յօ 𝔪𝔬𝔫𝔱𝔥𝔰 𝔭𝔯𝔦𝔬𝔯~ 𝔰𝔦𝔫𝔤𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔰𝔬𝔫𝔤 𝔣𝔬𝔯 𝔫𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱𝔪𝔞𝔯𝔢𝔰
Warning: mentions of self harm. If you are sensitive to this topic, for your own sake, I'd advise you not to read this chapter. Sorry ♥️
On the bathroom floor, Luna was on her knees. Deep gashes of scarlet were slashed from her elbow to her wrist on her left forearm. Henry behind him looked utterly lost.
"I smell blood." He said. This was just as much a statement as it was a question.
"Stand back." Edmond ordered. "It's the roses. Get rid of the roses." He commanded. Henry stared at him confusedly.
"The roses?"
Edmond was approaching Luna cautiously in order not to frighten her, adopting a slow stance, not unlike a predator uses to sneak up on prey. He crouched to her level. She looked as if she were seeing him for the first time. Her gaze was a mingle of disorientation and mistrust as if she were observing him but her mind were elsewhere.
Carefully, he placed his hand on hers and withdrew a bloody object from her grasp. It was a pen. A fountain pen. At first sight, it seemed as though blood were its ink. The tip wasn't that sharp but judging by the wound, it had been applied with such force that it pierced the skin easily and most likely the muscle as well.
Edmond's pupils dilated at the sight of all the blood and the smell of it was overpowering but it was imperative he fight the impulses
You're not hungry, he told himself firmly and tried to concentrate on the task at hand. He asked Henry to come back with some bandages and to get rid of the roses.
"Luna?"
She peered at him in a lost manner but without indication that she was actually listening or understanding.
"You've lost quite a bit of blood." He continued nevertheless. "Don't panic though, it's going to be okay." He said remembering her use of the word when they had first met. "You've got to lie down for now." He retrieved some towels to make her more comfortable and to apply pressure to the wound.
Someone placed her head gently on a soft pile of towels. All of her being felt numb with coldness. But strangely enough, she felt comfortable. She felt as if she were a six year old again, curled up in her mother's large bed, listening to a reassuring melody. But as she listened, she realized that it wasn't her mother's voice singing. It was a low and murmurous voice instead. And never as a six year old had she paid much attention to the meaning of the phrases. Though the melody was light and cheerful the same couldn't be said for the lyrics.
"Jadis, j'eus peur des ombres qui dansaient sur les murs du saint Pierre
Jadis, j'eus peur des figures sombres qui dansaient dans la clairière
A la blancheur de l'hiver, les vautours errèrent.
Dans la noirceur, ils noyèrent ma joyeuse mère
De leurs ailes silencieuses, quelque danse funèbre, ils exécutèrent
Aies foi et rejoins-moi
Nous nous cacherons dans l'obscurité
N'aie crainte des ténèbres
Ils ne t'appellerons jamais
Car je suis à présent leur roi
Suis moi suis moi
Quand le vieux saint Pierre sonnera
Souviens t-en souviens t-en de cette jolie nuit de printemps
Quand saint Pierre minuit, sonna
Et que le fruit écarlate tenta
Celui à qui les vautours ont tout volé est-il voleur est-il voleur?
Aies foi et rejoins-moi
Nous nous cacherons dans l'obscurité
N'aie crainte des ténèbres
Ils ne t'appellerons jamais
Car je suis à présent leur roi
Suis moi suis moi
Quand le vieux saint Pierre sonnera
Quand le vieux saint Pierre sonnera
Mes pensées seront à toi
Ainsi je te vois envisager la nuit comme j'envie la lumière
Ainsi, je reviendrai au verger
Entre pommiers et marronniers
Entre lumière et obscurité
Sera tu la? Sera tu la?"
Edmond stopped singing, aware that Luna was singing with him.
"L'heure nous tiendra réunis
Entends tu chanter notre mélodie?
L'espoir peut bien choir mais l'amour vivra pour toujours" she hummed.
***translation in English in the author's note
She was looking up at him, her right cheek pressed against the towels on the bathroom floor. Her gaze was tired but she was herself again. Edmond finished bandaging her arm, while doing so he had noticed pale scars that continued up along her arm.
"How do you know that song?" He inquired, curious.
She stared at the floor and its impeccable tiles.
"My mother used to sing it when I had a nightmare." She replied. Although, now that she thought of it, it was a weird song to sing to a child. What with 'the vultures who drowned my joyful mother in darkness'. What did that mean really? Was her mother somehow trying to warn her daughter she would die soon?
Edmond interrupted her thoughts.
"Did this ever happen before?"
"What?"
"The roses." he clarified. "It was the roses wasn't it?"
"Yes." she confessed. She remembered flipping out at a wedding once when she caught the bouquet in her childhood. That made her reputation as 'the girl who got traumatized by a wedding bouquet'.
"Why?" Edmond prompted carefully, sensing this was a sensitive topic.
"I don't know." she answered honestly.
She wasn't ready to talk about her dreams. There was a silence.
Edmond changed the subject.
"How are you feeling?"
She was having trouble thinking clearly and her eyelids were droopy.
"Dizzy." she grumbled.
Edmond frowned. Her bandages were soaked in scarlet despite the efforts he was doing to stop the bleeding. He added a bandage and continued to apply pressure to the injury while consulting his watch. He knew by the sound of her breathing that she was tilting slowly into unconsciousness.
"How serious is it?" Henry stood in the bathroom doorway.
"The ulnar artery may be severed." Edmond replied ignoring the implied question. He wasn't going to give her his blood.
"I don't mind... if we don't have the equipment for stitches..."
"No." Edmond retorted bluntly. "No vampire should give their blood lightly."
He picked up her limp body from the heap of towels on the floor and walking past Henry, carried her to an old royal blue couch in a corner of a smaller, more comfortable room than the big hall. Cerberus padded happily by his side, long tongue lolling out in pleasure, forgetting his blind master in favor of the exciting visitor. Henry trailed after them, following the sound of Edmond's footsteps. There, Edmond lit a fire in the fireplace to keep Luna warm.
"What is it with the roses?" Henry inquired when Edmond was still occupied with the fire.
"I don't know. I suspect a form of PTSD related to an earlier experience." Edmond suggested thoughtfully.
Meanwhile, Cerberus's panting heightening.
"Cerberus, you dog!" Henry bellowed.
The bulky black poodle had its front paws on the backrest of a carnation bergère armchair and its two hind paws on either side of the chair's left leg. At the call of its name, it sat down and cocked its head.
"Out." Henry commanded and the dog scampered, giving them more privacy.
"Excuse him." Henry apologized with a twinge of embarrassment. "He's got something with that chair lately... I've tried moving it, doesn't keep him away."
"You might not want to tell Marie-Élise. She's quite fond of it too."
Edmond advised while settling himself in the emerald green armchair. He listened distractedly to the soothing sound of Luna's soft breathing and the calm rhythmic drum of her heart. Curly dark hair streamed over her shoulders. A svelte caramel colored hand lay on the pillow in front of her. She looked so different without her glasses on and seemed so small curled up on the couch. Too small in this vast place. Too small to be fighting a city of vampires.
"She... reminds me of her." Edmond let his thoughts slip.
"Of Marie-Élise?"
"No. Of Julia." It had been so long he hadn't pronounced her name and he was afraid it would get stuck at the back of his throat on the way to his lips.
"Surely she doesn't much look like her." Henry continued, his interest piqued.
"Not at first." he admitted. "However, subtly she does. It's like she knows about the rose. She recognizes the song too... Maybe she knows about my past... what I did to Julia."
"I doubt it. How could she?" Henry comforted though his voice held uncertainty.
"The way she smells is familiar. There's something in her eyes too, something in the way she looks at me. She's kin. I'm sure of it. Julia had a daughter before she was with me."
"So what shall we do now?"
There was a pause.
"We wait." Said Edmond.
***
Luna's eyes felt dry and moist all at once. The room was blurry from her watery eyes, yet her eye sockets felt like they were on fire. Her arm was even worse. It was burning and something hot and itchy covered it. The shape of a dark silhouette against the bright large windows, vacillated with her blurred vision and the whole room was cradling her in a rhythmic sway. She focused on the vacillating shadow. It was leaning in a chair which looked like it was rocking back and forth though that was probably Luna's imagination. The figure turned and set down the book it was reading. When it approached, towering over her, she let escape a fearful moan.
"Luna." Her name was pronounced in a booming echo. She wanted to cover her ears but didn't feel that she had the strength to.
"I know you're awake." The voice continued. "I just would like to check your arm. Will you let me?"
The mere fact that he had asked her for her permission was all that sufficed. She moved the painful arm toward him.
"Thank you." He said and his voice sounded softer and plainer.
There was a moment of silence. He was undoing the tight bandages. She dared turning her head toward him. His features took shape. His brows were furrowed as he worked. Some strands of black hair fell over his forehead. He did not brush them away. There was something personal about this moment. It was the moment people usually looked at her injuries and questioned: Why Luna? Why? She was letting him see a part of her she had spent years hiding. When he looked up at her though, his eyes held not the usual question. Instead they held shy understanding.
He stood up slowly and she watched him walk away with the same alarm she had felt when seeing him come. When he came back he was carrying a whisky glass filled with water. He stirred it with a spoon and set it down on the table near the couch.
"You must drink this first." he urged. "Sit up slowly." he cautioned. Indeed when she tried lifting her head from the couch, the room began to spin. A cold hand steadied her and her gaze seemed to dive into the glass he was holding out for her. She took it with her uninjured arm and brought it to her lips. It was sweet. Water and sugar she deduced.
"Listen." he dithered. "You've lost a lot of blood." It was hard discussing this with her knowing his true nature. "The wound is too deep and keeps opening." he pursued. "You're going to need sutures. I've got the equipment here and I have a medical license which allows me to perform stitching. I could do it. Or if you prefer I can drive you to the nearest hospital."
She shook her head.
"Not the hospital."
"I understand." he nodded.
He came back with a small black satchel which he opened back to her so she couldn't see the contents. Then, he cut the tight bandages that were wrapped around her arm open with a pair of what looked like surgical scissors. Blood had dried into a black crust around the cut.
Luna remembered the panic that tore at her heart, the pointy edge of her mother's favorite fountain pen diving deep into the flesh, her trembling hand, shaky breath. Then, there was the splitting pain that ripped through her arm but sewed the imaginary gashes of her heart. Blood flowed and relief released the tight knots that seemed to twist her intestines. And then there was the white bathroom floor. And the splotches of red ink that painted it.
She forced her eyes shut.
When she opened them, her mouth opened without a gasp, a shimmer flickered before her, a small shimmer in the deep darkness of his pupils, a small shimmer that could have meant the world.
"I don't have anaesthetics ." He apologized sullenly, waiting for her to say she preferred being driven to the hospital.
"Alright." She accepted sheepishly.
He addressed her a last questioning look before applying a wet disinfectant wipe to the wound. She shivered. He stopped, his pupils dilating at her reaction.
Then, she watched him bend gently over her arm with the needle and metal thread. She admired how dexterously he worked, finely moving the needle in and out.
A gleam of sorrow glinted at the back of her dark gaze like a tear forever imprisoned in inky depths. She peered at him knowingly. Edmond recognized this glance. Back in the days sutures were not used, surgeons used to seal a wound by cauterization and most patients still died from increased infection of their injuries. There were two types of soldiers. Those who looked at him apprehensively as he held the hot cauter, seeking any sliver of reassurance and there were those whose calmness was discrepant with their situation. The latter mentioned were the men that knew. The men that had just endured too much and whose tears had flowed only too often, leaving place to a desert of emotions. This little woman was centuries younger than he was, she seemed so frail and small. Yet, the crescents dug beneath her eyes suggested that she had explored parts of life that some would experience only throughout multiple lifetimes. Her gaze radiated with a deep resentment and wiseness that seemed beyond age. He saw this in prey too. It was a sign of honorable submission.
I wrote the song. It doesn't really have a melody yet but I kind of want it to sound a little like this:
Lily from Alan Walker. Piano cover by Pianella Piano Jova Musique.
I would love to create songs. Music is such a powerful source of emotions. And if you think about it, basically singing is reading a poem emotionally :)) while using the chords and all of course... yet it's such a hard art to master! I play a bit of piano, how about you guys? Do you play instruments? Or maybe you write songs?
I originally wrote it in French here is the translation... it doesn't sound as good but at least you'll understand the meaning ;)
Between apple and chestnut trees
There was a time when I was afraid of the shadows that danced on the walls of St. Peter's
There was a time I was afraid of the dark figures that danced in the clearing
In the whiteness of winter, the vultures roamed.
In the darkness they drowned my joyful mother
With their silent wings, some funeral dance they performed
Have faith and join me
We'll hide in the darkness
Fear not the darkness
They will never call you
For I am now their king
Follow me follow me
When old Saint Peter rings the bell
Remember that lovely spring night
When St. Peter's midnight sounded
And the scarlet fruit tempted
He from whom the vultures have stolen everything is he a thief is he a thief?
Have faith and join me
We'll hide in the darkness
Fear not the darkness
They will never call you
For I am now their king
Follow me follow me
When old Saint Peter rings the bell
When old Saint Peter rings
My thoughts will be yours
I see you envy the night as I envy the light
Thus, I'll come back to the orchard
Between apple and chestnut trees
Between light and darkness
Will you be there? Will you be there?
The hour will hold us together
Can you hear us singing our melody?
Hope may fall but love will live on forever