The Journals of a Vampire Scribe

Chapter 5: Blood & Wine

So, we talk. Discuss. Exchange.

OK...there's not a whole lot of actual exchange; mostly just me trying to wrap my brain around everything she tells me. But I pitch in on occasion; fan the flame of friendship-embers coming to a crackly kindling [no, that's bad...] that lightly warm the room between us [much better].

I have a thousand questions, of course, but try not to badger her or dig into anything too personal. After an hour or so I feel like I've gotten into the groove of allowing her answers to dictate the direction of our talk. I ask if she can control the crossover; she says she's learned to, although it can be difficult if Gauze is fighting her. I ask if she can see or hear everything he does; she says she blocks it out, that it's too disorientating to make sense of so she doesn't try and, instead, allows him his privacy, as he does for her. I ask how equal their coupling is, and she says never to call it that...but that they can feel each other's pain, and he learned quickly not to upset her for the sake of his own emotional state.

"So Mr. Eggs and Bacon has feelings of his own?" This comes as a surprise to me since I took him for a sociopathic dungeon master and prickly narcissist.

She blurts out with a laugh from a memory she relives at the question.

"Well, no, he doesn't have many feelings of his own, which is why having to share those of a newborn, toddler, tween, and teenage girl taught him a lot about humility."

It's a funny concept, but— "...It doesn't show..."

So I'm still a little bitter at being referred to as "Rodent," sue me.

"Well you've obviously never met another demon."

Good point.

"Touché."

She's scooted back into her corner of the couch again, knees under her and elbow on the armrest, head in her hand, thinking. "I learned to sympathize with him when I was old enough to know what that word meant. He had it rough, having to be tethered to a human girl for the past twenty years – in Hell, I mean." Her fingers play with her hair. "He's royalty, you know – but sharing the feelings of an angry or lonely infant basically made him the butt of every demon joke in the Pit. His father had to remove him from the eyes of the Elitists and send him to the catacombs to lord over the damned in seclusion." —I try not to look like I'm enjoying this part— "We've learned to separate our 'feels' now, but it took half my life to even begin to understand why I had to. Basically the poor guy's been in Hell, while in another Hell of my making, cursed to be at the whims of a confused and angry little girl."

"Now even I'm starting to feel for the guy..."

She smiles, a little embarrassed at the thought, then squints, choosing her words. "He's basically like this scaly, irritated big brother who's had to show enormous patience just to get any sort of cooperation from me. He couldn't threaten me because when he did I'd get scared and cry, so, so would he. And he couldn't kill me without risking...something – neither of us really knows what would happen if he tried..."

"Wow..." My mind spins – and not just from having my third glass of Shaman's blood. "This...bond...is a bit of a pickle for the guy." I catch a subtle glare in her eye that reminds me I'm supposed to be on her side. "...And for you." (Saved by the astute awareness of recognizing who wears the pants...) Then she yawns and stretches, her midriff crisscrossed by the mesh shirt she wears under her cropped hoodie.

It surprises me for a moment that she has this delicate "pretty" side to her. You'd think being bound to a demon would make one insufferably Goth... But then I remember that, unlike how you'd expect a situation like that to go down, she was basically babied by him for fear of driving himself to tears. She'd essentially grew up as a princess, having this demon prince of hers more-or-less as a nanny, catering to her every princessly tantrum.