My muse slipped away, and this is me trying to coax it back.. A little piece, because it’s protesting too many demands.. *sigh*
Well, enjoy, and as always, comments are welcome..

Disclaimer: They belong to some certain other people, who intend to make money off them (or want to keep ownership of them
even if they’re just going to sit in the cellar and gather dust), which I’m sure they’d protest at… I’m not in it for the money. Just
the infamy...

Spoilers: Everything up to Queen of the Damned, I think.

~~~

Why do I not love him? Whose deficit is it, his or mine? Have I been in the cold for so long tat the freeze is permanent? This
house is big, yet not large enough. We move through it each night, the sole occupants circling its partitioned voids like some
displaced, nameless ghosts. We spend too much time alone, though we are, for all practical purposes, an arm’s reach, a few
footsteps away from each other.

I watch him now, drifting through the room, searching for some misplaced article, the mild annoyance creasing his brow
temporarily. He is beautiful, but not in a delicate, fragile way. There is a certain roughness in him. It is not crude clumsiness,
I don’t think any of our kind ever are. Rather, he is something more primal, a distilled rawness. His mistake is to try to
conceal this, and for that he has been described as cold, distant. False, the label, and curiously, I am the opposite. They think
me such a feeling creature, when in truth, the core is stony and dead.

Grey marble, I sometimes imagine it, placidly unyielding to the touch, unsplinterable as it is impermeable, so ancient, and
doomed to remain so. Perhaps it is igneous rock instead, truer to the origin of me old home, the warmth of a mortal life in a
rural village keeping me glowing magma before I was cast out of it all to harden into jagged black shards. Only the steady
pulse of me heart reminds me that it is an organ of flesh. Does that make a difference?

If anyone could inspire the heady rise of emotion in me, it should be him. From our first encounter, I could sense the conflict
between the deliberately manufactured exterior and the raging interior. So hurt he was then, from the loss of faith and all
accompanying security and sense of self, yet had to maintain the shell to keep from flying apart completely. The healing is
slow, as he acquaints himself with new friends and keeps old enemies. I’m not sure which daunts him more.

Gradually, he has opened himself up to me, and occasionally, I even hear him laugh. I sense affection from him, though it is
oblique. He is still wary. Rightly so. Is it inevitable that he directs this at me? As the first one who would take him in, who
would not damn him in his plight, some might label it merely a natural fixation. Even if that were true, the flattery of his
attention aside, I can’t help imagining the good it would do us, to have someone else to sit by the fireplace with, to walk
through the wonders of Nature and Man’s artifice with.

We do sit, and we do saunter, and at times I wonder if it was fate that brought us together. Such tranquillity I feel with him at
times, as if from the separateness of our barricaded towers we have communicated the key that frees us to the world.

I could need him as much as he needs me. I wish I could. But I realise, between these moments, that it is merely that. He
brings me peace, but it is not what I desire. Where is the quickening of the pulse, the fiery wish to be closer than is physically
possible, the hunger to be drunk on each other? I enjoy his company, but would I enjoy anyone’s company equally, after my
self-imposed isolation? Is it just his presence, or is it specifically, uniquely him? It is not enough to merely be entertained.
For that, I could keep mortal pets again.

I look up to study him once more, and he becomes aware of this, pausing in his rummaging through the stack of magazines
piled on the coffee table to shift his weight slightly to a more stable posture and stare back at me. Challenge in his dark eyes,
a combination of macho “what are you looking at” and demand for a staring match. I have to smile. For one who is seven
hundred years old, he can be such a boy at times. Is it just a release of all he has locked up within him? There is unsettled
bitterness still, so perhaps it comes from desperation instead. He arches his eyebrows for me, his manner of teasing, then
returns to his searching.

Could I not fall in love with this? He offers me a chance at love that I have not had, even from my Maker. To her I am
obedient more than adoring, though in theory I should be more closely bonded to her than to anyone else. With him, it is
sympathy instead of subservience. For his independence despite the crippling of spirit, I respect him. The strength and
weakness so inseparably intertwined in him intrigue me. His are the eyes that harbour shadows, windows to a troubled soul
that is on the brink of opening to me, the elegantly sculpted features which could never be as cruel as he believes, the full lips
over which so many impassioned words have flowed, and I want to make flow again… But no. It does not work. Though I will
it to, the torrent will not sweep me away.

I close this now, lest he sees this as he comes around the desk to stand behind me. I know the weight of his hand on my
shoulder before he touches me. I hear the inflection of his soft tenor invite me out to hunt with him before he speaks. I will go
with him where he asks. Passion, if there is any, is his alone. Perhaps, for a time, it will be enough.

Part 2
 

I could reach out and touch him, but he wouldn’t feel it. I hate it, that the need I have for him is all I have of him. To be
freed from servitude to the Old Ways to this, an even harder god… He is kind, but not loving, which is even more painful. I
am not cast out but merely left to stare and nurse futile longing for a light that cannot be mine. And yet his patience keeps
the kernel of hope within me alive. Suspended from merciful death, its scrambling roots dig into my heart, binding me to
his every gesture, seeking out the smallest indication of favour to feed itself. What I do now, to coax the slightest sign of
amusement or even interest from him… There, that gentle smile, and I would subject myself to indignities that betray me. I
jest, I abandon respectable solemnity to bring a twinkle to those amber eyes. That I could find some fire in them when they
turn to me. Fire has always been my element, the fatal purity of its consumption the source of my strength. The coven did
its rites by fire, death finally came by fire… I had to have power over it. Now? Now I am defeated, the heart of me silently
pleading for it.

I recognise this as weakness. How can I not? I try to keep myself from it, banishing myself to the corners of the house
furthest from him, occupying myself with other things. But eventually the yearning draws me back to suffer his indifference.
Well, it might as well be indifference. Am I cursed to endure this forever, to repeatedly be struck with mute devotion to
deities who care nothing for it?

But I will never ask for his attention. I will never admit this to him. Let me maintain at least some semblance of dignity. I
will not be scorned. I will not be pitied. I will not have him sneering at me, or being condescending.

Could he possibly be so wicked? The fine structure underlying the bleached porcelain skin gives him an aristocrat’s look.
He appears as one used to being above everyone else, his whims obeyed without question, thoroughbred arrogance, for
want of a better description, though he claims to come from a humble background. Only his placid gaze softens this
impression, but even this indication of mildness may be deceptive, from the fragments of his story which are occasionally
revealed to me. I have tormented many, but he decimated an entire village in a fit of temper. In certain parts he passed
through, he has become a myth, whispered of in terrified tones by children and full-grown men alike.

We embellished the halls of our faith with arrays of skulls and bones, in arrangements unconceived of by Nature. He
adorns his house with twisting figures, frozen in agony, masterpieces of ancient sculpture that he personally secured in his
journeying. They please him, and I have seen him pause before them and run his fingers slowly across their surfaces, as if
revisiting past lives, recollecting past deeds. He demonstrates nothing of this taste when he takes his victims. He is a deft,
delicate killer. I wish to assume nothing from his choice in relics, but I know that he can be cruel. Even without realising
it.

I am not afraid that he will bring out this other side. Can it be that much worse than I have been? I suppose the seemingly
suitable comment would be that we deserve each other. If only. Am I paying for it now? I will receive my come-uppance for
my obedience if I believed falsely, and I will receive it for my defiance if I believed truly. My fate so sealed, it does not
matter. I cannot change what I have done. If with each step on this road I lock my way ahead, then I am already past any
redemption that might be offered. I have nothing to turn back to.

What draws me to him? That he does not judge me for my past? How many would believe it? He understands it.

Amazing, how much he has experienced. Marius was the oldest I had ever encountered, a figment of fable made real, but
even he is youthful in comparison. All I learned tells me that he should not exist, or that he should be a raving madman by
now. But he is coolly solid to the touch, and recites from memory beautiful poetry from forgotten civilizations. Power is not
the lure, it is not his strength I crave. Not is it mystery, because even if his entire history was known to me, I would still
want to spend my nights by his side, talking about trivial things, or even in absolute silence, just to be in his company.

How many have shared this wish? He does not speak of previous companions, and I hesitate to ask him. It is impossible for
him to have had none in so many millennia, but how is he unaccompanied now? Did they end badly? Did he cast them
aside when he grew bored with them?

I am waiting for it to happen. I do not know what it was that made him decide to befriend me. What is my worth in his
eyes? Though he is of course the greater one in every way, he makes no demands as master of the house, or in fact as
master in any capacity. I might be his equal, for his tolerance towards me. He seems to purposely indulge me sometimes. I
cannot say what it makes me feel… But I dare not hope. He will get tired of me. It is inevitable. Each time he keeps himself
aloof, remote in his library or at his desk, I think I see the beginning of it. Impulsively, I want to seek reassurance. But
reassurance of what?

I have no right, no reason to desire what I do. Still…

I will never leave him. But when he decides to depart, I will not beg him to stay. I will not cry out, and he will not look
back, and no one will know that the heart within me has died.

End