"Cursed to Live"

[Alandor Fydmere]

He loved her. That was certain. After all of these years, she was the one. She was the one. The mess of a state that he currently resided in was all background noise. He had turned, into an undead creature. Cursed. His ink covered fingers slid up the back of her neck and into her hair as he pulled her close to him. She was warm. Even after all of the years in a deep and dark sleep, she was warm. Here they were, in the tavern again. Together again. Again. Again. And again.. he could feel her heart beating. He could hear the worry in her voice. He was inside himself.

Then his lips began to move. He wondered if she could see the cold he carried. Had his lips turned blue? So long he’d run that he had barely had a chance to do his hair. All of the glorious vanity drifted from him in her absence, was now returning. In that moment. Stop. It had to wait. For them to rebuild their home.

“I don’t know how it happened, it was all black. I awoke from the ashes, and awoke with such a hunger. And fury.. but most of all, I was filled with worry. It was chaos.. and..” It was chaos. Searching through the rubble. For her. The nagging pulling of the lust to feed. Revenge. Confusion. It was all chaos. He pressed his finger to her chin, and raised her to look up at him.. and as he looked into her eyes, he whispered “I couldn’t find you.”

He bit his lip as he walked into her eyes again. She was back with him. Safe. They had made it.

Dragging a finger along the couch, he brought it up to her face and drew a curve up the side of each of her cheeks. “Smile. If you don’t, I’ll just have to give you one.” A devilish smirk formed on his face. “We made it, Leetah.. to the other side of the flames. As for Selur..” he shook his head a bit, the gold loops that had made it still gilding his ears “no one can stop you and I.”

[Leetah]

Ooooh, she liked that.

His fingers sliding up the back of her neck sent an immediate shiver down her spine. The sensation engulfed her and for just a second, she could do nothing but close her eyes and allow the tingling sensation to blossom across her. Though she'd ached keenly for him all these long years, she hadn't realized that one of the things she'd missed most was his touch. She leaned backwards, her mess of red curls tangling around his hand; reaching out with her own slim fingers, she stroked his cheek, grazing the ashen skin with her nails. Yes, she could feel it -- a deep, permeating chill; his was the skin of something not quite dead. "Undead," her brain reminded her. His eyes, which seemed to look at her and then at something else a million miles away, betrayed the light that still lived inside him...but his teeth were testament to the beast that lurked at its edges. Almost playfully, she reached up and pried open his lips -- just at the corner -- with thumb and forefinger, looking for the telltale sign. They were there. Little white pearlescent things, startlingly sharp-looking but hidden perfectly by his smile. She wondered what they felt like when he pressed them to the flesh of his victims.

"It's a nice addition, those," she grinned, shaking her head a little. "Makes you look more dangerous. You know, more emblematic..."

She trailed off then as he began to speak again, his words weaving a sobering story of that night she'd rehashed a thousand times since. When he brought her face up to meet his gaze, she blinked slowly. He was so nice to look at. So nice to listen to. She was so glad he was here. And when he told her to smile she couldn't help it. Of course she smiled. She smiled and she kissed him, on his face and his temple and even his eyelids. Then she drew back, realizing he'd told her as much of his transformation as he ever would (though the ambiguity was maddening -- he was a perfect mystery); Leetah nodded her assent.

"No, nothing can stop you and I. So we'd better get started, my darling. As you asked before -- where do we start?"

Slipping up from the couch and stretching her arms out as she turned in slow circles, she took in the present state of their old, beloved Tavern. And it was disheartening, to say the least. The dust was everywhere. Long-cold ashes blackened the massive fireplace, a thousand cracks spiderwebbed the glass facades of ancient curio cabinets, stools and chairs lay piled around the cavernous front hall like discarded corpses, and everywhere -- in every corner and every alcove -- the damp and the cold had taken hold. It was time to bring this place 'round to its former glory -- she knew, almost as if the Tavern itself was whispering this request to her. By day she could sleep beside Alandor in one of the huge stone crypts outfitted below the Tavern's roots, and by night they would work to restore it. It would be their castle, their den, and it would rise to its place of prominence again.

Holding out her hand to him, she tossed her head, feeling (for the first time in years) a little coltish. A little...fiendish? With a wink, she looked back over her shoulder at Alandor and she purred, "How about you come help me find a place to begin? I know you hate it when things aren't beautiful."

[Alandor Fydmere]

He watched her as she spun about, her eyes on the tavern and his focused purely on her. She was the haunting memories that lacerated his heart for so many years. The rising strings, to the perfect deep and disturbing pitch, his magic had become so much more powerful with the transformation.. the sound became real. The solitary horn playing amid the strings, the drums coming in to the foreground.. all so soft at first. She didn’t even notice them as she looked around the tavern, her imagination dancing to the tune of the dark melodies forming.

They began to rise in volume as she held out her hand, the keys began to fall, his pupils began to grow. The deep and black centers of his vision were coming to life. He came in close, pulling the second of his gloves off and tossing it aside, and pulled her to him. He could taste her in the air. His feet began to move, begging her to follow suit. They had returned. And in this decay, and blight.. this ungodly blight that had overtaken their home.. he found the resilience of the two. Of these two. These two creatures so cursed by time and circumstance.

Where they were? Here? The soft touch of brass came in now, adding to the whole. His eyes only on hers, as they moved through the trash as if it was the glorious ball room they would often go for weddings and events held by the most regal of people. Them, dirty.. her from the earth, he from the neglect of time.. eaten up, devoured, and yet reborn. Two snakes, slipping from their used up skin.

Dancing now, slowly, to the flowing melancholy of their world of ghosts and gods and unseen things.. they drafted a rebirth with the falling and pressing of their feet, of their breath entwined, of their time once more whole. The music flowed with their bodies.

“How I missed this, this beauty..”

[Leetah]

For a moment -- just a moment -- she thought she heard music. It blossomed from faint strains to a swelling wave, rising and cresting, filling the room and shrinking the shadows...perfuming the air, very nearly, with an intangible beauty. She paused, cocked her head, locked eyes with Alandor and smiled. This had to be his doing. It had to be. She stopped mid-turn, arms dropping to her side, and looked at him. Really looked at him. Such a beautiful thing, a beautiful man, made preternaturally exquisite by the nonliving blood now coursing through his veins. There, the inky black hair; and there, the violet eyes both piercing and soft; there, the aged leather and marble-smooth skin...there he was. She almost laughed at how happy this unexpected reunion made her. It had been so, SO LONG...

But she was tiring of the polite, the touch-and-go, the brief flutterings of emotion punctuated by dreamy silence. She wanted him to move! To laugh! To take her up in his arms, kiss her roughly all over, show her his teeth.

"I missed this, too. I miss you. Now wake up, Alandor. There are things to do."

A half-grin, a devilish gleam to green eyes. She motioned again to the absolute ruin that surrounded them.

"It will be morning soon. But tomorrow night! Tomorrow, my dearest undead, let's begin the work. This is ours! This is our place, this is our heritage -- this is our history. And it can be our castle."

She suddenly slipped close to him, skirts slithering across the dusty floor and copper hair brushing against his face.

"But I need your help. After we sleep. You look like you need a good sleep. ...And I just so happen to know a place."

Hoping the crypts beneath the Tavern had fared better than the great hall above, Leetah motioned towards the hidden door beneath the old, massive staircase. Years before, in a time now nearly removed from memory, the Tavern's roots were honeycombed with myriad stone chambers outfitted with impenetrable stone coffins, all lined with velvet and cushioned against the cold. After such a universal upheaval, she wanted to go down into the earth again (but just for a while!) and sleep, pressed against her vampire.

[Alandor Fydmere]

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The crystal broke up into powder beneath the blunt of his sacrificial knife, smaller,smaller. He needed it. The life had already been taken. Bright red, so perfectly bright red against the mahogany desk. It wasn't meant to be this way, but what could be done of it now? He was an abyssal elf. Cursed with long life, it had become so much more with the blood. The thirst. His hair pulled back behind his adorned and pierced ears, so rare a look for him, so that his face was free to indulge. The rush. Vampires had lived for all of these eons and not once had they found a better rush. He had. Purified virgin elf blood, his own kind. Cannibalism was the finest. All the contours of his face shaded with the intake. The perfect angles receded with crimson. Laying back against the soft leather chair, tobacco bound in paper inscribed with infernal rites burned and blistered as he sucked from it. The out pour of white smoke flooded against the crystal powder that painted his face. Residue, what did it matter? He could waste. He always wasted. What did any of it matter? The powder began to hit, his veins began to glow the most effervescent indigo. He hit the lights, let the abyss overtake him as his veins bloated and pulsed. He was alive, he felt it,for a moment.. the light of his veins, and the lights flashing beneath the door.. the pounding of the music. He felt it. The people dancing. He felt it. The tobacco fumes filled him, danced around him, just another high.. sucking demonic energy.

He was the villain, he had always been one. A force of destruction that had wiped so many good things from this existence. A ruiner of lives, despoiler of the light. Dancing through self destruction like the world was ending, of course eventually it did.. and it came back. He came back. Evil, like they say, never dies. The only difference between he and the fallen was that he loved. Somewhere, somehow, that flower bud and bloomed within his ink and scar covered chest. His fingers dug through the massive, perfectly kept, hair and his back arched and stretched against the leather. Pushing back, opening his eyes.. they glowed, indigo and violet.. he was damned. He was damned from the start.

She had needed time, and as was their way.. they parted. He stayed here, at the Tavern they rebuilt, and she dispersed into the darkness. So he waited. Dancing in blood, feeding his sins with the vapor of his misdeeds. He had never been one who knew how to love.. and worse, he had no ability to console. A childhood of desperation and abandonment taught him only how to revel in the malevolent.. to love? Though he often failed, he tried because he loved her. The crystal pulsed harder. It almost felt as if his heart was beating again. To his feet, the leather and silver of his boots clinked against the floor. Another cigarette enshrined, another flick of the flint, another drag of the demonic.. he missed her. Though the tavern called, the patrons called.. The night was just beginning.. and he had a duty. So those perfectly shined boots carried him across the floor and through the door.

[Leetah]

Her hands were shaking. She wiped the rain from her eyes as another peal of thunder cracked; the noise was deafening, but it did little to drown out her furious, frustrated cry. Overhead, a forked tongue of lightning bloomed, illuminating the scene of Leetah’s most recent failure: the diminutive brown body over which she huddled, its eyes now blank and unseeing...the dense, dark foliage dripping down onto her hunched shoulders, framing the nightmare she’d attempted to stop...the twisted, broken remains of other small bodies scattered amongst the still-smoking ruins of what once was a village. Gritting her teeth, Leetah pulled herself up — but not before reaching out with two shaking fingers to gently close the eyes of the woman she’d tried to save. She was in the midst of a veritable charnel house now, so different from the familiar, bustling hive of the Tavern.
Leetah shook her head, tears coursing down her cheeks as she turned and began to walk back through the inky darkness. Why had she left? Why had she let a wild dream lead her into so much unexpected sorrow, so much disappointment and — she shuddered suddenly — potential danger? All she’d wanted was to find her people! All she’d wanted was to see, with her own eyes, the faces of those who looked like her.
There had been whispers at night, amongst the Tavern’s patrons, that something was hunting the Sun Elves. Those whispers died to silence whenever Leetah was near, but she’d heard them nonetheless. And it shocked her to the core. She’d thought that she was the only one who’d survived the apocalypse, so long ago. She’d not seen any of her kind either before or after going into the earth, after the world had split itself apart and so, so many died. But a furious sort of energy had built itself up inside her, as she’d realized that maybe — just maybe — other Sunfolk were alive...and now maybe they were in danger. Leetah had decided to leave the Tavern, then, and travel as far and as long was needed to find them. Before this rumored danger did.
....Now, though, after endless days away from her home, away from her love, Leetah was defeated. She just wanted to feel Alandor’s arms around her. She wanted to bury her face in his shoulder and tell him of the horrors she’d seen, the healings she’d failed to complete, and the unshakeable terror she’d begun to feel. Because it was clear: something WAS hunting her kind. And that something had been in the forest with her tonight. That something, Leetah felt, was now hunting her.
Continuing to fight against both her sorrow and her fear, she trudged inwards, beneath the rain-whipped trees. She was finally coming home...she would finally be with him again.