Rae "Sunshine" Seddon (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sunbaked_baker) wrote2013-07-20 08:20 pm
sunbaked_baker) wrote2013-07-20 08:20 pm
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It is the heart of summer, and the days are long. The sun sets late, and the nights are pleasantly warm.
At the moment, this particular day is finally relinquishing its grasp, the half-light of evening settling in, turning the world varying depths of grey.
Yet there is still a light out in the forest. Out past the baseball diamond, in a clearing where a great, thirty-foot wide circle of arcane symbols has been burned into the ground, Sunshine is practicing.
Three figures made of animate soil and water struggle with her. They are faster than she, but Sunshine has her magic. Has her knife in hand, beginning to glow as the daylight fades around her. Has her glimmering network of light set into her skin and hair, awake and alert and pulling from the sun that has already disappeared from the horizon. Has her silver and amber ring on its cord about her neck, gleaming. Her semi-transparent shielding spell appearing and disappearing in a ghostly golden light. Each strike by the figures of magically-animate soil and water she blocks, quick as thought, until she moves to lets one through so she can strike at its heart, in and up into where the chest would be.
The object of this exercise is to stay dry. Stay clean.
Except for her right hand and arm.
At the moment, this particular day is finally relinquishing its grasp, the half-light of evening settling in, turning the world varying depths of grey.
Yet there is still a light out in the forest. Out past the baseball diamond, in a clearing where a great, thirty-foot wide circle of arcane symbols has been burned into the ground, Sunshine is practicing.
Three figures made of animate soil and water struggle with her. They are faster than she, but Sunshine has her magic. Has her knife in hand, beginning to glow as the daylight fades around her. Has her glimmering network of light set into her skin and hair, awake and alert and pulling from the sun that has already disappeared from the horizon. Has her silver and amber ring on its cord about her neck, gleaming. Her semi-transparent shielding spell appearing and disappearing in a ghostly golden light. Each strike by the figures of magically-animate soil and water she blocks, quick as thought, until she moves to lets one through so she can strike at its heart, in and up into where the chest would be.
The object of this exercise is to stay dry. Stay clean.
Except for her right hand and arm.
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One of those hard breaths might also be a faint, incredulous laugh. "Stop messing with my head - I thought I just heard you ask me for mercy." Not serious at all, she's just a little shocked and overwhelmed by the fact the situation even came about. He's... him, after all.
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'I know, I know. It is an unfathomable request.'
She is, after all, her.
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Rae wields her magic with the skill of one who has had to learn quickly or die, but there are parts of her mind where the role she has taken on will never lie comfortably. The baker of good, honest bread will face the lies and horror and violent death, but she will never long for them; she will take her satisfaction from lessons learned well, not from the purpose for which they were learned.
The war she is waging is one of necessity. War so that humanity will survive. So that, perhaps, the relationship between vampires and humans would not just consist of bloody murder. A war of ideas, not just the body count (and wouldn't he be the very figurehead of the way of unlife against which she fights?).
It would be nice to think that she could hold tighter to the person she had been. The person who, out of mercy, does not kill spiders she finds in her apartment. Who sets catch-alive traps for mice because she can't bear the thought of killing them. Not be this person whose purpose is to be a monster to the monsters. The villain of the cautionary tales told by the villains of humanity's cautionary tales. Not a human with a vampire - this vampire, who horrifies her and yet draws her still - at her feet, asking (however lightly) for mercy.
(Again, she can see Con stagger back to thud against the far wall, all inhuman grace lost. "What in creation are you?"
Again, she can see vampires flinch first when she meets their eyes, shying away from her - choosing to face Con in battle than approach one slow, weak human with a knife, though they can clearly see from the litter of broken bodies how well all the others who made the same choice fared.)
Sunshine breaks eye-contact with him first, irrationally worrying that he'd see too much in her gaze.
"There are a lot of unfathomable ideas in the world." Like how horror and desire can coexist and mingle so readily. Like showing mercy to a vampire. Like willingly sparring with a vampire, alone in a dark forest, at the end of the universe. Like the idea that light and dark are not mutually exclusive, and that one will forever pursue the other.
Moving like someone who knows she's going to be sore in the morning, or someone who doesn't know quite why she's doing what she is, Sunshine steps forward to offer him a hand up. Whether or not he needs the help is not the point.
The point is the offer.
"And yet they insist on existing, in case someone comes along to try and fathom them."
They are exactly who they are.
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She is stunning. Her memories flow over him, through him, mingling with the sweet symphony of her heart beat, the flush of sweat on her skin, the scent of her hair. It's an assault on his senses, and one that he gladly submits to. She reminds him why he chose to return from the wilds.
He lets her feel his weight as he stands, using her as a counterbalance. It's easier now, after sparring with her. They've danced, so to speak.
'You need to rest. And something to drink, perhaps.'
He doesn't want to seem uncivilized.
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Sunshine smiles faintly, a bare twitch of the corners of her lips as she watches him. He is suggesting she have a drink, when she - a feeder of people - cannot return the favor.
They are both aware of it, of course. How their eyes meet, and how much of their paired attention is on the feeling of the hand against their own. How the other moves. Why they dance, and fight, and chase, and yet...
(There is always a need for ceremony, my lady. At least where you and I stand.)
"I think," Sunshine says at length, and because there is no point in it she does not hide the knowledge of just how much she is tempted to answer otherwise, "that I'll be fine. Thank you, however, for the offer."
They both know why, for they both know wars of necessity.
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'I have not forgotten my debt to you, lady.'
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"Nor have I."
Sunshine's replying gesture, something of a bow, something of a curtsy despite not wearing a dress -
(...she wiped her tear-stained face on the hem of her dress, there in that ruined ballroom, a dress finer than anything she had ever owned. Hearts-blood red silk, cleverly sewn on the bias so that it clung around the low-cut bodice but swirled out in the ankle-length skirt to what feel like yards of material at the hem, draping over her awkward knees in drifts like something out of a Renaissance painting...)
- comes as naturally to her as drinking blood. Which is to say, it doesn't.
Nevertheless, the gesture is true, and honest, and respectful. He represents everything she fights against and everything she is drawn to; not to acknowledge whatever gravity-like force that binds them together would be to lie.
And neither of them do that.
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'Thank you, for this. I should like it if we could train like this, again. If you're amenable?'
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"Thank you, as well." It is a strange feeling, to have danced in this way with a vampire, this vampire, and know that it will be genuinely useful.
In her fight against vampires.
"I would... like it, too."
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Perhaps it is simply another facet of his mask. Perhaps it is not a mask at all. Certainly, when he lifts his gaze to hers again, the look in his eyes is as open and honest as she has ever seen.
'I look forward to it. Until then?'
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Mask or not, lingering humanity or an act, she meets him as he is. With all she is, and all that he is, open and honest. Food-maker, warrior, hands covered in flour or in blood to feed her world body and soul. Monster, man, living blood and unbeating heart in unending love and impassioned hatred.
"Yes," she agrees - then, greatly daring. "Until then... Vlad."
Sunshine has never before spoken his name aloud. His title, the one best known to her, yes, but never his name.
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'A good evening to you... Rae.'
Again, he dips his chin, and turns to leave. The shadows pool around his feet, licking up his legs until it seems like the night itself draws him in. His silhouette dissolves and maybe she can hear a faint sound. A contented, quiet chuckle that echoes around her, coming from everywhere and no where, all at once.
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Then and only then, Sunshine lets out a breath she hadn't been aware of holding. She stands alone in the circle until her heartbeat slows towards normal, until her nerves - heightened and aware and seemingly sensitive to every breath of a breeze - calm to the point where she becomes aware again of her fight-grimed weariness, the dirt smearing her skin, the sweat making her clothes stick to her. And in that moment, complicated relationships and divided loyalties aside, all she wants is a bath.
Human again, her mother's daughter, feeder of people, Rae fetches her water bottle from the edge of the clearing, and heads back towards the bar in silence.