into their siblings. It does not matter who leads. There are kings and queens born in times of peace, and those who are not.

The cemetery has not changed, however. I did not come here last year, or even the year before that, but such places do not alter. Though weeds may creep and stone may crumble, civilisation falter and fail, there is never a change so great as to give the impression of change.

The unkempt grass paws at my legs, and the night is quiet. Restful.

You may, I confess, think ill of me, when you are exposed to the nature of my visit here. I am afraid my purpose is not a pleasant one, but a crude necessity.

Here is a grave strewn with flowers. There is no stone, as was the fashion in my time, but the intricate silhouette of a tree, cast from such new iron that the mists have yet to make a patina of rust.

After removing the flowers, I claw back the earth. Awful, messy work, but my penance, I suppose. I had no right to all these centuries. I took on this existence because I wanted it, and there is a price for being undeserving.

Always, I underestimate how deep the coffin rests. Always, I am filthy, ragged and ravenous by the time my nails strike wood. Tonight is no exception.

I wrench back the lid, and behold the earthly remains of an old woman, in the first stages of decay. The skin has started to shrink, and an odour has set in, faint but pervasive.

Not a fresh corpse, after all, but that was a great deal to hope for.

It – I long ago resolved that it would do no good for me to count these things as persons – is no longer quite what it was in life, though let us be thankful that the body bears no mark of its demise. A cadaver that met its end through plague can be a disturbing sight. I hate them worse than anything, except the graves of broken children.

My instinct is revulsion, and by it I know this is not natural, but perhaps you will think it less an act of sacrilege, if you imagine the alternative ways a vampire might procure large servings of human blood.

We will not go into the details, perhaps. It is enough to say that my feeding is a frenzy. The blood is sour, cold, and as thick as syrup.

Reinvigorated, I fill in the grave afterwards, and restore the flowers to their place, so that only the most observant eye might note the disturbance.

I can only imagine what you must thinking, but more blood has passed between my lips than ever ran through my veins. If I am sorry, it does not merit forgiveness.

Next part here.

 

Vampire Novella?

New readers, this is a continuation. I suggest you start here.

It’s still very much a work in progress, this thing which I am pulling out in fits and starts. Like most of my creative projects, there are moments when it feels like a giant splinter.

We’re still going. We still have no title, but there is some shape forming? And she has a name! Palladine. I am still working on her story. 

The grass is damp, dark as moss. The slick cold of it wraps my soles like fine slippers.

I am hungry. The feeling is so intense it spots my vision with pale dots, clusters that swim through the air like dust particles.

We have far to go. My summer haunts are always chosen with a mind to remaining far from any settlement. I am at my most vulnerable in repose, and I see no reason extend my needs into avoidable cruelties. Linger near a field, and my presence will fail a harvest.

I see no one, nothing, from here until the horizon. The smell on the wind is earth and rain. Traces of blood, but I do not investigate. Just a rabbit. The ghost of leftovers.

We must go further. As far as the grass goes, to where it gives, and soil becomes stone.

But no. Not yet. I pause, for under these familiar smells is another, subtle vein. I stop, crouch to brush my hands through the grass. Nose almost to the ground, it tickles my senses, a sweet-sour odour. Vanilla, and rancid meat.

Seraphina.

The trail is old, faint, but still I let my eyes wander down her path.

Even the most reticent of our kind cannot help but make the acquaintance of other vampires. We may be few, but the world is not as big as men dream.

I could seek her, were I so inclined. The moon has seen us hunting together before, but she would be surprised at my seeking her company. Tonight is just a common silver moon, not one of those rare blood moons which see darkness made bolder.

We have gone together, three times now, to answer the call of that ominous sight, and lingered thereafter in company, but always I have waited for her footsteps to fall in beside mine. Always I have seen the approach of spring, and gone away, to rest alone.

We do not talk of the past, but she knows. I know.

Here, so far from the land we must go to when the blood moon calls, those few of us who wander, came here to be alone.

*  *  *

Quickly now, and quicker. Race the clouds the blot the hillsides with their shadows, over the rocks and ferns. Every stride a silent leaping, a passage unmarked. How many miles is beyond believing, but I have told you I do not sleep near beating hearts and warm breath. You will share my caution, when you know my story.

Hours of running, and I am far, far from the yew. A wooden fencepost marks a line of ink, drawn on some fusty parchment, telling this grass from that. The wild earth from that which has tasted human blood.

No more wilderness, now. Not in the true sense of the word.

I stop, listen. They do watch for us, the young, or naïve. When the wind turns, it is known that more than snow comes racing in from the north. Bold are those who come here, from time to time, in tight-shouldered clusters, to wait as one waits, hand outstretched, for a snake to burst from its pit. Foolish, there is no denying it, but I confess to an admiration for these hardened men, who rise to hunt their hunters.

Nothing on the wind, but I will go slower, now. My stepping into a bear trap is like to cause more trouble for the trapper than myself, but at the moment I am weak, compared to my full strength. Such an incident would be unfortunate, and likely to tax my limited powers.

My sound is a soft clinking, a rustle in the grasses as I walk down to a ribbon of water, white with moonlight, like a vein of quartz in some dark ocean stone.

The wind is at my back, pushing with the faint pressure of a hand, so I cross under moonlight. Come. We are almost there.

Next part: here.

It Still Has No Title.

I’ve been busy! But here is a little more. Please note this is a continuation, so new readers may wish to start here.

I can travel many miles in the space of a night, and so long as the night outlasts the day there is no need to return here.

I do not look behind me, for I experience no sentiment which renders that particular yew with the warm colours of a comforting home. I would surrender it in a moment, if I thought its secrecy compromised. There are as many trees as there are summers, and this yew is only one among its brethren spread across the world. In any I come across I will find the same hollow heart, pearlescent and smooth, the same promise of safe haven.

It is quiet here. Not silent, for I can hear the wind whispering and the clink of my hauberk, but quieter than most places in the world. I hear no owls screeching on the wing, no foxes panting as they run. It is unsurprising, given how long I have lain. Though snow will come soon, and those creatures which abhor it have already curled inside their hovels, this quiet is no work of nature, save that nature you may call my own.

I admit it has never ceased to be unsettling, the way that my lingering in a place can serve to ward other hunters away. If I stay here for the whole year, the quiet will deepen into the shadows of a death I should have met long ago. Look at those other trees, surrounding the yew. You can already see it. Those funguses sprouting, the black cracks spreading through the wood. I choose yew trees for good reason, you see. The forever tree, with all its own poison, has no mortal span my presence might shorten.

At the border of the wood the land gives way to grass hills, and I run. It was what seduced me, the promise of this speed, this fleetness which rivals the quickest of the fey. I cannot quite pace a horse at full gallop, but so long as darkness pervades I have stamina beyond mortal calling.

It was long ago, so long ago that I doubt you believe me, but I tell you that I do remember much of my human years. They took place in a land like this, but far, far from here. There, in the first years of our acquaintance, I would race Kazimir by moonlight. Me on my palfrey, whilst he ran.

I loved him, of course, because beside him I felt free.

This work continues. Find the next part here.

The Untitled Novella Continues

Okay, so I really have to work on a title. I feel like one is close, so hopefully it will bubble to the surface soon. Also, I really tailed off with posting at the end of the year, but now I’m back! New year, new disciplined writing habits! Of course we all know I swing back and forth on blogging like a grandfather clock, but I’m hoping to at least exceed my output for 2018 this year. So here it is, 2019. First post.

Quick note: Since this is a continuation, new readers may wish to start here, but you can also dive right in to my latest world-in-progress.

Erelong I am restored. My body, cleansed of dirt and slumber, is nubile and eager.

I am ready to feed, though that is a want less easily satisfied in this land of furred morsels, berries and old bone. There is nothing here that can satisfy my appetite, so we must go further afield.

I go to assess the situation.

My existence is not without its problems, and some are greater than this, but really my wardrobe is the most consistent frustration I face. I say that not in vanity, but in true vexation. Given contact with my skin, every garment short of chainmail will rot to rags within a week. Be it leather, cotton, silk or wool, there is no avoiding it. Only metal can long withstand the corruption of my flesh.

Vavara once said it numbered low on the list of our trials, and perhaps she was right, but she said that in a different time, when awakenings were not this furtive stealing out from under trees, but a rising undertaken in company. It was a time of better dignity.

I dress in what little remains of the bundle I secreted beneath the yew with me. My mail, and the remnants of a black cloak I stole from a rider unfortunate enough to stumble on me feeding. An unhappy circumstance for us both. It is wise to avoid one’s entry into human folklore, since there is no knowing how far a tale may reach, but it was all I could do to rip the cloak from his shoulders and send him galloping to his people. I had gorged myself, and it is a dark act, to hunt when one is not hungry.

That was far from here, in any case, and I seem to have paid a fair price for the scrape. Though I was careful to handle it with gloves, the garment unfolds in a cloud of fungal spores, a foul, damp smell.

I put it on nonetheless, since it will hide my hauberk’s gleam.

We must go now, and here I confess my usual ounce of trepidation. Leaving this wood, where I have spent so many summers, is not an enterprise without risk. There are few who can harm me, and fewer still who can lay claim to their courage when faced with my actual presence, but there is a truth, and I know it well.

Vampires can live forever, but none ever have.

Few of us have ever been so unwise as to stir the hatred of other immortals. We leave the sea to the mer, the great forests to the fey. Our lands are the mountains and the open moors, those copses and scattered provinces where the only queen is the running wind. We are not the only ones to make a home here, however. We need it that way, for all that I wish it were otherwise. Humans go with the territory, a source of equal pleasure and pain. Lacking our speed and strength, they are our natural prey, but here the hunter does not chase a beast without its own teeth. Fire, axes and rope. Humans are only what we all were, once, and I have never thought us dissimilar, we savage creatures.

Sooner death at their hands than the slow agony of starvation, however.

I walk with the darkness, parting shadows with my presence and bringing fear upon the world.

I hit chapter II. Find the opening here.