Vampiric Interdiction

[46] Missing

She instinctively reached up to tap a piece of twist metal that hung from a string of gold on her neck. He had made it for her almost half a century ago but it still glimmered like new, as if she had never used it, and she probably hadn’t. It reminded Villahr of a flattened pretzel with the way it looped around in parallels on either side, but it looked a lot more like a four-leaf clover that had lost half its luck as it was missing two of it’s “leaves.”

It glittered in the light that came in through the window which centred the culneria a few feet from Panique. It stretched right upwards and straight across the centre of the ceiling and to the other side, creating a skylight that looked almost accidental, like someone had ripped away a perfectly long strip of what would have been lath and plaster, revealing the world above. It wasn’t glassed in, so Villahr could feel the outside air on his face when he looked up, but there was clearly something blocking creatures and insects from entering as several birds were perched above in the open space, their wings clamped to their sides, seemingly floating in mid-air.

The long braid down Panique’s head swung back and forth a bit as Villahr began to sway with her trapped in his arms. He stopped when he nearly knocked over a pitcher of milk on the counter that Panique had been using. The white liquid would have spilled everywhere were it not currently encased in what looked like a coaster with a miniature railing.

This reminded Villahr of a sport the humans used to play involving a heavy ball with holes in it. The object was to roll it down a lane and knock over the skinny pins at the end; the lanes sometimes had bumpers on the side which Villahr still hadn’t quite understood the use for. The bowling hall, the only one in the region, was often empty these days, as the humans didn’t do much more than cowering in their homes.

Panique poured a little into the bowl she was working in, nudging Villahr playfully in the ribs to halt his constrictions. The “coaster”’s spiral design in the centre of pure white, burned red a moment, but when Villahr touched it experimentally it was ice cold and he pulled back as if the opposite affect had been scalding and it burned him. Panique scolded him loudly and then took her fingers and rubbed them briefly between her own, muttering something along the lines of him being a child.

Apparently he would do this very same thing a lot as a child, yet never learned —even after his fingers had blackened from the frosty bite — not to touch the cooling holder with his bare hands. When the heat had returned back to his digits, the faelna let go and his hand fell back to his side.

She had taken care of him for centuries, ever since he had first shown up here. In fact, it had been Panique who had first noticed him, taking refuge in the bushes under the window to the kitchen whilst the sky was relentlessly pouring out it’s tears upon him, chilling him almost right to the bone. She had been baking that time too. Croissants; ones stuff with cheese and sugared meat though, not chocolate with sickly sweet powder coating.

“Have you seen Karolinna yet this morning?” Villahr asked, leaning against the refrigerator now. It didn’t look like the ones the mortals used. More like a glass coffin stood upright. There were designs of no particular theme etched into the side, though most he had thought resembled flowers when he was younger, but now as he looking at them through aged eyes, they looked more like tornados with jagged mountainous peaks.

The general shape of the structure resembled the human variety food preservation chamber, each edge top rounded off , but there was no handle, just a pad where it would be, rectangular, white and slightly inset. The entire thing looked frosted and cloudy, but it must’ve been on the inside because it was dry to touch.

Apparently finished with the milk, Panique lifted it off the cooler and carried it to where Villahr was standing. Pressing her finger tips lightly into the pad, which gave way slightly from the pressure like memory foam, but returned back to its original shape shortly after she removed her hands. The food slid open silently, temporarily obscuring Villahr through the door, so he was not but a blurry mass of colours that seemed to melt into one another.