Bayfield Cemetery

Morose Riddle walked the rows of headstones in a silence that was so common to his form. He walked with the slowness, the silence, and the ease in which he’d always possessed, the sadness that had always been there. He walked with the shadows, the way being a vampire had taught him to do. He was still even when he moved. But this was different, tonight was different. Tonight he moved with a different weight. The sadness had grown, become heavier, less bearable. Were it not for his parenting, for lack of better words, of Enyo and Jex, and his unexplainable love for them both, surely he would have ended his life tonight.

Enyo had hurt him, cut him as deeply into the heart as had his father the day he left him at the orphanage at such a young age. Enyo had been out of it when she’d said those things, but she’d said them nevertheless. He’d expected her of all people to respect him, to not speak of such things. But she had. And it had hurt.

And his mind was elsewhere as well. His thoughts for Zachary. His thoughts for Jex. His thoughts even for Enyo. He’d loved all three and he’d failed all three. He’d lost Zachary, and years since, he still hadn’t found his death record or a headstone. He’d not been there to protect Jex when he most needed it. And he’d left Enyo when she’d most needed it. Granted, he’d nursed both Jex and Enyo back to health, but that could not make up for his short coming, his failure.

Morose was moving through one of the many Bayfield Cemeteries, one he’d already been to twice. He loomed tall like a shadow. His build was slim, thin, bone showing though faintly muscled and even stronger beneath the surface with vampiric aid. He wore tonight a pair of black pants, hanging on his hips, strapped there with a leather belt. The waist fit but the legs were wide, hiding his feet even. The pants had zippers and chains, buckles and straps. They were lined in red. His shirt, in the summer heat, had been reduced to a red fishnet that was long sleeved but covered only his shoulders and collar bones and his neck all the way to the leather strap of a collar. His chest showed signs of healing wounds, looking to be a week old, scratches that were really only an hour old. Fingernails.

The two chest length strips of red bangs were both braided down half way, the rest hanging unbraided, his hair messily spiked on top. Once again, he carried a long stemed thorny red rose covered and sealed in clear wax to preserve it. His fingers had none of the common cuts he’d had as a mortal. His skin healed to quickly now. He wore makeup on his pale flesh. He’d not fed tonight at all, nor the previous two nights. And the night before that he’d fed from his sire, to make a point to her. His flesh was pale, nearly an off white color rather then pale peach. His eyes were heavily lined with red eyeliner, his lips painted red as well. The red of his clothing, hair, and makeup were brilliant to his skin.

Morose came to the last headstone, the same one he’d already seen twice. As he stood before it, touching the black onyx cross that hung around his neck, his face became strained. He dropped to his knees suddenly on top of the grave as if the will to stand had evaporated. He hadn’t fed, his body wasn’t alive. Having not fed had made his skin thin, cold, and it made him unable to shed tears. He sobbed though, a soft sound before he doubled over, squeezing the rose in his hand, and pressed his face to the headstone of a stranger.

Asher was dressed in quite a different fashion as the youngling of this century was clad. Asher preferred a pair of pants that were fashioned of suede and seemingly sewn onto his body. They, like the fledglings trousers, were black, yet much of them, to the mid-thigh was covered by the leather of soft boots, silver buckles fastened down the outer side of the thigh. His shirt revealed as much as the young one’s as well. But where the young one wore what was known to Asher as ‘fish net’, the elder vampire clothed his toned chest in sheer. The sheer material was black and tucked into the pants. The shirt buttoned to the neck where a triangular collar spread over his shoulders and ruffles of the same sheer fabric spilled down the center of his chest. The sleeves bagged to the wrist where they were cuffed tightly with white pearl buttons and more lace and ruffle spilled over his hands to nearly hide his fingertips.

Asher had fed, unlike the fledgling, and this made his skin a pale tone of natural flesh, his cheeks flushed softly pink and his lips stained a light and gentle red. His own hair was a spill of blond curls down his back and loosed to fall as they would.

He had sensed this other long before he had reached the cemetery and he had been hesitant upon entering the grounds where the permanently dead lay to rest for eternity or until a permit would be passed to disturb the graves only to build yet another formicated building on the land. The smell of the dead to his nose was putrid and sickening, yet the fledgling could bare it. He’d entered and found the young one lying at the head of a grave. He had entered because it was important to his goal. Asher wished to meet all of the vampires in this city, to gauge his rank, to understand their ways. He had done this exact thing thirty years previous this. Now he wished to know how many had moved on, how many new where there. And he had entered because the young one’s fiery hair was like none he’d seen before, bright and brilliant. Because he was pale and his flesh thin, because he wore a cross about his neck. He was intrigued.

Gently, Asher invaded his thoughts, understood that his saddening display of emotion was not for this man of whom lay beneath the soil but for himself and for others. He had moved in utter silence until he stood at the foot of the resting place and behind the fledgling. The vampire gently cleared his throat.

“Forgive me my interruption,” he uttered in his baritone sweetness. His accent was French and his tone gentle.

Morose nearly jumped out of his skin when someone behind him cleared their throat and began to speak. Becoming a vampire had increased his hearing, and his other senses, tenfold yet someone had snuck up on him without him knowing, without his senses alerting him. He hadn’t even felt that firmiluar sensation of being watched. Nothing. He’d had no warning at all.

He turned slowly, because he’s already been caught off guard and moving quickly would do no good at all, to face the other and he knew immediately that this golden-haired angel was nothing human. And in staring at him for only a brief second, he knew somehow that this non-human was a vampire. And somehow, in a way that he could not have explained, he knew that this was a very old vampire. Perhapes because he simply felt old then his own young sire. Or maybe it was his dress.

Whatever the case, Morse had the least bit of an idea of how exactly a vampire should greet an older vampire. Why should he even care? This Vampire who defied his own Sire, wished to be otherwise then what he was, why would he care how he should address this older being? Because he felt drawn to him, in the same way he felt utterly and helplessly drawn to Enyo, he felt drawn to this vampire.

He swallowed his sob that had been rising in his throat before the other had startled him and raised to his feet with some ease. He stood towering over the other by nine inches with the one inch of help from his boot.

“You’ve not interrupted anything important,” he managed to reply after a moment. “Can...?” he trailed off because his thoughts had not been like him. You don’t long to touch the hair of someone you’ve only just met. You do not ask them.

“Forgive me, monsieur, it had not been my intention to frighten you.” Asher had need to look upward to see into the face of this stranger from his own five feet seven inches. And he did so with a graceful exposure of a long, clean line of throat. Somehow, mostly hundreds of years of practice, he managed to look as though he were looking down on the other rather then up.

Asher stepped back from the immortal just one pace in order to bend at the waist, his blue eyes never leaving those blue eyes of the other, to bow in a graceful sweep of his arm, a florish to his hand. His blond curls fell around his face like a curtain of ringlets. And as he stood once more he pushed the curls back over his shoulder with a calculated swat of his hand.

“It was merely my intention to meet you.” And, as the other began to form a question but did not continue, Asher could feel the longing in which the other was feeling. He could feel the desire, but he did not wish to feed of it. Lust is much fuller from a human. “You may,” he replied softly.

There was something intriguing about this one, so very different from the rest. His faith, a faith that most abandon when they’ve been given the gift of immortalaity but this one still believed. Asher himself was not certain he believed in much but it was terribly refreshing to find someone who did.

“What may I call you?”


OOC: Forgive me, the internet here is confused.

((it's alright))

It was strange, to be looked up at by this one, even though Morose was used to it. He was used to tower over the majority of the population, but this older vampire made him feel as if he were smaller when really it was he who was looking down and the older who was looking up.

Morose watched the other bow and frowned. He truly had no idea of what he should do in this situation. The other was French, or at least his accent was. He was old, but how Morose knew, he didn’t really know. He could just simply feel that beside this one, Enyo was young. But then, he’d never asked Enyo how old she was either. For all he knew she could be thirty of three hundred. Whatever her age, this one was older. Maybe it was the style of dress, with the flowing clothing and ruffles, though it seemed modernized a little by the sheer fabric and the buckles in the boot. And this one had bowed to him, that in itself was an old gesture.

And when the other bowed, Morose was at a lost to what he should do. Should he bow to because the other had? Or should he try to shake his hand? Instead, Morose simply stood there as the other bowed, feeling clumsy and gangly next to this other’s flourishing movements. He just stood there and felt stupid. It isn’t often that he doesn’t know what to do.

“Meet me? Why?” His voice had softened, quieted because the fear was gone. The other was a much older vampire, it’s only sensible that he was able to sneak up on him without detection. Even if he claimed he hadn’t meant to sneak.

You may

Upon hearing this, Morose stepped forward, before he could even stop himself, and extended his hand. But here he couldn’t stop himself but he did hesitate. He reached outward and brushed his fingertips against one of the other’s curls. And then he wound his fingers through it.

“Morose Riddle.” He answered almost mechanically.

Asher’s hair, beneath Morose’s touch, would be light and thick, thicker even then it had been in life. His hair would be smooth and silken and Morose’s fingers would devid the curl and it would simply curl around his fingers. Asher did not move, nor remove his eyes from the young one’s face. He simply allowed him to touch, to feel. Even as old as he was, he’d not changed even the slightest since the day he had been made. And neither had Morose.

“Morose? Such a sad name. Who dubbed you so?” The vampire allowed his tricks to slide slowly away, causing him too look as short as he truly was, though this height had been fairly tall in his own time. But the presence, the sense that he was something strong, something graceful, this did not slide away with the illusion. Because Asher was indeed old, and with age came strength and knowledge. With age came grace and power.

His pale skin of his face was dark and hot against the pale hand in his hair, warm with a young man’s blood, Gabriel’s blood. He turned his head in the slightest of movements, putting his rosy cheek against Morose’s pale wrist and feeling to cold of his flesh. “I beg of you, walk with me. Grace me with your presence away from the stench of decay, the foulness of this place.”

“An orphanage. My name has been changed many times. I don’t think that I know my real one.” Why was he telling this stranger this? It was that Asher did not feel as much like a stranger to him as mortal’s did. When he encountered mortals, aside from Jex, he felt outcast and unknown. But this vampire, only the second of whom he’d met that was not his sire, knew what he was, was what he was.

You’d think that because Morose doesn’t like what he is, he wouldn’t like feeling like the same thing to another monster. You’d think he wouldn’t want to feel familiar with another vampire. But he felt drawn to him rather then repelled by what he was in the way that he felt need for Enyo. How he craved to be with her he felt that same craving, or something similar to it, to be beside this man. This immortal.

Grace me with your presence away from the stench of decay

It was true, to his sensitive nose, the smell of decay was strong where a human could hardly smell it. But he’d become used to it, not that he’d say it smelled good, it simply didn’t make him feel sick anymore. But it seemed it did make this other uncomfortable.

“I’m not sure I’d call it gracing you but I would like to and I will.” Morose felt the warmth, knew the other fed. He scowled. This vampire had probably fed from a human? What woman would never see her child again? Or child to never see their parent because he’d needed to feed? He took his hand away from the other’s face and lowered it to his side. “You know my name. What’s yours?”

“I was an orphan as well, mon ami. Though, my name, it has always been the same, unchanged by time or by my owner.” He offered his arm to the young vampire as he agreed to accompany him from the cemetery. It was an outdated gesture but Asher had the ability and grace to make it natural and modern.

“No, truly, Morose, you would be gracing me with your presence.” He paused briefly to look the vampire over once more in a silent calculation. “Asher. Jean-Asher Nicolas was the name given. But you will find that with a great passage of time, your name will quickly become tedious.” He smiled gently at this, a perfect and beautiful smile. He is a man one would call beautiful before hansom. But it is very masculine.

OOC: and I must be leaving. Ash says he misses you, Emmyar.

((I miss you guys too))

By his owner? Had this vampire, Asher, been a slave or a servant? How long ago had this been that people were still owned by others, still just property?

The arm was offered and again for a moment, Morose wasn’t sure exactly what he should do, though this time is was obvious what he was expected to do. After a moments consideration, he lifted his arm and, because he was taller, allowed Asher to loop his arm through his.

“Asher.” He repeated the name, his lips forming the word and he frowned. The sadness in his eyes never left and he didn’t smile to return Asher’s smile. But how beautiful that smile was. “It’s a beautiful name.” They were moving now, out of the cemetery, and Morose lay his red rose on a headstone in passing. He was brimming now with questions. If this vampire was older then Enyo even, maybe he could answer some of the questions that Enyo couldn’t.

Asher did slide his arm through Morose’s and began to walk with him. But Asher didn’t seem to walk as much as he seemed to flow across the ground. It seemed his feet scarcly touched the ground even as they stepped from the cemetery gates and onto the sidewalk. His hand was light on Morose’s sleeve, just barely a touch to it, he was warm on the cold arm.

“I thank you, your compliment is gracious.” He allowed a silence to come between them and let it linger in a way that seemed natural to his being. He looked serene and calm and as the placed more distance between themselves and the cemetery, the scent of decay and death faded further. And finally Asher turned to look at the young vampire of whom his arm was intertwined. “Ask,” he said gently. “You have questions. You’ve only to ask, and it shall be given you.” His voice was urging and melodic. The young one simply brimmed with curiosity and he in turn was becoming intrigued and curious of the young one.

He felt strange, walking with a man on his arm, or anyone on his arm for that matter. It wasn’t even that Asher was a man, it was the entire strangeness of the situation. The warmth of the other’s arm reminded him that this was a vampire who had fed. The one thing that Morose worked the hardest at not doing, as can be seen from his pale flesh and empty body.

And then the silence. Morose had always been a solitary creature, as a human first and then as a vampire. He’d always liked his silence and solitude, always had it until Zachary, and then Jex and Enyo. They all spoke and he replied, they gave him conversation and company. Silence with another present was always awkward and heavy. But this silence, Asher was silent, and he remained silent. It filled between them and it wasn’t uncomfortable. Somehow it seemed natural to be silent with Asher. As if Asher were giving him the pleasure of it.

And then the other broke the silence. ask and it shall be given to you. Morose’s blue eyes turned onto the pale blue eyes watching him. He swallowed, though he didn’t need too. His other fingers came up and touched his cross that lay flat to his chest. “seek and ye shall find, Knock and it shall be opened unto you.” He mumbled softly. His eyes lingered on the vampires and his tongue came out to lick his pale lips. “You are religious?”

As Morose continued the quote from the book of Matthew 7, he nodded his head as if approving.

“No, Morose. Not in many years have I been a man of God or of the Devil.” Asher paused to let his eyes be lingered in, and then he began to move once more, gliding over the gray sidewalk, two men for an evening stroll through the city. And what a pair they made! A man dressed in elegant and out dated clothing and a man modernized and dark. Two beautiful figures of inhuman nature.

“ But I was born into a time in which ever natural occurrence was explained by religion, was an act of god. And each deformed child or natural disaster a punishment from the Father. I was once religious.” There was a hint of longing in his voice at that moment. “It was many, many years ago I last believed in anything.”

“I see,” and he sounded disappointed. For just one moment he’d had hope that he wasn’t the only religious vampire, he wasn’t the only one that still believed. But now he’d been deflated. And more so in finding that Asher had once been religious. He didn’t want to think that as time passed he would become less and less religious.

Indeed, a couple they did make, tall and short, blond and red, fed and unfed, warm and cold. But somehow they both seemed gothic, Morose in the form of a more current meaning of the word, with his chains and makeup, and Asher in the old, elegant meaning with his ruffled shirt and pearl buttons.

“You said ‘owner’. What did you mean?” He frowned and shook his head. “How old are you? You’re older then my maker, I can feel it. But I don’t understand how.” And it confused him.

“Do not be disappointed Morose, in time, you personally will understand why many of us cease to believe. We have eternity at our fingertips, we are immortal. Nothing short of fire, sunlight, and dismemberment can bring us to an end. What is God to a being like us? What is the devil to something that lives in the night as we do, who are immortal as we are?” He watched Morose’s fingers on his cross then and though he was not smiling, he did look relaxed. “It is refreshing, truly, to be in your presence. You believe with all of your heart.”

After a moment, Asher answered Morose’s question, leading him around the corner. The city was so lovely at night, and people’s eyes were drawn to the pair. “I did say owner, didn’t I,” He seemed to think for a moment. “I was the whipping boy to a family. Sold at a young age because we had no money. My mother, she knew that I would have clothing and food in an aristocratic families care. And so she gave me up.” He paused and once more let silence filter between them. “I am six hundred and eighty, give or take a few years.”

He looked on Morose’s youthful face, much as his was young, Morose seemed a mere child to him. And not only in terms of years as a vampire. “I was sired at twenty-seven. But you, your so much younger. What is your age and when were you made?”

Morose’s heart sank and he could not help but become overwhelmed with the feeling of despair. He really hadn’t wanted to understand, he really didn’t want to loose his faith. If he was going to live for eternity, he wanted at least to keep his religion, his faith, something to believe in for that long.

“God will always be there, watching over everything. Even the damned. We are his creatures too.” He shook his head, shaking away a lingering feeling that he’d felt three nights ago with Enyo. The night that he’d thought about his Religion, doubted. What if there is not heaven and hell, or what if we cannot die, or if we do we directly are cast to hell?

Asher’s answer had been unexpected. He’d asked and honestly expected to be told some story about a slavehood, or a man falling into debt and becoming a servant. But a whipping boy? It shot pain in his heart to think that this man had been, as a child, beaten for another child’s wrong-doing. He didn’t comment.

“I was nineteen when she made me this.” This monster that I’ve become. There was bitterness in his voice because Morose often tried to avoid this subject of being turned. “Now I’m twenty years old.”

Oh but asher! He was nearly seven hundred years! It was overwhelming and frightening and exciting at the same time! Here he was, standing here speaking to a man that has been alive for nearly eight lifespans. And how much history he must have seen! So we truely do live forever! Or at least to seven hundred. How frightening but somehow Morose found it exhilerating.

“Do you truly believe that?” Asher did not think that he did. “Morose,” he paused and turned, raised a hand and put the back of his fingers to Morose’s cheek, running it gently down the clean line of the young one’s jaw. “Sweet young one, we are not his creatures, we are the creatures of our makers, and they of their makers. We are a race separate from man and separate from God.”

He pressed his hand once more against the side of Morose’s face. “You were just a child. It was once not allowed to make someone so young to be a vampire. It was against to the vampire laws to make anyone who was younger then the age of legal drinking. And it was severe punishment. For what reasons were you made?”

He stopped when Asher paused and he turned towards Asher the way that Asher had turned towards him. He began to bend his head towards the hand on his cheek but stopped himself there. He steeled himself for a strong argument but just before he said that he did believe that he paused again. “I...” he dropped his eyes to the sidewalk. “I don’t...” he shook his head sadly and his bangs slide forward to his face, one of the braids was coming undone and hung in his face covering one eye. “I just don’t know anymore.”

He looked up, met Asher’s eyes and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Is it wrong? For me to want to believe? For a vampire to love God?” The hand pressed to his face again as he was told he’d been a child.

“I was old enough to live alone, I wasn’t a child. In this country, nineteen is the legal drinking age.” He closed his eyes and pressed his face into the hand on his cheek. Then he pulled his face away defiantly and turned his face to look down the street, leaning back against the wall of a building. “I can’t believe it. That vampires ever had laws. Beastly things.”

Made? Reason? “Because she was lonely. Her sire left her and she was alone.” His voice had softened and much of the sadness flooded back into his voice. Enyo had hurt him, but he still loved her, very much. “She followed me and I discovered her. Talked to me. I’d never have guessed she was a monster. She bit me...” pause to reflect. “The third time she met me?” He trailed off. Returned his gaze to Asher. “Why were you made?”

Upon seeing the despair in Morose as he admitted that he did not know, and knowing well that he longed to continue his belief, Asher was filled with emotion. It was not regret. He’d come to learn not to regret anything that he’s ever done. It brings despair in the amount that this poor fledgling was feeling it. But he touched Morose’s cheek even after the young one turned his head from him. “Don’t fret. Believe what you will and for so long as you will. There is no wrong in faith, even among creatures of darkness.’

“I understand her loneliness. Many times I’ve found myself alone and it swallowed my heart each time in misery. But you did not give consent to being made, did you?” This Asher was certain of, because Morose was so very bitter to what he was. And he was so young in his years, both as mortal and as immortal. To be so jaded so young, it was a terrible thing. “I was made by a woman who found me on the street. I was made in the year 1349, I had fallen ill to the black death and a woman offered me life. I took it.”

Asher smiled slowly, a spread of beauty creeping slowly across his lips. And then he laughed softly. It was a ringing sound, calculated and practiced, a sound that could run chills down ones back and send warmth to the heart. “Beastly things?” And his accent had thickened in his humor to give his voice a light lilt that it had lacked before. “Mon ami, do you forget that you are one of us beastly things? We are not monsters, mon amour. Simply a species of immortal, thriving to live. What is so beastly?”

His humor faded slowly then, leaking from his voice, though the amusement remained shining in his light blue eyes like crystal. The vampire reached up and began to braid back Morose’s bang, braiding it halfway to match the other and push it back from his face.

Morose let him braid his bangs back again and watched his hands as he did so, mostly so that he did not have to look at his face. It was a relief to know at least that someone so much older then him did not disapprove of his belief and faith. At least, if Asher was older, he could give Morose good council as he was. But he still felt despair because he still was so confused in his faith at this point in time.

“You were...alive for the plague.” It was a statement not a question. He sounded distant for a moment and his eyes were wide on Asher. “The history you must have seen in your life!” He sounded wondered. Amazed. Immortality frightened him in the religious aspect of his life, but to hear of it, to speak of the history, it excited him, thrilled every part of him.

Mon ami, do you forget that you are one of us beastly things?

“Believe me,” he replied as the braid was pushed back from his eyes. He reached up and tucked it back behind his ear at that point, brushing Asher’s hand from his hair. He wondered briefly if he angered this elder what would happen. Would Asher destroy him? He was much more powerful then Morose, even at his weakest. Morose had expected to feel anger at Asher’s laughing at him, but he did not. His words only came sadly. “I could not forget that I am a this.” He wanted to push Asher away now, return to the cemetery, as he reminded himself that Asher had fed, that they were blood sucking fang faced monsters. And for a moment he had fooled himself that they were just a pair of men enjoying an evening stroll.

We are not monsters, mon amour. Simply a species of immortal, thriving to live. What is so beastly?

“Not Monsters?” He nearly shouted this, interrupting Asher. He remembered himself and hushed until Asher was through speaking. “Not monsters! Of course we are monsters! Do you forget? We need blood to feed our immortality! We kill! We bath in human blood but we are not monsters?!”

“Yes. I was alive, unfortunately, for the Black Death. It was not pleasant.” He allowed another smile to grace his lips. “Yes, the history I have seen. There were magnificent moments, moments where the sheer thought to be alive at that precise time was sheer ecstasy. And sometimes it is not. It is a glorious thing, to watch the world change.”

He allowed Morose to pull his face from his hand now. He allowed the fledgling a moment to let his own words sink in, the silence to build between them. And then after a few moments, he crossed his arms over his chest and turned his head just slightly to the side to peer up into Morose’s sad eyes.

“No, mon ami,” he whispered the words, so low and gentle that they would go unheard to all others save the young one in front of him. “I believe it is you who forget. You forget that you do not drink from a human, that you do not kill. And you forget that there are other ways, aside from killing.” Asher raised his voice just slightly then, folding his hands in front of himself. “There are those who are monsters, who kill because the enjoy it and because they can. But there are other ways, Morose.” And he turned, offering his arm once more to Morose.

“Take myself, for example. I feed nightly, but I’ve not killed by feeding in nearly two centuries.” Nothing saying that this elegant vampire did not commit a kill anymore, he simply did not kill when he fed. “I’ve fed from willing humans and willing creatures. Just tonight I fed from Gabriel, a werepanther who is more then willing to allow me to feed. And he is still alive. Tell me, Mon Amour, what is so very monstrous from feeding of those who are willing. They do not die.”

Morose listened, and when Asher offered his arm, he just stared at it until Asher’s explanation was through. And still he just looked at Asher. He’d known that there were other ways to feed, he himself had said that to Enyo when he’d begun to feed from a slughterhouse. Jex had said it to him before even that. But for some reason, he’d never thought of himself as something other then monstrous.

Yet, it was true, he was not killing when he fed from a bucket of cows blood, in fact, he was putting to use what the factory would have just thrown away. And Asher was not killing when he fed of this werepanther Gabriel that he spoke of. And he nore Enyo had killed that woman mage. That was not evil.

But then, he recalled having killed a man. He recalled biting Jex. And he recalled his arousal, shameless as it was to him, when he’d bitten all three, Jex, the man, and the woman mage. “You are right. I’ve forgotten. I let myself think it was that it was evil was the reason I shunned it.” He was still simply staring at Asher, but his scowl had slid from his face and was replaced by confusion.

“I think of us as monsters because we can not die, but I love that we can’t. And I think of us as evil because we are damned creatures. But I could not bring myself to feed on a person.” He shook his head. “I don’t think I can ever again. I’ve killed once, and it was terrible. I’ve nearly killed my best friend. I can’t do it.” He scowled again. “I don’t know anymore.”

“And who said that we were damned?” His voice remained light and sweet. “No doubt you read this in a mortal written book? No book you find will be genuinly written by a vampire, at least, not in a mortal's circulation. That too is something many of us try to hide, our existance. It is best for mortals to believe us fiction. Morose, none of us can say if we are damned or not damned. Man can not even say if they are damned or not damned. A man won’t know if he will die and simply cease to be or if he will die and go to eternal life or damnation until it happens. And once it does, he can not come back and tell the rest of us what really does happen. It is impossible to know. As much for us as for a mortal man.”

He lowered his arm as he noted that the young vampire was not taking his arm and seemed not to wish to move. He folded his hands in front of himself once more. Leaning forward as if to emphasize a point, he began once again to speak gently. “No one is making you to feed of a human, Morose. No one is going to make you change your ways. But here me this,” he paused, reached out and placed a warm hand to Morose’s cold, white cheek. “You are not a monster, even less so then myself. You must feed. You can not go on like this, allowing yourself no privilege of nightly nourishment.”

He turned his hand slowly against Morose’s cheek until his wrist brushed the fledgling’s lips, then his palm and finally his fingertips. He brought his hand down and unfastened the pearl button, pushing back the ruffles of his sleeve from a perfect and lovely wrist. He did not offer it to the young vampire yet, but held his arm near to his own body, where, should Morose refuse, he would simply button the pearl and leave the subject be. “If I offer will you take? With the knowledge that this is not human blood but that of a lycanthrope who willingly gave?”

Some reason, Morose felt earnestly releaived that this vampire, this Asher was telling him that he was not a monster. That this vampire reminded Morose that no man nor creature could ever know what God’s judgment on them was told Morose that Asher was indeed smart. Morose himself had always believed that no one could know what their judgment would be until their judgment was passed. How could he have forgotten so easily? Was his faith slipping?

No. It was because with the notion of immortality, it was hard to think ‘I will be judged when I die’. Because now he had to think ‘if I die’. The entire thought of never dieing was frightening and exhilarating, but it was slowly making him crazy.

The wrist was run over his lips and he quivered faintly. It’s been three days since he’d fed from Enyo, the mage blood that had recently frazzled him and thrown him off of his usual balance. He turned his head to the side, away from Asher, but his blue eyes watched from the corner when Asher unfastened his sleeve and pulled it back. His wrist was beautiful, like the rest of him, and Morose could see every vein, hear the blood flowing now that he was paying attention to it.

He shook his head. “I can’t.” Morose would not feed from Asher, vampire or not, for fear of that arousal that he got from taking blood from a body. He could hear Enyo’s taunting voice in his mind. You’ve got enough control to stay down my ass! I saw you the night you fed from that woman! Or have you forgotten the stiff prick in your pants! I haven’t! His face twisted and he closed his eyes and reached out to push away Asher’s wrist, even though Asher hadn’t put it near him. “I can’t.” His voice was strained.

Asher stepped back away from Morose gracefully when the younger one pushed his hands away. “What is it Morose?” Asher asked gently. “What is it that makes you hate this so? What is it that causes you this pain?”

He had stepped back to grant the fledgling the space he required to recover himself from this sudden hurt that he seemed to be feeling. Asher stood in silence, he once again allowed the silence to filter between them. He refastened the pearl button around his slender wrist and folded his hands once more. And then he grew still in the silence, like a beautiful carving, so very human-like, but far from it.

As before, to Asher, the silence was not suffocating nor was it awkward. It simply felt right, as if silence was what he wanted from company in the same way that conversation is what a mortal wanted from their company.

Morose had actually expected different. He’d expected Asher to fight him, to push the wrist to him, to pressure him into feeding from him. Even though Morose had no reason to think that and Asher had made no indication that he was going to force Morose into anything that he was not willing to do.

He opened his eyes and stared at Asher through the silence, thinking the question through his mind, even though he knew the answers. They were embarrassing and really he didn’t want to say out loud that he got aroused by feeding from a body rather then a barrel.

“I just can’t.” Yes...we’ve covered that Morose. He watched Asher stand back away from him. No pressure. And the silence, there it was again, the silence that he was comfortable with in the company of another. He frowned slightly. “I...like...” he turned his eyes from Asher again.

“You like to feed,” Asher finished for the young vampire. “And you feel ashamed that you like it?” he guessed the reason that Morose so terribly hated to feed. It should come as no surprise to the older of the two creatures that the younger, in such religious turmoil and longing, should find this natural attraction to feeding as terrible. Asher had been attracted to feeding when he’d been young as well. And so had his companion in those times. And as did his fledglings of his own making.

“Worry not, mon amour,” he said lightly. He did not laugh nor mock Morose in this. “You are no different then all of the rest. Your soul will not be damned for that which is in your nature.”

“How can you know that?” He asked, then leaned his head back against the wall behind him and closed his eyes again. “How can you know that it won’t damn me? You yourself said that one can’t know whether or not they will be damned until the day of their judgment. You yourself said it’s impossible to know, yet now your telling me that I won’t?”

He scowled through his confusion and looked down at Asher again. He looked so sure and so honest. Morose found himself wanting to believe this other, to be held and comforted in a way that he would never ask Jex or Enyo to do. He would not ask them to because he didn’t want to show them, who he tried so hard to take care of, that he needed the comfort. And here Asher stood, so perfect and confident, and seeing his weakness without judging him. He’d broken down in front of Jex before and he’d felt terrible, like a father crying in front of a child. And he’d broken in front of Enyo before and he’d felt weak and venerable.

He sighed and perhaps he was smiling just so faintly. “You are correct, I can not tell you that you are not damned. But I can tell you that it is natural. To love to feed. It is natural to you now, to become,” here he paused, attempting to find a softer word then ‘aroused’ for he feared that the word ‘arouse’ may cause Morose more embarrassment, though this was exactly what it was. ‘Arousal’. “excited when you are feeding. It means nothing more then that and it does not make you terrible. It makes you like to your species.”

He risked, at that moment, to take a step inward to Morose, to touch the vampires arm briefly and then to offer his arm again, to lead him once more to walk through the city, two lovely creatures.

Morose was once again reduced to simply staring at Asher. Normal? There was nothing normal about enjoying drinking blood from a person’s body! But then, Morose realized, this was the remainder of what was human about him. Of course it was normal, to a vampire. And not to a human. Here, he realized, was where his problems lay, he was still so very human. Eventually, he would need to compromise with himself or his two halves, his two ways of existing were going to be the end of him.

He let Asher touch his arm, and then he took the offered arm and they began to walk again. Two beautiful creatures.

“Am I too human?”

“Far from it.” Asher moved the sidewalk again, flowing over it, urging Morose through the city. “Far from it, sweet child. You cling to your mortality with all of your soul. And it is amazing and wonderful. It is a rarity in our kind. Many do not pause to reflect upon what immortality would truly mean. Your every waking breath seems spent to understand it.”

He paused here in his words, as if in thought. And as they walked he fell into a deeper silence then before. This silence seemed his, as if it personally belonged to him and Morose was excluded from it. Until finally he spoke, it seemed he’d left his physical body entirely and that he’d become nothing but an animated corpse to which had no soul, he’d retreated so far into himself. Or rather, it seemed that his entire body had become a place of contemplation, a sanctuary. It was as if his body had become part of his mind and all of it was at a peacefully slow contemplation.

And when he spoke, he spoke as if he truly had been given peace by this.

“You are not to human, though I fear that if you do not become more vampire in your ways, you very well may perish.”

Again he felt a mild relief now that he knew a vampire so old did not think that he was too human. If it was ‘amazing’ and ‘wonderful’ to something so old, surely it couldn’t be terrible right? And he wondered for a moment if Enyo thought that he was too human. It was, after all, the reason they tended to fight so often and cause each other so much pain, because Morose was so very human in the heart. So rebellious against what she was used to.

And then Asher grew quiet and Morose was glad for the comfortable silence again. But it didn’t come. It was comfortable, he didn’t need conversation in Asher’s silence, but this was different. It seemed that he had been closed off and that Asher was...well...somewhere else. Not home. And then he spoke.

Morose was amazed, and it showed in his face that he was fascinated by Asher’s silence, his way of thinking. How could he become so gone to the world? Morose had never tried. Morose had learned to make others aware of him. To make his presence frightening and suffocating, but not to make himself empty and...gone.

But Asher’s words startled him. “I thought that only the sun and fire could kill us.”

Asher turned his blue eyes to Morose again.

“They are the only things that can directly kill us. But we can die in other ways, and each of us have our own...abilities” his eyes returned to the path along the street side. “I have seen many die. For example, dead blood can kill most of us, and so can beheading. But that is not what I speak of.”

He was silent again, for such a length of time that it seemed perhaps that he was not going to answer at all. This was not a retreat into his body, however. This was the silence of simply not speaking. And once again, his voice flowed from the silence lightly. “What I speak of, Morose, is much like willing yourself to death. I have never seen it happen, and I have never seen it proven that we can do it at all. But it is one of the very few things I believe in.”

“Willing our self to death?”

Morose sounded shocked and curious. As for dead blood and beheading, he’d read of it before but it was interesting to have a vampire, older then he and his sire, to confirm it. Asher’s probably seen such things happen. Morose nearly grimaced at the thought of witnessing a beheading or watching a vampire die from dead blood.

“How do you mean?” He asked. “How is it possible? Is it like dieing from a broken heart?” Don’t knock it. It’s happened. People whose spouse died and a half a year later they die of absolutely no findable cause. And while he’s thinking about it, he’d only just asked Enyo a few days ago, “Why does sunlight hurt us? Why can’t we walk in it?”

“Yes, Willing ourselves to death. It’s not been proven really. Times change, and many vampires can not cope. That is why I believe it is difficult to find very many vampires beyond five hundred years, but that is only my thought. Some cannot cope with the change in time and they retreat from it rather then change with it. They discontinue hunting and another must do it for them. They become frail and slowly become ugly next to a vampires beauty.” He turned his head to the side now, to watch Morose for his reaction. “We think that vampires will themselves to death because some never see them again. There is no other explanation for it.”

Asher himself had tried to find vampires that had disappeared too, only to find a dead end with all of his searching. Willing to die was absolutely the only thing one could believe. “But then,” he added, “for all we know they are simply walking into sunlight and this is why we can not find a body or evidence of a death. And I fear that if you do not become a little more like a vampire, you may end yourself as well. If you do not feed more often.”

His shoulder rolled into a shrug then. “I do not know a vampire who can answer that question either. Though I long to know.” He replied. And then he smiled. “There are some who say that sunlight will not kill us, it will simply render us blind, but I know none who have been brave enough to test this theory.”

“You think I would do that to myself?” He asked, but he didn’t feel as outraged as he sounded. He looked at the sidewalk as they walked. “I have...entertained the thoughts before actually. But I wouldn’t. I have people I can’t leave, two. They depend on me.” It’s the only reason he didn’t kill himself, Jex had asked him not to, worked hard to find a way around everything. The heavy curtains so that they could still share an apartment, working at the hospital in case Morose needed blood from the blood banks. He couldn’t leave Jex and Enyo.

He smiled when Asher talked about vampires who believed in a theory but wouldn’t test it. “I bet they wouldn’t.” He said. His smile was charming, didn’t really reach his eyes but it was honest. It’s the first time he’s smiled in a while. “And you? What do you believe? That it kills us or blinds us?”

“I do not know you well enough, in all honesty, to say if I think that you would do such a thing or you would not.” He felt, then, the faintest of pulling, as if something were tugging at the back of his naval. The elder vampire knew well that he had the ability to walk through dusk entirely and even remain aware for an hour after the sun rise, but he did not know all of Morose’s abilities. “Two you care for? And who, may I ask, are these two that are in need of you?”

He walked a moment, choosing his words as he always did with care. “I believe that the sun will destroy us. I do not know how and I do not know why but I do know that no vampire would have begun that warning had it not been at least witnessed to have happened in at least one case.”

Morose, too, could feel the awareness in his mind, sending it through his whole body like a shiver, of the coming morning. “My sire and my friend.” He replied. Then he stopped and wondered if perhaps telling this vampire that he took care of his sire was a good or bad idea, but for some reason, he felt he trusted Asher. If he felt attracted to him in the way he felt drawn to Enyo, he couldn’t be bad right? But Morose is smart enough to wonder if it would be like this with every vampire, since Asher was the first that he’d met.

“I’d be afraid of what my friend would do, or what would happen to him, if I killed myself. I…suggested dieing when I was turned and he protested it.” He shook his head at himself then. “The suns coming up soon,” as if he thought for even a brief moment that the other did not know that.

“I see.” He turned yet another corner in their stroll. “I never had anyone when I was turned. I did not want to return to my mother and my master’s family had died.” He grew silent again and only nodded when the other commented that the sun would be rising soon. And finally, after some time, he turned to the other and asked him, “May I meet you again? You are refreshing for one such as I. And in truth, I sense we could have many wonderful conversations together and share many long silences if undisturbed.”

Morose let the silence sink in, fill any space that was between them, though truthfully, he didn’t feel too very distant to this man...vampire. He felt a little bit of pity for Asher that he hadn’t had family or friends at the end. But then he thought about that. No. He didn’t pity Asher. Asher had been able to leave his home and do as he pleased as an immortal. He’d not had to take care of two others, he’d not had to worry at all about what if someone killed his best mortal friend?

“I would like that,” he admitted to Asher, after a long moment of his own silence. “You’re the second vampire besides my sire that I’ve met but you’re the first of all three to have any answers to my questions.”

“Then if you would like that, so would I. It is my age, Morose, that gives me answers that others do not. And many of those only educated and long thought on guesses. I can only answer honestly a small number of your questions. But I can guess at much of what you may ask me as best I can.” He stopped walking then and turned to Morose once more. “I live towards the north of the city and I think that I may have need to run if I wish to reach my home by sunrise now. It is the Nicolas Manor. If you ever have need of my assistance, or simply wish for the company, then someone there will tell you where you can find me.”

Asher took Morose’s cold hand into his own and raised it to his lips, pressing a gently kiss to the back of the taller, younger vampire’s knuckles, his blue gaze never left the blue eyes of the younger. “It’s been a great pleasure, Morose Riddle.”