Plogviehze, Baby: 3/14
Prologue | Chapter 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14
And you thought the last one was wordy :D
There's snow. And shedding of clothes, ha. Um. And a lot of talking, because these two? Have unresolved issues.
Plogviehze, Baby: Chapter 3
This is not happening," said Mal, eyes closed.
She seemed to have pulled herself together, but bloody good it did them now. Typical of her to regard undeniable facts as some kind of personal attack.
But typical, at least, was good. Polly agreed with typical. Typical was the hot water bottle of the mind.
"Seems like it is, in fact, happening," she said. "Any idea where we are?"
As far as Polly was concerned, they were in the middle of white hell. There was no path. There had never been a path, but the path that hadn't been there was gone.
"No," said Mal. Standing thigh-deep in snow, in front of a wall of snow, surrounded by more snow, and snow still falling down on her, she was rather convincing.
"I mean," she added, "I'm not merely classically lost. I'm all kinds of lost. This is a whole new dimension of lost I'm talking about." She kicked the snow. It didn't kick back, but it might as well have snickered.
"Er -," Polly was lost as well, but in a slightly different sense.
"Polly, I can't see," said Mal. "This environment is the diametrical opposite of psychotropic. Not only doesn't it listen, it doesn't even talk."
"Yeah, well, it's snow," Polly pointed out. "And you're speaking in tautologies. I suggest we find us a cave and wait it out." She put down the pack. "And none of this talking to landscapes business."
Typical Mal behaviour, but minus the oddities, please, thought Polly.
Mal didn't argue the point, which wasn't quite typical, but nice, and ten minutes later, Polly had found a cave. The entrance was almost completely snowed in, but there was a tiny opening at the top. Polly would have overlooked it, if a slightly drowsy bat hadn't emerged at just the right moment. Bats were the best, she thought.
She let her eyes follow it for a while as it flew into the night.
"Bats are basically rodents, right?" she said after a while, and grinned. She wasn't even hungry; that must have been her inner quartermaster speaking.
Mal was, by now, trying to get some of the snow out of the way, using Polly's tea mug and her own bare hands. She had tried to do it with the sword, possibly out of snow-related aggression. It hadn't worked.
"No eating bats, Pol," she said absent-mindedly, not looking up from what she was doing. "They could be relatives."
Polly shrugged. "I don't have any bat relatives," she said.
"I do," said Mal. "I kindly implore you not to eat them. They're tetchy enough as they are."
She finished her work with grim determination and no help from Polly. Polly did feel just that tiny bit useless, but they only had one actual mug-sized mug between them now, and Mal had refused to let Polly touch the teeny tiny porcelain espresso cup that she had carried around for emergencies (and also, Polly thought, for a certain inexplicable sentimentality Mal wasn't going to admit to).
And wait -
Mal had relatives? Down Polly's mind went, down down down the slippery slope that was the topic of vampire reproduction. How do they suckle? she thought weakly, and then her brain shut down and she hastily restarted.
Teeth, she thought. Ngk. Need wholesome thoughts right now -
"There," said Mal, and Polly thankfully snapped back to reality. "Hardly a cave, but we can put up the tent. It's almost water-resistant, after all." Polly watched her walking over to the pack, struggling to open it with frozen fingers, and there it was, there was the shaking again.
Gonna share a tent with her...
"Here, let me do this," said Polly, stepping beside her and noticing with distress that she was actually volunteering to put up the damn tent. "Have some coffee. Please."
"Nah," said Mal. "I'm running out as it is."
One. Two. Three.
"What?"
"I've had to ration for weeks, Pol," said Mal. "We've been camping for a while, yes?"
"I know that, Mal," said Polly. "What is this, some kind of adventure trip? From Borogravia to Ankh-Morpork on two point five coffee beans?"
"Twenty-six, actually," said Mal. "I counted."
"Daft," said Polly. "Crazy. Completely bonkers. You could have told me."
"I can refill," said Mal. "As soon as I've figured out how to keep you from attacking people. Zlobenia is a nation full of crazy coffee addicts." She grinned. "My kind of people, really."
"How to keep me from -?" began Polly. "You are the one who's shaking and randomly hugging people and looking completely, utterly deshabille and you bit me and -"
"There's no need to worry," said Mal. "Well, little need. Is my hair that bad?"
"Fine," said Polly. "Do what you want. I'm putting up the tent, seeing as we're snowed in with no prospect of reaching any human settlement at all."
Their tent was the sort of tent that was supposed to accommodate two people, which was... exactly what it did. It was also completely inappropriate for any kind of serious warfare; the amount of cursing required to put it up tended to counteract the half-hearted camouflage-effect of the grey-green linen.
And curse Polly did. She'd been getting good at tents lately, despite frozen fingers, but over the course of the last winter, she had grown heartily fed-up with all sorts of army tents. 'Roomy, comfy, and water-resistant' summed up everything they weren't. The only thing worse than sharing the army tent with anyone was not sharing the army tent with anyone, because then you'd get paranoia, too. And cold.
Midstream, somewhere between "bloody" and "tent", she cast a glance at Mal, who had -
- sort of collapsed in the snow, doing things to -
What.
Polly tried to concentrate on tying rope A to hook B, she really did. But Mal daintily inspecting coffee beans before putting them back into the bag was -
No need to worry, indeed.
"Come here, I'm done," Polly called. She was openly watching now, and added, "Are you giving them names or something?"
Mal put the coffee bag on the ground while she took her time getting up. For a while, it really looked as if she'd be leaving it there, only sweeping the bag up as an afterthought.
Well. So far, so unsurprising.
"What?" said Mal. "They're the children I've never had!"
She was walking over to Polly, swaying only a tiny little bit too much, and Polly wondered if she was going to survive the night. Be a m... a grown-up about it, she thought. She proceeded to usher Mal inside, and followed.
"Please," said Polly, "do keep the topic of vampire reproduction far away from me."
"Polly, dear," said Mal. "You fixating on teeth or something?"
"No, you are -" began Polly, and thought, and added, "Well, are teeth involved?"
There was a lifted eyebrow. "Matter of preference, really," said Mal.
"Eurgh," said Polly. "I meant tiny widdle vampire babies. Forget it."
Once inside the tent, Polly struggled out of most of her wet, icy clothes, fully aware that there'd be no drying them anytime soon. She marvelled at the white cloud that was her breath. It really was one bastard of a winter, was it?
Polly had a short internal struggle whether to keep the soaked socks on. The socks lost, on account of them being an icy nightmare, although she didn't have replacements. Polly had, always carried an extra pair of socks, hur hur, but they only had Mal's pack now, and Polly had, actually, though Mal was still Maladict to the world, never quite found out how Mal handled the socks business.
Possibly her delicate soft silk stockings didn't do much good in that respect, she mused.
"Wool, actually," said Mal. She was still sitting cross-legged on the tent floor, not moving a muscle, but watching. Polly felt a blush coming on. She grabbed the blanket and drew it over herself. Not that there was anything much to be seen, she thought. After all, she was a woman of sensible underwear.
"What?" she asked.
"I'm wearing woollen socks. Before you ask, no, they don't have ruffles."
"My world is collapsing," said Polly. "And how come you're reading my thoughts?" She snuggled into the blanket for warmth, and comfort, too.
"Did I?" said Mal. "Oh, damn -"
"Get a move on, woman," said Polly, "it's getting cold."
Mal didn't react, at least not the way Polly would have preferred; she was just sitting there, rubbing her eyes, and shivering, though that must have been the cold. Must have been.
"Oh, come on now," Polly said and unwrapped herself from the blanket, the cold hitting her body again with full force, "you need to get out of these clothes. Here, I'll help you."
"Don't bother," said Mal, as Polly, behind her, was maneuvering her out of her thick, black coat. "I'm going to leave," she added.
The snow that was caked onto the collar and on the insides of the sleeves hadn't even been melting anymore, Polly noticed.
"You'll bloody well stay," said Polly. "Hands up," she added, pulling the clammy shirt over Mal's head. The vampire wasn't resisting. Polly was really good at being the motherly type, at least she thought that until Mal rested her head against Polly's shoulder for one tiny moment. Motherly didn't quite cover that.
"I rather think I should go, really," said Mal. Polly could feel Mal's muscles tensing, as if readying to get up, She wasn't having with this.
"You might want to do the breeches by yourself," Polly said, "else, I fear this'll fall under the category of things we aren't talking about."
Mal did no such thing.
"It seems to me, Polly, dear," she said, instead, "that you are not listening."
Bloody stupid stubborn vampire.
"You've brought me here and you're bloody well not going to leave me alone now," said Polly. "So sorry if that's inconvenient for you."
She did grab Mal's wrist at this point, and she noticed that the piece of cloth that Mal had tied around her hand was still very much in place, and she noticed something else.
Bite marks.
"You need get over that trust thing," she added.
"Trust thing?"
"Look," said Polly, "I've noticed you're not sleeping next to me, and I'd really like to know why. I don't think I'm that dangerous to you."
Polly already had a gallery of strange Mal glares. This one was certainly in the top five, possibly because she saw Mal's face upside down and underneath her, possibly because it was a really fine specimen of a glare.
"Well, actually..." Mal began.
"Yeah?"
"I don't actually think it's you who's dangerous, and neither do I think I gave off the impression that I might think it was," Mal said.
"So no need to worry, yes?"
"You don't need to worry, Pol," said Mal. A pause. "I can worry all right, though."
"You're not making any sense," said Polly, still holding on to Mal's wrist. "Why isn't this healing?"
"Why isn't what healing?"
Mal, thought Polly, must have had a fair idea of what Polly had meant, since she was, at this point, trying to wrestle her arm free, without much success. Polly knew she was stronger than that, so what -
Polly tugged at the ruffly, slightly stained sleeve of Mal's undershirt, pulled it back to get a better view of the dark, scabby marks.
"Why isn't it healing?" she asked again, sharply. "You've had three days and you are a bloody vampire and you shouldn't even have bloody scars left, so why the bloody hell isn't this healing?" Polly could feel some serious hysterics coming on. Asking the same question three times surely was one sign of that.
Silence.
"Mal?"
"I didn't know it would happen like this," Mal said, not even looking at Polly. "Look, I never turned someone before. They don't give you a manual."
Polly was looking at the symmetric imprints again, and something inside her clicked. There was the memory of Mal staggering back, that look of terror on her face...
"It was me, wasn't it?" she asked. "You're unstable because - ?"
Mal winced. "Not your fault," she said, "it's mine. I should have known."
There was a pause in which Polly considered things. Such as I might be a little too caught up in what she did to me to consider what I -
So the coffee situation probably wasn't helping, either; at least one thing that she could blame on Mal. Still -
"I'm sorry," she said softly. She had never thought about the implications of blood loss in vampires before, but it made some sense if you twisted your brain around a few tight corners.
"I said it wasn't your fault," said Mal, "now, care to give me my arm back? So I can get up?"
Polly did, reluctantly, but the effect was rather spoiled when she put her arms around Mal's shoulders, on account of it being a very cold winter night. She was freezing something awful, and Mal was being difficult, and Polly needed the warmth, although she possibly didn't need it all that much, being immortal and all, and was this ever getting ridiculous.
Bit warmer, though.
"Polly," said Mal, after a long moment of almost but not quite leaning into the embrace, "I've got to..."
"You never attacked anyone, and you have been more... unstable before," Polly pointed out.
"Yes," said Mal, "I've been Mr Nice Coffee Drinker Guy since the day I was fucking born, Polly. Think again."
"I am thinking," said Polly.
For example, she thought, I am thinking about why you just used those exact words -
"What if I -"
There was a sharp indraw of breath. "Okay," said Mal. "Stop thinking right now."
"I am thinking about it, Mal," said Polly. "Remember what old Scallot said?"
"No."
"About the leg-sharing? It's the only way they survived winter in the mountains."
"I'm sure I don't remember a word of it," said Mal. "Besides," she added, "only one half of each came back. Forget it."
There may or may not have been a little 'plop' when Polly lost her patience.
"Mal, I am not putting up with this. You're frightening me, and so is the snow outside, into which I will not let you go, on account of it being frightening, and besides, we're not talking about legs here. Be reasonable, damn it."
In her arms, Mal had fully given in to the shivering. Polly was getting serious doubts about her offer, only -
She bloody well wasn't, right? This had to happen now, before there was a general loss of control. She just needed to convince Mal.
"Please, Mal," she said, "just this once. Just for... stabilising effects. It doesn't mean you're going to go back to underwired nightdresses and acting crazy. Just do it now before you start to seriously hurt...," me, "...someone."
"I've got that filed under seriously hurting people, actually," said Mal. "Besides, I'm a natural at the escapism thing. Just let me go, damn it."
"We're low enough that you might meet someone who isn't immortal, Mal," said Polly. "Besides, where do you want to go?" She leaned forward. "No coffee shops 'round here, Mal. We are snowed in."
She knew she was appealing to Mal's morals now. Well, time to find out if Mal had any.
One of the nastier parts of her mind thought, better a humble wood-gatherer than me, but it was silenced. Polly, on the whole, wasn't that nasty, right?
Mal was silent for a minute. Clearly, she was doing some thinking. Polly was careful not to interrupt her.
Finally, Mal lifted her head and turned towards her, and Polly let go out of sheer self-defence. She'd never seen an expression quite like this.
"Lie back, Polly," said Mal. Polly was automatically searching her voice for strange, bloodlust-y undertones, but there weren't any, she hoped, and she could feel her eyes widen with something that might have been surprise, but not fear. Never fear. She hadn't actually thought Mal would take her up on her offer, had she?
"I'm kidding, Polly," said Mal with a slight smile. She reached for her clothes.
Polly had had quite enough of this. She grabbed Mal by the ruffly collar and dragged her close and down.
"I'm not," she said into the ear of a - finally - speechless Mal. Polly hadn't intended on coming down on the bottom, though. That must have been Mal's vampire instincts kicking in.
Speaking of which -
"One question, though," said Mal, touching Polly's face with one icy hand. "Why do you want me to lose control?"
"The way I see it, you are losing control just now," said Polly.
"You're not making it easier," said Mal. "I can keep myself together, you know?"
"For how much longer?" asked Polly, softly, and reached up to brush away a tendril of Mal's hair that had been irritating her. "Come on," she said. "It won't get any more consensual than this."
"That's a pretty ambivalent statement," observed Mal.
Polly sighed.
"Mal?" she said.
"Polly?"
"Bite me."
Mal closed her eyes. The touch of her fingers was cool on Polly's jaw, pushing her head gently to the side and upwards. Her other hand was resting, just so, upon the point where Polly suspected her heart had wandered off too.
She felt a soft brush of lips upon her neck, and that was all there was for now, because Mal was talking again.
"This is stupid, Polly," she said. "You're scared."
"Am not," said Polly.
"It's going to hurt, Polly," said Mal. "You're scared and too bloody stubborn to admit it."
"Nervous," said Polly. "Also, immortal. Will you kindly practise your amazing self-control another time? I'm getting a bit bored here." She reached out again, her hand on the back of Mal's head, held her breath, urged her down. Just a little.
On the whole, it felt exactly like someone perforating your jugular vein with their teeth, that was to say, it hurt a lot in a 'help, an army doctor is amputating my toe'-way. The bite of the reformed vampire, it was almost tame.
It's all wrong this should be reversed -
There was a sound that sounded a bit like breathing in, but not quite, and Polly felt her blood being drawn. For a terrible second, there, she thought that it was too late, that Mal was losing it completely, and just then she wanted to scream very much, but didn't find the air and -
"There," whispered Mal, replacing her lips on Polly's throat with the soft touch of her fingers, waiting for the wound to close up.
It's all wrong, this is how it should go -
Polly shut her eyes, but the image was in her mind, clear as ice: Mal under her, subject to her anger, eyes wide open and her body shivering all over again, and all the ways Polly could make her scream -
The echo of it rang not in her ears, but further inside, and she opened her eyes to a world that had gone all haywire and was, somehow, still preferable to the world inside.
Define preferable.
The faint smell of blood in the air, a tiny red drop on Mal's lip, (memory of taste), the best thing there ever was, and in the blink of an eye Polly found herself grabbing a fistful of Mal's hair, a small sound of quite possibly surprise, or pain, and she craned her neck to get it back, get it all back. It ended some sort of kiss, tasting of iron, of salt, but a kiss nonetheless.
And that was that, and Mal ended up resting her head on Polly's shoulder, her face turned away, and Polly stroked her hair, because that was all the distraction she was going to get, and they were both still quite cold.
"... I hate hurting you," said Mal after a long while, her voice barely audible.
"So did it help, then?" asked Polly.
A pause, and then, "I think so," said Mal.
"Good," said Polly. "Would have been a bloody waste, otherwise."
"Indeed."
At this point, Polly gathered Mal just a little bit closer, for cold-related reasons. Just for a moment.
"I have no idea where the hell the kissing came from, though," she murmured. "'m sorry."
There was a pause in which the world was almost okay.
"I do," said Mal finally. "Have an idea, I mean. Don't mention it."
Polly had to disentangle herself from all of this, turn away a little. It was necessary, sanity-wise.
"V'mpire thing?" she asked.
"Maybe," said Mal. "Probably,"
Polly heard, and felt, Mal moving around her, drawing the blanket over both of them, tucking in stray ends, and then moving to lie next to her. Not quite as close as she'd used to, when it was merely part of the "Gods, Polly, please don't freeze" routine they - well, Mal - had established during the winter. Back in the Borogravian mountains, when this had still been safe.
"Mal?" she asked at some point.
"Yes?" Mal sounded very, very awake, Polly thought, compared to herself, who had just managed to slur Mal's name.
"'m scared."
There wasn't really an answer, as such, just Mal sort of missing a breath. Maybe, Polly wasn't sure. Slowly, she drifted off into sleep, completely aware that Mal didn't.
-
Polly woke up cold.
Instant aggression made her stumble to her feet. That, and the cold, and maybe also some honest concern at the lack of Mal. She felt for her socks and boots and put both on, wincing. Failing to find the rest of her clothes, she draped Mal's cloak over herself.
How was that for the bat look?
Outside, the sun was shining. Actually shining! Mal must have been up for a while now; a fair amount of snow had been removed from the space around the cave entrance, and she had done something clever with the leftover ropes from the tent. Their clammy clothes were drying in the sunlight, or, all right, maybe just freezing into something solid, but the thought was there.
Mal was sitting in the middle of it all, drinking brownish water that gave off a faint smell of something that might once have been stored next to a bag of coffee.
"How did you manage to boil water?" asked Polly. Mal looked up to her as if this was a really stupid question.
Well, it was a really stupid question, but -
"Built a fire," said Mal.
Indeed, there was a fire burning. Mal had dug a hole into the ground, and a heap of twigs was smoldering in it. Considering the fact that every available surface was covered in a fair amount of snow, Polly had to admit she was impressed.
Polly sat down opposite to her, just now realising that Mal, actually, was trying not to look at her at all. It was not surprising, considering Mal was drinking sort-of-coffee, and the relationship between Mal and coffee had always been a special one, but still.
"So, how are you feeling?" Polly asked.
"How are you feeling?" asked Mal, completely disregarding the question. Polly wasn't going to put up with these vile communication strategies.
"I asked first," she said.
Mal shrugged. "Surprisingly fine," she said, "I mean, I'm trying not to die of embarrassment here, but, yeah, I'm fine."
Polly tried to catch her eyes, she really did, but Mal was concentrating on her coffee and nothing else.
"Why embarrassment?" she asked.
"I'm supposed to be the stable one, remember?" said Mal. She may just as well have been talking to her espresso cup, but at least she was talking. "I'm supposed to get you to Ankh-Morpork nice and safe, because it's the least I can do, and then I go and get all... distracted." She shook her head."Impossible."
"Knock it off, Mal," said Polly, "self-pity doesn't suit you."
Mal didn't actually spit her coffee back out, but it looked like a close call. "But I'm a vampire!" she protested.
"Hello, Temperance League," said Polly lightly.
"Yeah, right," said Mal.
Polly shrugged. "Got any saloop?" she asked.
"In a moment." Mal got up and filled the kettle with snow.
Saloop was truly mystical, it was. Saloop was made from the big-leaved black tea, with cream and as much sugar as could possibly be legal, and still, you could subtract the sugar and the cream and sometimes even the tea leaves and it would still be saloop. It was amazing.
"So, getting back on topic -" said Mal, when Polly had been issued with a regimental mug full of the best beverage in the world.
"Yeah?" she asked. She was, for the first time, experiencing how someone could be wholly taken in by a cup of steaming hot liquid. If this was how Mal felt every day, then Polly was all for it. Up to a point, anyway.
"How are you feeling?" asked Mal.
"Fine," said Polly. "You didn't drink all that much," she added and thought, gosh, the verb 'drink' should never be used in conjunction with body juices.
At least not during breakfast conversation.
Oh, shove it. It was better than 'suck' at any rate. At least in this particular sentence.
Oh dear.
"Really?" asked Mal, the tiniest hint of what was possibly anxiety in her voice. It may also have been suppressed laughter, Polly supposed, what with Mal being prone to the occasional bit of mind-reading.
"Really fine," said Polly. "Though I should go find me some - uh - you keep referring to it as breakfast."
Mal felt up and down her trouser legs, then unbuttoned a sleeve of her shirt, then found something. "There you go," she said, and threw it to her. It was a live rat.
Polly caught it, and swallowed.
"How do you get them to sit still?" she asked. She wasn't good with rodents. They tended to struggle a lot.
"They don't. I just let them wander about a bit," said Mal. "I've got another one, somewhere, in case you're really hungry."
"You realise this is disgusting, do you?" asked Polly, eyeing the rat quizzically.
"They probably wash more often then we do, these days," said Mal. "Y'know, I'd kill for a bathtub. Er. Only I wouldn't, of course." She put some thought into her coffee.
"No, what I mean is letting food get so close to you, that's disgusting," said Polly, "Food shouldn't enjoy being food and, er," she gave up, as an image of open windows and women in nightdresses briefly flashed up in her mind. "It's a vampire thing, right?"
Mal didn't even look up. "Hurry up with that one," she said. "It's terrified."
Now that Polly thought about it, there were little squeaky sounds coming from the rat.
"D'you now what I'm going to do first right after withdrawal?"
Mal mumbled something that might have sounded like 'throw up', and added, "No, what?"
"I'm going vegetarian," said Polly, and bit into the rat.
A smile. "Don't you think this is taking things maybe a bit far?"
"I get excited at the idea of biting vermin!" said Polly after a moment. "How can you possibly fail to see my point?"
"Well," said Mal, "you never actually said no to a bit of rat scubbo when Rosemary cooked it."
"That was 'cos we didn't have much of a choice!" said Polly and realised that she had plunged headfirst into an all too obvious trap.
"So, what's the difference, then?" asked Mal, finishing off her coffee and refilling the cup in one movement.
Polly sighed. "I'm not going into this again."
"Okay."
"I mean, well..." Okay, so Polly had lied. "Listen, have you ever been human? I mean -"
"I know what you mean. And no, I was born like this," said Mal. "Everyone with a total of more than twelve names generally is, unless they're showing off."
Polly glared. "It's not showing off if it's done by vampires?" she asked, if only to bypass the dreaded topic of vampire reproduction by a mile or two.
"Exactly. We're never showing off."
"Yeah," said Polly, "you're just showing."
"Right now I am walking around in clothes that haven't been washed for days, I am not properly combed and half of your breakfast is running up my trouser leg," said Mal. "Honestly, Polly -"
"Stop that. You're getting girly, corporal."
She received a strange glare.
"There's really a lot you've got to learn about vampires," said Mal.
"Yeah, well, so everyone's girly," said Polly. "I'd like to get back to the topic."
This was maybe not the ideal point in time, considering the discussion, but with the fire dying and the cloak being her only shield against a cruel, cold world, it was a choice between freezing and moving closer to Mal, and Polly chose the latter. An arm was put around her. They could do this entirely on autopilot. It was amazing.
It also didn't mean anything.
"I think," Polly began, and then stopped to find out exactly what she was thinking, and then find a diplomatic way of putting it. "I think the reason why it's so hard to explain to you why I'm disinclined to warm up to the idea of vampirism is..." good start, thought Polly, now think of a reason, and try not to mangle grammar any further, "... is because, um, you don't quite know what I'm talking about when I say I miss being human."
"Which is supposed to tell me what, exactly?" asked Mal.
"Erm... what I said, really," said Polly. Damn, she was proud she had gotten that sentence out once. She was not going to reformulate.
"What you said is, actually, that I'm just not able to understand your inner turmoil," said Mal. "Excuse me, but that's a really vampire way of thinking. Are you going to write a sonnet about it?"
"You're making fun of me," said Polly.
"So?" said Mal. "You seem to believe vampirism comes with the social grace of a troll in a dwarf mine."
"Ha," said Polly. "It doesn't?"
"Uh," said Mal. "It... depends. Yes. What I'm trying to say here, Polly, is -"
Polly waited a few seconds, then nudged her. "Yeah?"
"What I'm trying to say here is, er," said Mal, "I do, in fact, try my best to understand your inner turmoil."
There was a pause in which Mal clearly chose not to elaborate.
"You're not getting it at all," said Polly finally. "It's difficult."
"I'm not going to argue that."
"Mal," said Polly, "fact is, I don't entirely feel like Polly anymore. I mean, I still have all the bits and then some, and in full working order, too, but I don't feel..." What, exactly? "I get so angry sometimes that I get scared of myself. I'm not in control, Mal. I mean, I -," a pause in which her thoughts reassembled, "damn, I kissed you for a drop of blood. That's hardly me now, is it?"
"If it's any help," said Mal, "my professional opinion would be that quite a lot of that anger is you. Vampires are the whiny type."
"Wow," said Polly, "I bet the vampires are glad you're not their official spokesperson."
Mal shrugged. "Well, I'm supposed to be a disgrace," she said lightly.
"Did someone tell you that?" asked Polly.
"Not in so many words, no."
"You mean -"
"I mean that a few people stopped talking to me. It wasn't hard to figure out."
There was a short stretch of silence between them. Polly always found silence to be difficult when there were only two. It talked too much. She shifted a little closer to Mal, for reasons of freezing.
"So, when are we leaving, then?" asked Polly, if only to change the topic. "Come to think of it, where are we going to?"
"Well," said Mal, "I don't think there's much of a point in staying in the mountains, on account of the snow situation, so we have to go lower. Tonight, I think, when the clothes are dry." She gave them a taxing look. "Dryer, at least."
Polly sighed. It seemed so logical. "What about the bloodsucking thing?" she asked.
"What about it?"
"There's bound to be some wood gatherers," said Polly. "You have coffee, well, sort of; what do I have?"
"Well," said Mal, "rats and such. And, er, me, should the need arise."
"Because that was such a good idea the first time?" said Polly.
"Polly," said Mal, "this is, ah, kind of hard to explain, but, you know, the transition thing I told you about? It won't always be rats. Um."
Gods, thought Polly. That. Just when she'd thought she'd figured something out -
"I'm gonna get cravings for... gods, Mal, I hate you so much right now."
"Anything human-shaped will do," said Mal. "And don't look at me like that. It may seem a bit strange, but it's logical."
"Strange? Try icky," said Polly.
Mal groaned. "What are you, five?"
Wow, thought Polly. Exhibit A: yes, Mal gets angry.
"Well, no," she said. "I'm nineteen, not going to grow older, and I'm scared to death."
It was then that she broke down, but, all things considered, Polly thought she did a pretty good job on not showing it. Only one or two sobs made it through the barricades, but those were enough to make Mal shift uneasily.
That's what the inner turmoil looked like: an infinity waiting to be filled, and there was only Polly to do the filling. Hard enough to lead a meaningful life if you only made it to sixty, or make that nineteen, 'cause Polly -
- should be dead.
She felt herself being pulled into a tight embrace by Mal, and hated herself for complying so easily, like a beaten dog running to the first source of comfort that offered itself. But there was nothing else here, only snow, only the two of them, and two meant trouble.
So trouble it was, then.
"You should have let me die," said Polly. She didn't care if she sounded dramatic, which was good, because she didn't. Sniffling, more like.
"I would have, if you'd just gone ahead and done it," said Mal.
"What?"
"I waited for an hour and you were still breathing," said Mal, "so I built a bloody fire in the middle of the bloody battlefield and made myself some bloody coffee and you were still breathing, and then I waited for the sun to set and you were still breathing, and then I sorta screamed at you to, you know, fucking die already."
"Charming," said Polly. "Good friends are so invaluable."
Mal shrugged. "I was a bit out of it at that point," she said. "And I think that was when you sorta woke up, only not really, as it has turned out, and I proceeded to have an existential conversation with the reaper man. Happy?"
"No," said Polly. "Not happy. You know I'm not happy. Damn, Mal, you had the nerve to demand your mercy killing, and yet you couldn't even -"
Should have gone and left me to the crows, she thought. Not as if I was conscious. Not as if -
Not as if I would ever have been capable of killing Mal, she thought. Not until now.
"Hey," said Mal softly, oddly comforting, and that was something which Polly hadn't thought her capable of. It did make her feel like one of the small furry animals that so easily took a fatal liking to Mal.
"Stop doing that," she said, her voice not shaking, not shaking at all.
"Doing what?"
"Hypnotising me," said Polly. "Or whatever it is you're doing."
"Oh, please," said Mal. "You're still yourself. Just a bit angrier maybe."
Which was, admittedly, a perspective Polly had not yet considered. Of course she's right, said a voice inside her, after all, she's only sucked out your blood, not your brain, and it's time to be a grown-up about things.
Yes, but she's sucked my blood!
"Realism is the last thing I need now," she growled. Come to think of it, what she really need was a hug, and come to think of that, she had a hug. Still not happy, but calm. Calmer. One breath at a time, one breath, and then another, and another. There.
"I know," whispered Mal, stroking her hair and being all impossible again. "I'm sorry."
And you thought the last one was wordy :D
There's snow. And shedding of clothes, ha. Um. And a lot of talking, because these two? Have unresolved issues.
Plogviehze, Baby: Chapter 3
This is not happening," said Mal, eyes closed.
She seemed to have pulled herself together, but bloody good it did them now. Typical of her to regard undeniable facts as some kind of personal attack.
But typical, at least, was good. Polly agreed with typical. Typical was the hot water bottle of the mind.
"Seems like it is, in fact, happening," she said. "Any idea where we are?"
As far as Polly was concerned, they were in the middle of white hell. There was no path. There had never been a path, but the path that hadn't been there was gone.
"No," said Mal. Standing thigh-deep in snow, in front of a wall of snow, surrounded by more snow, and snow still falling down on her, she was rather convincing.
"I mean," she added, "I'm not merely classically lost. I'm all kinds of lost. This is a whole new dimension of lost I'm talking about." She kicked the snow. It didn't kick back, but it might as well have snickered.
"Er -," Polly was lost as well, but in a slightly different sense.
"Polly, I can't see," said Mal. "This environment is the diametrical opposite of psychotropic. Not only doesn't it listen, it doesn't even talk."
"Yeah, well, it's snow," Polly pointed out. "And you're speaking in tautologies. I suggest we find us a cave and wait it out." She put down the pack. "And none of this talking to landscapes business."
Typical Mal behaviour, but minus the oddities, please, thought Polly.
Mal didn't argue the point, which wasn't quite typical, but nice, and ten minutes later, Polly had found a cave. The entrance was almost completely snowed in, but there was a tiny opening at the top. Polly would have overlooked it, if a slightly drowsy bat hadn't emerged at just the right moment. Bats were the best, she thought.
She let her eyes follow it for a while as it flew into the night.
"Bats are basically rodents, right?" she said after a while, and grinned. She wasn't even hungry; that must have been her inner quartermaster speaking.
Mal was, by now, trying to get some of the snow out of the way, using Polly's tea mug and her own bare hands. She had tried to do it with the sword, possibly out of snow-related aggression. It hadn't worked.
"No eating bats, Pol," she said absent-mindedly, not looking up from what she was doing. "They could be relatives."
Polly shrugged. "I don't have any bat relatives," she said.
"I do," said Mal. "I kindly implore you not to eat them. They're tetchy enough as they are."
She finished her work with grim determination and no help from Polly. Polly did feel just that tiny bit useless, but they only had one actual mug-sized mug between them now, and Mal had refused to let Polly touch the teeny tiny porcelain espresso cup that she had carried around for emergencies (and also, Polly thought, for a certain inexplicable sentimentality Mal wasn't going to admit to).
And wait -
Mal had relatives? Down Polly's mind went, down down down the slippery slope that was the topic of vampire reproduction. How do they suckle? she thought weakly, and then her brain shut down and she hastily restarted.
Teeth, she thought. Ngk. Need wholesome thoughts right now -
"There," said Mal, and Polly thankfully snapped back to reality. "Hardly a cave, but we can put up the tent. It's almost water-resistant, after all." Polly watched her walking over to the pack, struggling to open it with frozen fingers, and there it was, there was the shaking again.
Gonna share a tent with her...
"Here, let me do this," said Polly, stepping beside her and noticing with distress that she was actually volunteering to put up the damn tent. "Have some coffee. Please."
"Nah," said Mal. "I'm running out as it is."
One. Two. Three.
"What?"
"I've had to ration for weeks, Pol," said Mal. "We've been camping for a while, yes?"
"I know that, Mal," said Polly. "What is this, some kind of adventure trip? From Borogravia to Ankh-Morpork on two point five coffee beans?"
"Twenty-six, actually," said Mal. "I counted."
"Daft," said Polly. "Crazy. Completely bonkers. You could have told me."
"I can refill," said Mal. "As soon as I've figured out how to keep you from attacking people. Zlobenia is a nation full of crazy coffee addicts." She grinned. "My kind of people, really."
"How to keep me from -?" began Polly. "You are the one who's shaking and randomly hugging people and looking completely, utterly deshabille and you bit me and -"
"There's no need to worry," said Mal. "Well, little need. Is my hair that bad?"
"Fine," said Polly. "Do what you want. I'm putting up the tent, seeing as we're snowed in with no prospect of reaching any human settlement at all."
Their tent was the sort of tent that was supposed to accommodate two people, which was... exactly what it did. It was also completely inappropriate for any kind of serious warfare; the amount of cursing required to put it up tended to counteract the half-hearted camouflage-effect of the grey-green linen.
And curse Polly did. She'd been getting good at tents lately, despite frozen fingers, but over the course of the last winter, she had grown heartily fed-up with all sorts of army tents. 'Roomy, comfy, and water-resistant' summed up everything they weren't. The only thing worse than sharing the army tent with anyone was not sharing the army tent with anyone, because then you'd get paranoia, too. And cold.
Midstream, somewhere between "bloody" and "tent", she cast a glance at Mal, who had -
- sort of collapsed in the snow, doing things to -
What.
Polly tried to concentrate on tying rope A to hook B, she really did. But Mal daintily inspecting coffee beans before putting them back into the bag was -
No need to worry, indeed.
"Come here, I'm done," Polly called. She was openly watching now, and added, "Are you giving them names or something?"
Mal put the coffee bag on the ground while she took her time getting up. For a while, it really looked as if she'd be leaving it there, only sweeping the bag up as an afterthought.
Well. So far, so unsurprising.
"What?" said Mal. "They're the children I've never had!"
She was walking over to Polly, swaying only a tiny little bit too much, and Polly wondered if she was going to survive the night. Be a m... a grown-up about it, she thought. She proceeded to usher Mal inside, and followed.
"Please," said Polly, "do keep the topic of vampire reproduction far away from me."
"Polly, dear," said Mal. "You fixating on teeth or something?"
"No, you are -" began Polly, and thought, and added, "Well, are teeth involved?"
There was a lifted eyebrow. "Matter of preference, really," said Mal.
"Eurgh," said Polly. "I meant tiny widdle vampire babies. Forget it."
Once inside the tent, Polly struggled out of most of her wet, icy clothes, fully aware that there'd be no drying them anytime soon. She marvelled at the white cloud that was her breath. It really was one bastard of a winter, was it?
Polly had a short internal struggle whether to keep the soaked socks on. The socks lost, on account of them being an icy nightmare, although she didn't have replacements. Polly had, always carried an extra pair of socks, hur hur, but they only had Mal's pack now, and Polly had, actually, though Mal was still Maladict to the world, never quite found out how Mal handled the socks business.
Possibly her delicate soft silk stockings didn't do much good in that respect, she mused.
"Wool, actually," said Mal. She was still sitting cross-legged on the tent floor, not moving a muscle, but watching. Polly felt a blush coming on. She grabbed the blanket and drew it over herself. Not that there was anything much to be seen, she thought. After all, she was a woman of sensible underwear.
"What?" she asked.
"I'm wearing woollen socks. Before you ask, no, they don't have ruffles."
"My world is collapsing," said Polly. "And how come you're reading my thoughts?" She snuggled into the blanket for warmth, and comfort, too.
"Did I?" said Mal. "Oh, damn -"
"Get a move on, woman," said Polly, "it's getting cold."
Mal didn't react, at least not the way Polly would have preferred; she was just sitting there, rubbing her eyes, and shivering, though that must have been the cold. Must have been.
"Oh, come on now," Polly said and unwrapped herself from the blanket, the cold hitting her body again with full force, "you need to get out of these clothes. Here, I'll help you."
"Don't bother," said Mal, as Polly, behind her, was maneuvering her out of her thick, black coat. "I'm going to leave," she added.
The snow that was caked onto the collar and on the insides of the sleeves hadn't even been melting anymore, Polly noticed.
"You'll bloody well stay," said Polly. "Hands up," she added, pulling the clammy shirt over Mal's head. The vampire wasn't resisting. Polly was really good at being the motherly type, at least she thought that until Mal rested her head against Polly's shoulder for one tiny moment. Motherly didn't quite cover that.
"I rather think I should go, really," said Mal. Polly could feel Mal's muscles tensing, as if readying to get up, She wasn't having with this.
"You might want to do the breeches by yourself," Polly said, "else, I fear this'll fall under the category of things we aren't talking about."
Mal did no such thing.
"It seems to me, Polly, dear," she said, instead, "that you are not listening."
Bloody stupid stubborn vampire.
"You've brought me here and you're bloody well not going to leave me alone now," said Polly. "So sorry if that's inconvenient for you."
She did grab Mal's wrist at this point, and she noticed that the piece of cloth that Mal had tied around her hand was still very much in place, and she noticed something else.
Bite marks.
"You need get over that trust thing," she added.
"Trust thing?"
"Look," said Polly, "I've noticed you're not sleeping next to me, and I'd really like to know why. I don't think I'm that dangerous to you."
Polly already had a gallery of strange Mal glares. This one was certainly in the top five, possibly because she saw Mal's face upside down and underneath her, possibly because it was a really fine specimen of a glare.
"Well, actually..." Mal began.
"Yeah?"
"I don't actually think it's you who's dangerous, and neither do I think I gave off the impression that I might think it was," Mal said.
"So no need to worry, yes?"
"You don't need to worry, Pol," said Mal. A pause. "I can worry all right, though."
"You're not making any sense," said Polly, still holding on to Mal's wrist. "Why isn't this healing?"
"Why isn't what healing?"
Mal, thought Polly, must have had a fair idea of what Polly had meant, since she was, at this point, trying to wrestle her arm free, without much success. Polly knew she was stronger than that, so what -
Polly tugged at the ruffly, slightly stained sleeve of Mal's undershirt, pulled it back to get a better view of the dark, scabby marks.
"Why isn't it healing?" she asked again, sharply. "You've had three days and you are a bloody vampire and you shouldn't even have bloody scars left, so why the bloody hell isn't this healing?" Polly could feel some serious hysterics coming on. Asking the same question three times surely was one sign of that.
Silence.
"Mal?"
"I didn't know it would happen like this," Mal said, not even looking at Polly. "Look, I never turned someone before. They don't give you a manual."
Polly was looking at the symmetric imprints again, and something inside her clicked. There was the memory of Mal staggering back, that look of terror on her face...
"It was me, wasn't it?" she asked. "You're unstable because - ?"
Mal winced. "Not your fault," she said, "it's mine. I should have known."
There was a pause in which Polly considered things. Such as I might be a little too caught up in what she did to me to consider what I -
So the coffee situation probably wasn't helping, either; at least one thing that she could blame on Mal. Still -
"I'm sorry," she said softly. She had never thought about the implications of blood loss in vampires before, but it made some sense if you twisted your brain around a few tight corners.
"I said it wasn't your fault," said Mal, "now, care to give me my arm back? So I can get up?"
Polly did, reluctantly, but the effect was rather spoiled when she put her arms around Mal's shoulders, on account of it being a very cold winter night. She was freezing something awful, and Mal was being difficult, and Polly needed the warmth, although she possibly didn't need it all that much, being immortal and all, and was this ever getting ridiculous.
Bit warmer, though.
"Polly," said Mal, after a long moment of almost but not quite leaning into the embrace, "I've got to..."
"You never attacked anyone, and you have been more... unstable before," Polly pointed out.
"Yes," said Mal, "I've been Mr Nice Coffee Drinker Guy since the day I was fucking born, Polly. Think again."
"I am thinking," said Polly.
For example, she thought, I am thinking about why you just used those exact words -
"What if I -"
There was a sharp indraw of breath. "Okay," said Mal. "Stop thinking right now."
"I am thinking about it, Mal," said Polly. "Remember what old Scallot said?"
"No."
"About the leg-sharing? It's the only way they survived winter in the mountains."
"I'm sure I don't remember a word of it," said Mal. "Besides," she added, "only one half of each came back. Forget it."
There may or may not have been a little 'plop' when Polly lost her patience.
"Mal, I am not putting up with this. You're frightening me, and so is the snow outside, into which I will not let you go, on account of it being frightening, and besides, we're not talking about legs here. Be reasonable, damn it."
In her arms, Mal had fully given in to the shivering. Polly was getting serious doubts about her offer, only -
She bloody well wasn't, right? This had to happen now, before there was a general loss of control. She just needed to convince Mal.
"Please, Mal," she said, "just this once. Just for... stabilising effects. It doesn't mean you're going to go back to underwired nightdresses and acting crazy. Just do it now before you start to seriously hurt...," me, "...someone."
"I've got that filed under seriously hurting people, actually," said Mal. "Besides, I'm a natural at the escapism thing. Just let me go, damn it."
"We're low enough that you might meet someone who isn't immortal, Mal," said Polly. "Besides, where do you want to go?" She leaned forward. "No coffee shops 'round here, Mal. We are snowed in."
She knew she was appealing to Mal's morals now. Well, time to find out if Mal had any.
One of the nastier parts of her mind thought, better a humble wood-gatherer than me, but it was silenced. Polly, on the whole, wasn't that nasty, right?
Mal was silent for a minute. Clearly, she was doing some thinking. Polly was careful not to interrupt her.
Finally, Mal lifted her head and turned towards her, and Polly let go out of sheer self-defence. She'd never seen an expression quite like this.
"Lie back, Polly," said Mal. Polly was automatically searching her voice for strange, bloodlust-y undertones, but there weren't any, she hoped, and she could feel her eyes widen with something that might have been surprise, but not fear. Never fear. She hadn't actually thought Mal would take her up on her offer, had she?
"I'm kidding, Polly," said Mal with a slight smile. She reached for her clothes.
Polly had had quite enough of this. She grabbed Mal by the ruffly collar and dragged her close and down.
"I'm not," she said into the ear of a - finally - speechless Mal. Polly hadn't intended on coming down on the bottom, though. That must have been Mal's vampire instincts kicking in.
Speaking of which -
"One question, though," said Mal, touching Polly's face with one icy hand. "Why do you want me to lose control?"
"The way I see it, you are losing control just now," said Polly.
"You're not making it easier," said Mal. "I can keep myself together, you know?"
"For how much longer?" asked Polly, softly, and reached up to brush away a tendril of Mal's hair that had been irritating her. "Come on," she said. "It won't get any more consensual than this."
"That's a pretty ambivalent statement," observed Mal.
Polly sighed.
"Mal?" she said.
"Polly?"
"Bite me."
Mal closed her eyes. The touch of her fingers was cool on Polly's jaw, pushing her head gently to the side and upwards. Her other hand was resting, just so, upon the point where Polly suspected her heart had wandered off too.
She felt a soft brush of lips upon her neck, and that was all there was for now, because Mal was talking again.
"This is stupid, Polly," she said. "You're scared."
"Am not," said Polly.
"It's going to hurt, Polly," said Mal. "You're scared and too bloody stubborn to admit it."
"Nervous," said Polly. "Also, immortal. Will you kindly practise your amazing self-control another time? I'm getting a bit bored here." She reached out again, her hand on the back of Mal's head, held her breath, urged her down. Just a little.
On the whole, it felt exactly like someone perforating your jugular vein with their teeth, that was to say, it hurt a lot in a 'help, an army doctor is amputating my toe'-way. The bite of the reformed vampire, it was almost tame.
It's all wrong this should be reversed -
There was a sound that sounded a bit like breathing in, but not quite, and Polly felt her blood being drawn. For a terrible second, there, she thought that it was too late, that Mal was losing it completely, and just then she wanted to scream very much, but didn't find the air and -
"There," whispered Mal, replacing her lips on Polly's throat with the soft touch of her fingers, waiting for the wound to close up.
It's all wrong, this is how it should go -
Polly shut her eyes, but the image was in her mind, clear as ice: Mal under her, subject to her anger, eyes wide open and her body shivering all over again, and all the ways Polly could make her scream -
The echo of it rang not in her ears, but further inside, and she opened her eyes to a world that had gone all haywire and was, somehow, still preferable to the world inside.
Define preferable.
The faint smell of blood in the air, a tiny red drop on Mal's lip, (memory of taste), the best thing there ever was, and in the blink of an eye Polly found herself grabbing a fistful of Mal's hair, a small sound of quite possibly surprise, or pain, and she craned her neck to get it back, get it all back. It ended some sort of kiss, tasting of iron, of salt, but a kiss nonetheless.
And that was that, and Mal ended up resting her head on Polly's shoulder, her face turned away, and Polly stroked her hair, because that was all the distraction she was going to get, and they were both still quite cold.
"... I hate hurting you," said Mal after a long while, her voice barely audible.
"So did it help, then?" asked Polly.
A pause, and then, "I think so," said Mal.
"Good," said Polly. "Would have been a bloody waste, otherwise."
"Indeed."
At this point, Polly gathered Mal just a little bit closer, for cold-related reasons. Just for a moment.
"I have no idea where the hell the kissing came from, though," she murmured. "'m sorry."
There was a pause in which the world was almost okay.
"I do," said Mal finally. "Have an idea, I mean. Don't mention it."
Polly had to disentangle herself from all of this, turn away a little. It was necessary, sanity-wise.
"V'mpire thing?" she asked.
"Maybe," said Mal. "Probably,"
Polly heard, and felt, Mal moving around her, drawing the blanket over both of them, tucking in stray ends, and then moving to lie next to her. Not quite as close as she'd used to, when it was merely part of the "Gods, Polly, please don't freeze" routine they - well, Mal - had established during the winter. Back in the Borogravian mountains, when this had still been safe.
"Mal?" she asked at some point.
"Yes?" Mal sounded very, very awake, Polly thought, compared to herself, who had just managed to slur Mal's name.
"'m scared."
There wasn't really an answer, as such, just Mal sort of missing a breath. Maybe, Polly wasn't sure. Slowly, she drifted off into sleep, completely aware that Mal didn't.
-
Polly woke up cold.
Instant aggression made her stumble to her feet. That, and the cold, and maybe also some honest concern at the lack of Mal. She felt for her socks and boots and put both on, wincing. Failing to find the rest of her clothes, she draped Mal's cloak over herself.
How was that for the bat look?
Outside, the sun was shining. Actually shining! Mal must have been up for a while now; a fair amount of snow had been removed from the space around the cave entrance, and she had done something clever with the leftover ropes from the tent. Their clammy clothes were drying in the sunlight, or, all right, maybe just freezing into something solid, but the thought was there.
Mal was sitting in the middle of it all, drinking brownish water that gave off a faint smell of something that might once have been stored next to a bag of coffee.
"How did you manage to boil water?" asked Polly. Mal looked up to her as if this was a really stupid question.
Well, it was a really stupid question, but -
"Built a fire," said Mal.
Indeed, there was a fire burning. Mal had dug a hole into the ground, and a heap of twigs was smoldering in it. Considering the fact that every available surface was covered in a fair amount of snow, Polly had to admit she was impressed.
Polly sat down opposite to her, just now realising that Mal, actually, was trying not to look at her at all. It was not surprising, considering Mal was drinking sort-of-coffee, and the relationship between Mal and coffee had always been a special one, but still.
"So, how are you feeling?" Polly asked.
"How are you feeling?" asked Mal, completely disregarding the question. Polly wasn't going to put up with these vile communication strategies.
"I asked first," she said.
Mal shrugged. "Surprisingly fine," she said, "I mean, I'm trying not to die of embarrassment here, but, yeah, I'm fine."
Polly tried to catch her eyes, she really did, but Mal was concentrating on her coffee and nothing else.
"Why embarrassment?" she asked.
"I'm supposed to be the stable one, remember?" said Mal. She may just as well have been talking to her espresso cup, but at least she was talking. "I'm supposed to get you to Ankh-Morpork nice and safe, because it's the least I can do, and then I go and get all... distracted." She shook her head."Impossible."
"Knock it off, Mal," said Polly, "self-pity doesn't suit you."
Mal didn't actually spit her coffee back out, but it looked like a close call. "But I'm a vampire!" she protested.
"Hello, Temperance League," said Polly lightly.
"Yeah, right," said Mal.
Polly shrugged. "Got any saloop?" she asked.
"In a moment." Mal got up and filled the kettle with snow.
Saloop was truly mystical, it was. Saloop was made from the big-leaved black tea, with cream and as much sugar as could possibly be legal, and still, you could subtract the sugar and the cream and sometimes even the tea leaves and it would still be saloop. It was amazing.
"So, getting back on topic -" said Mal, when Polly had been issued with a regimental mug full of the best beverage in the world.
"Yeah?" she asked. She was, for the first time, experiencing how someone could be wholly taken in by a cup of steaming hot liquid. If this was how Mal felt every day, then Polly was all for it. Up to a point, anyway.
"How are you feeling?" asked Mal.
"Fine," said Polly. "You didn't drink all that much," she added and thought, gosh, the verb 'drink' should never be used in conjunction with body juices.
At least not during breakfast conversation.
Oh, shove it. It was better than 'suck' at any rate. At least in this particular sentence.
Oh dear.
"Really?" asked Mal, the tiniest hint of what was possibly anxiety in her voice. It may also have been suppressed laughter, Polly supposed, what with Mal being prone to the occasional bit of mind-reading.
"Really fine," said Polly. "Though I should go find me some - uh - you keep referring to it as breakfast."
Mal felt up and down her trouser legs, then unbuttoned a sleeve of her shirt, then found something. "There you go," she said, and threw it to her. It was a live rat.
Polly caught it, and swallowed.
"How do you get them to sit still?" she asked. She wasn't good with rodents. They tended to struggle a lot.
"They don't. I just let them wander about a bit," said Mal. "I've got another one, somewhere, in case you're really hungry."
"You realise this is disgusting, do you?" asked Polly, eyeing the rat quizzically.
"They probably wash more often then we do, these days," said Mal. "Y'know, I'd kill for a bathtub. Er. Only I wouldn't, of course." She put some thought into her coffee.
"No, what I mean is letting food get so close to you, that's disgusting," said Polly, "Food shouldn't enjoy being food and, er," she gave up, as an image of open windows and women in nightdresses briefly flashed up in her mind. "It's a vampire thing, right?"
Mal didn't even look up. "Hurry up with that one," she said. "It's terrified."
Now that Polly thought about it, there were little squeaky sounds coming from the rat.
"D'you now what I'm going to do first right after withdrawal?"
Mal mumbled something that might have sounded like 'throw up', and added, "No, what?"
"I'm going vegetarian," said Polly, and bit into the rat.
A smile. "Don't you think this is taking things maybe a bit far?"
"I get excited at the idea of biting vermin!" said Polly after a moment. "How can you possibly fail to see my point?"
"Well," said Mal, "you never actually said no to a bit of rat scubbo when Rosemary cooked it."
"That was 'cos we didn't have much of a choice!" said Polly and realised that she had plunged headfirst into an all too obvious trap.
"So, what's the difference, then?" asked Mal, finishing off her coffee and refilling the cup in one movement.
Polly sighed. "I'm not going into this again."
"Okay."
"I mean, well..." Okay, so Polly had lied. "Listen, have you ever been human? I mean -"
"I know what you mean. And no, I was born like this," said Mal. "Everyone with a total of more than twelve names generally is, unless they're showing off."
Polly glared. "It's not showing off if it's done by vampires?" she asked, if only to bypass the dreaded topic of vampire reproduction by a mile or two.
"Exactly. We're never showing off."
"Yeah," said Polly, "you're just showing."
"Right now I am walking around in clothes that haven't been washed for days, I am not properly combed and half of your breakfast is running up my trouser leg," said Mal. "Honestly, Polly -"
"Stop that. You're getting girly, corporal."
She received a strange glare.
"There's really a lot you've got to learn about vampires," said Mal.
"Yeah, well, so everyone's girly," said Polly. "I'd like to get back to the topic."
This was maybe not the ideal point in time, considering the discussion, but with the fire dying and the cloak being her only shield against a cruel, cold world, it was a choice between freezing and moving closer to Mal, and Polly chose the latter. An arm was put around her. They could do this entirely on autopilot. It was amazing.
It also didn't mean anything.
"I think," Polly began, and then stopped to find out exactly what she was thinking, and then find a diplomatic way of putting it. "I think the reason why it's so hard to explain to you why I'm disinclined to warm up to the idea of vampirism is..." good start, thought Polly, now think of a reason, and try not to mangle grammar any further, "... is because, um, you don't quite know what I'm talking about when I say I miss being human."
"Which is supposed to tell me what, exactly?" asked Mal.
"Erm... what I said, really," said Polly. Damn, she was proud she had gotten that sentence out once. She was not going to reformulate.
"What you said is, actually, that I'm just not able to understand your inner turmoil," said Mal. "Excuse me, but that's a really vampire way of thinking. Are you going to write a sonnet about it?"
"You're making fun of me," said Polly.
"So?" said Mal. "You seem to believe vampirism comes with the social grace of a troll in a dwarf mine."
"Ha," said Polly. "It doesn't?"
"Uh," said Mal. "It... depends. Yes. What I'm trying to say here, Polly, is -"
Polly waited a few seconds, then nudged her. "Yeah?"
"What I'm trying to say here is, er," said Mal, "I do, in fact, try my best to understand your inner turmoil."
There was a pause in which Mal clearly chose not to elaborate.
"You're not getting it at all," said Polly finally. "It's difficult."
"I'm not going to argue that."
"Mal," said Polly, "fact is, I don't entirely feel like Polly anymore. I mean, I still have all the bits and then some, and in full working order, too, but I don't feel..." What, exactly? "I get so angry sometimes that I get scared of myself. I'm not in control, Mal. I mean, I -," a pause in which her thoughts reassembled, "damn, I kissed you for a drop of blood. That's hardly me now, is it?"
"If it's any help," said Mal, "my professional opinion would be that quite a lot of that anger is you. Vampires are the whiny type."
"Wow," said Polly, "I bet the vampires are glad you're not their official spokesperson."
Mal shrugged. "Well, I'm supposed to be a disgrace," she said lightly.
"Did someone tell you that?" asked Polly.
"Not in so many words, no."
"You mean -"
"I mean that a few people stopped talking to me. It wasn't hard to figure out."
There was a short stretch of silence between them. Polly always found silence to be difficult when there were only two. It talked too much. She shifted a little closer to Mal, for reasons of freezing.
"So, when are we leaving, then?" asked Polly, if only to change the topic. "Come to think of it, where are we going to?"
"Well," said Mal, "I don't think there's much of a point in staying in the mountains, on account of the snow situation, so we have to go lower. Tonight, I think, when the clothes are dry." She gave them a taxing look. "Dryer, at least."
Polly sighed. It seemed so logical. "What about the bloodsucking thing?" she asked.
"What about it?"
"There's bound to be some wood gatherers," said Polly. "You have coffee, well, sort of; what do I have?"
"Well," said Mal, "rats and such. And, er, me, should the need arise."
"Because that was such a good idea the first time?" said Polly.
"Polly," said Mal, "this is, ah, kind of hard to explain, but, you know, the transition thing I told you about? It won't always be rats. Um."
Gods, thought Polly. That. Just when she'd thought she'd figured something out -
"I'm gonna get cravings for... gods, Mal, I hate you so much right now."
"Anything human-shaped will do," said Mal. "And don't look at me like that. It may seem a bit strange, but it's logical."
"Strange? Try icky," said Polly.
Mal groaned. "What are you, five?"
Wow, thought Polly. Exhibit A: yes, Mal gets angry.
"Well, no," she said. "I'm nineteen, not going to grow older, and I'm scared to death."
It was then that she broke down, but, all things considered, Polly thought she did a pretty good job on not showing it. Only one or two sobs made it through the barricades, but those were enough to make Mal shift uneasily.
That's what the inner turmoil looked like: an infinity waiting to be filled, and there was only Polly to do the filling. Hard enough to lead a meaningful life if you only made it to sixty, or make that nineteen, 'cause Polly -
- should be dead.
She felt herself being pulled into a tight embrace by Mal, and hated herself for complying so easily, like a beaten dog running to the first source of comfort that offered itself. But there was nothing else here, only snow, only the two of them, and two meant trouble.
So trouble it was, then.
"You should have let me die," said Polly. She didn't care if she sounded dramatic, which was good, because she didn't. Sniffling, more like.
"I would have, if you'd just gone ahead and done it," said Mal.
"What?"
"I waited for an hour and you were still breathing," said Mal, "so I built a bloody fire in the middle of the bloody battlefield and made myself some bloody coffee and you were still breathing, and then I waited for the sun to set and you were still breathing, and then I sorta screamed at you to, you know, fucking die already."
"Charming," said Polly. "Good friends are so invaluable."
Mal shrugged. "I was a bit out of it at that point," she said. "And I think that was when you sorta woke up, only not really, as it has turned out, and I proceeded to have an existential conversation with the reaper man. Happy?"
"No," said Polly. "Not happy. You know I'm not happy. Damn, Mal, you had the nerve to demand your mercy killing, and yet you couldn't even -"
Should have gone and left me to the crows, she thought. Not as if I was conscious. Not as if -
Not as if I would ever have been capable of killing Mal, she thought. Not until now.
"Hey," said Mal softly, oddly comforting, and that was something which Polly hadn't thought her capable of. It did make her feel like one of the small furry animals that so easily took a fatal liking to Mal.
"Stop doing that," she said, her voice not shaking, not shaking at all.
"Doing what?"
"Hypnotising me," said Polly. "Or whatever it is you're doing."
"Oh, please," said Mal. "You're still yourself. Just a bit angrier maybe."
Which was, admittedly, a perspective Polly had not yet considered. Of course she's right, said a voice inside her, after all, she's only sucked out your blood, not your brain, and it's time to be a grown-up about things.
Yes, but she's sucked my blood!
"Realism is the last thing I need now," she growled. Come to think of it, what she really need was a hug, and come to think of that, she had a hug. Still not happy, but calm. Calmer. One breath at a time, one breath, and then another, and another. There.
"I know," whispered Mal, stroking her hair and being all impossible again. "I'm sorry."