Entry 04 . In the Moonlight
Title: In the Moonlight
Entry Number: 04
Author: saraste_impi
Original: My post-apocalyptic-pre-industrial vampire story
Rating: G
Genre: angst, horror
Warnings: horror
Word Count: 1993
A/N:This is set before my last entry. Aamu and Sofia meet for the first time. This fic was a bit of a fumble and I want to change so much!
I had been walking along the path following the river Aura, the darkness a comforting blankness around me, despite the moonlight making the snow on the field shine, mottling the vast whiteness with shadows in varying shades of blue. The snow had scrunched under my feet as my eyes had idly passed over the apartments at the other side of the river, what I could glimpse of them through the wild trees lining the path on the other side. There were some lights there, even if most of the complex had become uninhabitable because there were no fire-places. My own house near the church on my side of the river near the Maaria church, one of the house built over two hundred years ago for our soldiers coming home from the War, has not suffered much since the Shift. There were things in it which did not work, but I managed as had my parents and my mother's parent's before them. Living alone, now that they were all gone, had made me restless, and when I became restless, I went outside for a walk.
A patched woolen coat, a long scarf around my head, mittens for my hands and a rather silly knitted hat and I had been ready to brave the winter outside.
I had walked along the asphalt road and towards the Halinen rapids and the bridge going across the river onto the other side. There I'd turned right towards Koroinen, walking through the partially cleared path which would lead my way past the farm. But before I got there, I saw her.
Standing five meters from me, dressed in all black, the darkness almost swallowing her up. Her bare feet are deep in a pile of snow and I know she's not human. I can barely make out her pale face in the moonlight, hoping fervently that there was more light, cursing myself for going outside. I rack my brains to come up with what kind of creature she is, I draw a blank. There are few creatures living around here that do not feel the cold. So my mind goes to all sorts places it ought not to, realizing she is a stranger in these parts. A small gush of wind makes her light clothes swirl around her, tossing up her hair, hurling loose snow on us both. A cold fear grips my heart and I don't even feel my body shivering as the sub-zero temperature seeps into my bones.
I stare at her, unblinking.
The moonlight makes her skin shine eerily, the slant of it casting most of her face in shadow. Her head is cocked as she observes me. I dare not move, nor make a sound. It is stupid, because she has already seen me. I can't overrun her and we both know it. My body is rooted to the spot, frozen, even when every inch of me screams for me to run, make at least a token attempt of escaping. Even when I would only die with my pride intact as she tears into my throat.
She walks towards me and I remain standing where I am, transfixed. As she makes her approach, I gaze in awe at the sensuous glide of her limbs. She walks, yes, but with such fluid ease that it's not natural. I am not surprised, because I know what she is, even if who she is is a mystery.
I stare at my death preying on me, advancing with the light steps of a predator. Her eyes are fixed on me, their intensity touches me deep. I am her sole goal, the center of her attention and even when it's utterly terrifying, her gaze also makes me feel wanted, desired, important.
Then she speaks and the trance upon me cracks just a little, my body painfully aware that my feet are buried in snow, my legs shaking from the cold as it creeps over me, overwhelming.
“You are afraid,” the woman says in accented Finnish.
I gasp, freezing air filling my lungs as I do so, for it is the last language I would ever have expected for her to use. The intonation of the sounds is a bit off, yet the words themselves roll off her lips with such ease and proper order that I find it hard to think that she's not a native. But how could she be? I saw a glimpse of her sharp teeth as she spoke, never have I heard stories of what I think must be her kind as living in here on the edge of Europe in our own corner of Skandinavia.
“What are you?” I ask, my teeth chattering, my hands aching to draw my coat closer around me, to hug myself as if it would keep away the cold better. I have to know, even if I might die here, on this path by the fields, near the frozen river, in a forgotten part of Finland. I've held onto my speech, even when I can't seem to make my body turn and run, get away from the woman whose very presence screams danger.
She smiles, that impossible woman, my death, she smiles. “I am not your death, I think.” The woman shakes her head. “I'm death to some, but only those who are willing, who want it. Do you want to die, here, your blood spilled on this pristine snow?”
I shake my head, my voice ragged. “No. How can you, there aren't any of your kind here...”
“Yes, fantastic, isn't it?” She says, walking. She stops near me, some three meters away from me, too close to my comfort. She holds her hands up in a placating gesture. The absurdity of it all almost makes me want to giggle. My heart beats all too loud, thrumming in my ears, my legs beginning to numb by the cold and my lack of movement.
I don't trust her one bit. Every minute more, every breath and heartbeat is a blessing right now.
“There's never...” I say, trying to prolong what curiosity I must have roused in her. I am out of options, of ways to stop her if she truly wants to drink me despite her words to the contrary, for how can I believe she'll give me a choice in the matter? How she has strayed to our shores I do not know, but I know enough of her kind to remember that they are quite common in Europe beyond the sea.
“There have,” she says, observing me fidget, her preying eyes upon me. “Albeit we've never been numerous in this country. I was so young myself, when I was made a vampire. He was foreign but I was born in this very city.” She turns her head and looks around.
“No...” I say, softly. The world around us seems to shift, the familiar shapes of the broken city around us moving. Yet why would she lie, even when her truth seems to be so extraordinary. The world around us is extraordinary with a lot of thins which make no sense. Nobody knows what they are for, these things, and all wonder why the knowledge of their function or how they were made was lost. There is no sense to it. The supes remain silent in the matter, declaring all inexplicable things as human follies and, as such, of none of their concern.
“Yes.”
Lost in my thoughts, I never noticed that she had come right by me. I cringe as I realize that the moment of my death has come to me, who would have known that death could be so beautiful? For she is, what I can see of her, at least, being just human, the night around us not quite bright enough. I stare in awe, all of my worries forgotten.
“Do you ever think how the world makes no sense? Look at the skeletons of the past before Shift, wonder why they are there, how they worked and why they don't, anymore? Listen to stories of an age when people in opposite sides of the world could speak to one another like they were in the same room, wondering if it was magic. Or when you could heat a dwelling with a magic force running on wires, their ghosts now hanging on posts littering the outdoors...”
I am lost in her words, my mind lulled by the strange familiarity of her articulation, cleared by every words she speaks, she is one of us and yet she isn't. Her strangeness runs deeper than that. There is a decdidedly queer quality to her actions. Caugfht in the flow of her words I find her voicing many of the questions I've often wondered about. What was the world like, before.
And why is the way it is now?
What was the Shift, the Change, the great Cataclysm which changed our history, stripping the world bare? That moment, on that snowy riverbank on the fringes of a ravaged city, I wonder why these questions aren't asked more. I know why, I've always known. But I've never been satisfied. She knows.
My curiosity overcomes my caution, her hands settling on my shoulders prompting action. If she were to kill me right away, she would have done so already, I reason with myself. And I have to know, even when I'll live with the knowledge for the time it takes for her to stop talking and killing me.
“How old are you?” I ask, looking at her young face. “What was it like, before? Do you know why the world changed so much?”
“Never ask a women her age,” she chuckled, her amusement giving me strength. I should feel the warm puff of her breath on my cheek but there's nothing. That alone verifies her creature identity. She goes on, holding onto me, all too close for comfort.
“I am older than the Shift, to be sure. The world was such a place to life, even when there were problems, but there always are. But the change ...” She sighs. “It solved very little, or so it seems to me, at least. The skies are clear, yes, and the world isn't being used up in the way it was before...”
She tilts her head and looks up at the stars twinkling bright even with the moon full. “The modern world always made me miss the stars, there was too much light pollution.”
Her last world is unfamiliar to me but I don't ask for her to explain. So much was lost, concepts, ideas, a whole way of living. Every family has their stories passed down from the dark times after the collapse of the world as humanity then knew it.
She goes on, rambling as if I wasn't even there. She's lost in her memories. “The dark times after the fall... it's a wonder the humanity and the supernaturals both even survived. I cannot deny the sadness in her voice, the compassion to those who perished in gruesome ways.
“The dark times,” I swallow, for I, too, have heard the stories, passed down generation after generation. I have heard the stories of people burning alive, buildings exploding and killing people even decades after the world changed... Know of those who perished even here. The chaos which reigned. Two centuries of the new world and things are... calm, even when there was strife. There was still unrest in the time of my great-grandparents.
“I remember them well,” she caresses me absently, her eyes intent on my face. The moonlight is clear, giving me a proper view of her. I am lost.
“Can I kiss you now, or will we talk some more of times long past?” she asks before her cold lips descend upon mine and I melt in her arms.