Handle With Care

Shards of Stone and Hot Chocolate

Nimr on the top

The clock on the nightstand read 23:42. If I wanted to leave, I would have to be forced to wait a while until everyone was asleep. Vampires were nocturnal creatures from what I had heard. So, to pass the time, and since I wasn't tired like I had claimed to be earlier, I decided to have a look at my wounds.

In the room, aside from the bed and the nightstand, there was a dresser with a mirror mounted on the wall above it. I stood before it, my eyes roaming over my reflection. My dark brown hair was a mess, disheveled all over the place like I had just walked through a particularly rough wind storm. There was even a twig buried among the strands, and I quickly plucked it out while I attempted to smooth my hair down. My efforts didn't amount to much, so I left it, reluctantly.

Moving on from that, I saw my cheeks had grown a little more hollow than I last remembered, enunciating my cheekbones, and the area under my eyes were shaded a dark black due to my troubled sleeping habits. I looked sickly, as if I hadn't eaten in days, which was a tad truer than not... it made sense why Elric had suggested on me eating something earlier.

I couldn't help but wonder, still, why they seemed to care as much as they did. We were two unmistakably different species, and in most cases, we would undoubtedly be enemies. But, for a strange reason, I felt as though they were different than the vampires told to me in stories. Those vampires had appeared ruthless, maliciously relentless, and even a little power-hungry. These vampires, however, didn't seem anything like that, and it was quite confusing.

When I quickly shifted my attention back to the mirror, I caught the glimpse of a makeshift necklace hanging around my neck, three jagged and roughly cut pieces of stone dangling on the thin string that wrapped around each of them tightly, and I felt my heart constrict ever so painfully in my chest at the sight. How could I have possibly forgotten to check if that was still there after everything that had happened? That necklace was such an important and dear thing to me, and yet I had hardly remembered to make sure it was still there when I first woke in this house. How was it even possible for it to still be there after everything that had happened?

I felt as if an enormous weight had suddenly been dumped on me, like stepping under a raging waterfall. An enormous weight of shock and self-hatred. My hand immediately reached up and enclosed around the stones, grasping them tight, as if I was willing myself to believe that they were, indeed, still there.

How could you? How could you have nearly forgotten your only connection with them?

No, distract yourself, Ryder.

My eyelids flickering, I forced my view away from the necklace, and instead focused on the bandages that covered nearly my entire torso, and remembering why I was standing in front of the mirror to begin with, I reached up to start undoing them. Slowly, I unwound the gauze, revealing the scarcely-tanned skin underneath. My front was perfectly fine, but I was more worried as to what my backside had in store. Unwrapping the rest of the bindings, and setting them atop the dresser, I took a deep breath to steady myself, and to rid of any mild shock left over from my previous find. Once I felt calmed enough, I turned, revealing my left side, and I craned my neck to get a better look. My eyes widened at the sight they were met with.

The first of the injuries that I noticed were two bullet holes, both a grotesquely dark red with charred blackened flesh rimming the edges, revealing the awful effects that the silver had inflicted upon them. One was near the top of my back, where the bullet lodged in my shoulder blade used to reside. The second was a little lower, just barely missing the shoulder blade and instead showing where the bullet stuck between my ribs used to be. Of course, that wasn't all that had shocked me.