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Aloud, echoing in the vastness, the stillness of the room, it didn’t sound as big of a deal as I thought it’d be.

Time to find out, that hopefully, she thinks much of the same of it.

This definitely would have been so much easier to deal with if I knew just how she was feeling. If she’s uneasy, then I can be uneasy. If she didn’t mind, then I’d instantly know I didn’t have to either.

But she felt nothing, showed nothing, and in turn… neither could I.

And what could be worse than absolutely nothing? That’s right—nothing.

“You…” Adalia began, speaking up after what felt like an entire ice age. “...are… curious about… me…?”

“Burning,” I affirmed, feeling more at ease hearing her calm. “I know you asked me to forget about it, and if you insist, I will, but, well, y’know…”

.....

Was hoping she’d fill in the blanks for me there, follow up the words that I couldn’t find, but she continued to just sit and stare and wait… apparently she didn’t know what I was getting at either.

“It’s like back then, back with Ash, y’know? Like her, I love you. But just like her, I know so very little about you. And the bits and pieces I do get… well, it just makes me wanna know even more.”

“Bits… and… pieces…” there she goes again, picking her own bits and pieces from what was said. “...what has… sister told you…?”

She’s too good at that, I swear.

“Nothing that she rather you tell me yourself—her own words,” I replied. “She thinks I don’t have the right to claim that I love you if I continue to keep turning a blind eye to you.”

“She… is… wrong…”

I felt a smile tug hard at the edges of my lips. So firm on that stance, and so passionate at that… fiery too. Like a small little lion cub roaring her displeasure.

“Yet for some reason I can’t help but agree with her a little. I don’t know you as well as I should. You had a whole life before me, and right now I’m just a small part of it.”

“What has… sister told… you…?” She asked again.

“That you were cruel,” I blurted out bluntly. “Crueler than she was. That you used to think way less of others, and that…” I paused here, deciding whether to continue or to stop, only for a lump in my throat to force the rest of the words out. “...and that I wasn’t the first person, human… to have fallen in love with you.”

Honestly, I had still been on the fence about whether anything Amelia had claimed before could even be taken with a grain of salt. Maybe she just loved her hyperbole, her impractical jokes, I wouldn’t put it past her to be that mean and petty.

But there was nothing again this time. That passion, that firmness of hers just then, evaporating away leaving and lingering the usual nothing in its place.

An empty silence that said all that was necessary.

“This is… your wish…?” Adalia blinked at me, gazing closely as if trying to make sense of a senseless puzzle. “It is… a very plain wish… simple…”

“Simple, hm?” I raised her a brow. “Is it though?”

She didn’t answer that, instead simply just blinking again.

“I… do not know… where to start…”

Not so simple, after all.

“Whatever you feel is best,” I told her. “Whatever you’re willing to share with me, I’ll take it.”

Her gaze fell a little from mine.

“You will not… hate me…?”

Again, I couldn’t help but smile. That little lion cub limping with an injured law, seeking, yearning for comfort.

“You already know the answer to that, remember?” I said. “I seem to recall you asking me the same thing while we were in the bathroom together. My answer hasn’t changed.”

“It… might…”

“Even if it did—didn’t you say you wouldn’t mind it even if I do end up hating you?”

I knew she remembered what happened then as vividly as I did. Those kinds of happenings, the words that were exchanged, they were things you don’t just go easily forgetting even if you try.

So she does remember, alright. Except now she wasn’t reaffirming what she had stated back then. Which could only mean one thing.

“Would you look at that,” I said, still faintly smiling in spite of everything. “You really do care, huh?”

And almost as if spurred by embarrassment, Adalia lowered her head even more, this time deliberately obscuring and hiding her face from my prying eyes.

I wasn’t having it though. Before she could sink any further, I cupped her chin, gently raising her gaze again, face-to-face once more with the woman I had grown to love with every fiber of my being, and like the snow, I watch the gray of her eyes flurry and swirl, like a storm restless in the skies—a brewing storm that I wanted to appease.

“I love you for who you are, Adalia. If you’re worried I’ll stop, then don’t. It’ll hurt me more than it’ll hurt you to even think about despising you. Like it or not, you’re a part of my life now. This short, brief existence I have, and you’re a big part of it, and you’ll just keep getting bigger. It’s now to the point that no matter what you say or do, I’ll just keep loving you for you.”

To the deep night, to the falling skies, and especially to the murky gleam of her gaze, I heard my words ring bold, loud… and oh, so hollow.

“But I also want to be able to say that with confidence,” I continued, feeling my smile leave me. “That I’m not just spouting empty sentiments without knowing if I even mean them or not, and I won’t know until I know who precisely it is I’m falling in love with.”

Adalia blinked at me again—oh, those so slow, bleary blinks like she’s about to doze off any moment. The cold of her skin, her body, like startling electricity coursing through me with every graze, every touch, and that I just couldn’t get enough of.

One of the innate abilities of a vampire was to create mindless, willing puppets from sentient beings—and that was me right here, to her, only for her—I was ultimately, utterly, indoctrinated.

“So with your permission, Adalia…” I finished. “...I’d also like to learn to accept you, to love you for who you were too.”

Then there was that silence again. The silence of absolutely nothing. Yet even in the quiet, something had changed—the swirl of her gaze coming to a rest, a calm—and she blinked at me again.

“Okay…”

It was my turn to start blinking now, surprised, pleased, and between flutters, I watched her rise up to her feet. On impulse, I sprung up right alongside her, matching her pace as she slowly shambled through the vast interior, our footsteps, ringing echoes in close unison with one another.

I just patiently waited for her to start speaking. Any moment now, her tale was to begin and I wasn’t going to miss a single word of it. Then, just when I thought she was about to begin recounting, Adalia froze in place. At once, I froze too.

She extended her hand out, beckoning for mine. “Don’t… let go…” was all she uttered.

I immediately did as told, throwing all inquiries to the wayside, and the moment I felt that familiar bolt of icy lightning, it happened—a violent surge of the invisible shot through my arm, rippling through the rest of my body, and all around, the room began to distort.

An inky blackness from nowhere began to manifest, warping, folding, and transforming into many endless, indescribable shapes and sizes that consumed the entire vicinity. The movie set was gone, replaced, overtaken too.

But much like a play in and of itself, the blackness began to create and fabricate, shaping the room into something else, whisking us both to place more foreign, unfamiliar.

Suddenly there were grasslands, mounds and hills protruding in a distant horizon. I could still feel the hardness of the concrete beneath my feet, yet it was a soft sludge of muddied soil that surrounded us. It was no longer snowing, instead in a flash of white, a tumultuous ripple in the skies, the night poured with rain without relent.

And yet I couldn’t feel a thing.

“Illusion…” I heard myself whisper.

We were in a memory. A memory she brought to life, replicated using her affinity for deception and tricks. It was only the thing that made sense at the moment. Question was though…

A memory of what?

Adalia kept my hand firmly in her grasp. Silent and unmoving ever since her illusion had taken form, and it was almost as if she was waiting for something to happen.

I took the opportunity to assess our newfound surroundings again. Out in the distance, I could see the faint shimmer of lamplight, multiple of them—a town was glimmering like a beacon in the distance.

Then just like before, the inky blackness shrouded and devoured all in view, and instantly we were whisked off into another scene, another place, the darkness slowly unraveling to reveal the walls and ceiling of a small, quaint room.

One of the houses in the village, I presumed.

Something exploded close by, and my eyes quickly whirled around backward to find the loose swivel of a door barged wide-open, pouring rain pelting down fiercer than ever before, and two dark shadowy figures soaking wet and clumped together, hastily stumbled forward into the interior. One of them seemed more haggard than the other, weaker, feebler, with the other mustering all effort to keep the both of them upright and still walking.

Upon reaching the edge of a lone, messy bed, the healthier of the two carefully placed the frailer one atop the thin piece of mattress, and with a dry, almost strangled heave, immediately collapsed sideways onto the bed.

The shadow that was still standing took a step back, hands curling into fists, and shouted.

“Why have you not mentioned this to me?! All this time, and you’ve not thought to speak a word of it?! Of this?! How long has this been happening? And do not lie—I beseech you—do not lie to me, sister!”

Curled on the bed, and struggling to sit upright, the frail shadow mustered her strength, and spoke, “A week. Merely a week. That’s all. I thought it was nothing.”

“Nothing?!” The other one shrieked. “To nearly expose yourself to the humans, to lay helpless out in the pouring rain—you thought it nothing?!”

“Amelia!” The weaker shadow growled, and at once, the other one froze, fell silent, taking an almost frightful step back. Confirming finally what I long already knew, and just who exactly I was seeing, hearing. “You are annoying me.”

Amelia hung her head, looked away. “My apologies, sister. I did not intend to upset—”

“Just leave,” Adalia spat, tossing herself in the other direction, falling into bed and refusing to look at her sister. “Thank you for your assistance. Now go. I am quite well now. I do need you at the moment.”

“But…”

“Just let me rest, Amelia!” She nearly shouted again. “Tomorrow. We shall discuss this tomorrow, alright? At the moment, I wish to see and speak to no one, much less you especially. Just… just go, would you?”

Another distancing step, an even steeper gaze, and Amelia quietly turned away.

“Understood,” briefly, Amelia stood beneath the doorframe, tossing back a glance at the curled figure laying in bed. “Sleep well, sister.”

Then In a blink, a flash of lightning, Amelia was gone.

And Adalia did not respond.

Her hands trembling, she slowly lifted them up toward her eyes. For a moment, she simply admired them. They were no longer elongated, each tip ending without a jagged edge, they were simply normal now—human.

She curled them tightly, almost relishing the sensation.

“Terestra,” another growl, and her hands fell slump against the bed. “You liar.”

And the darkness came once more.

.....