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Another memory.

Adalia’s shadow sat still and hunched, illuminated by the flicker of candlelight by the bedside. The blank void of her face permeated to be a pondering one, an apathetic one, the way she so callously regarded the lifeless corpse inches away from her bare feet.

With a flare of breath, she nudged the dead woman’s forehead with the tip of her toes.

“Who is this?”

“A wanderer,” Amelia’s voice rang impatiently. “Not of this village. No one would be suspicious. Eat.”

“Get rid of it. I’m fine, Amelia.”

“Oh, would you please spare me of your stubbornness?” Amelia said louder. Long, heavy echoes in a silence that rang even fiercer. “You will continue to deny despite already knowing otherwise? Sister, show me your teeth.”

.....

“Amelia, do not test me…”

“No, you do not test me, sister!” Amelia snarled so low, so harsh, I could pretty much hear her voice rattling the bones within my chest. “Show me, or I shall do it for you. You know I am able. I am stronger than you are.”

For once, it was Amelia’s stubbornness that won it out between the pair, and with a begrudging growl, Adalia complied.

For a single moment, there was only the suffocating quiet. Meanwhile, I couldn’t pry my eyes away from the dead woman. She looked young, just a couple years past me was my best guess – and she’s dead.

An innocent life taken, and yet no one in the room bothered to give it a second thought. Not Amelia. And Adalia somehow even lesser.

So I was told.

So I was shown.

“They’re curving,” Amelia stepped over the woman’s body toward her sister, an edge to her tone brazenly holding in a surge of anger from rising any more than it already had. “Are you daft, sister? Tell me. Or did you deliberately choose to turn a deaf ear as to what we’ve been told? Did you think yourself saved? That the risks do not apply to you?”

“Terestra is a liar.”

“No she is not, she warned us that this might happen. You and I both know the process was never infallible! Accept it! You’re regressing, Adalia!”

“I am fine, Amelia, just leave it be!” Adalia was shaking now, the sheets of her bed wrinkling loose at the edges and crumpling within her clenched fists. “This has happened before. Not once, not even twice. Don’t you remember?! Nothing came of it then! I am fine!”

“Yes, but to this extent? Do you not think I notice you mindlessly strolling about in the day for hours? And not just once. Oh, not even twice. Tell me, sister, how is the sun? A little too hot as of late, don’t you think so? Does it overwhelm you – or are you still just too stubborn to accept that it does?!”

“I. Was. Just. Walking,” Adalia slowly chewed up and spat out her every word. “Fuck. Off.”

“Eloquent,” Amelia calmly crossed her arms. “How it pleases me to know you’re blending right in just fine with the local populace.”

But Adalia has reached a lesser mood for conversation if that was even somehow possible. She lifted up her legs, tossed herself the opposite way and settled herself into bed.

“What else are you losing?” Amelia continued to peruse. “Tell me, Adalia. Do you feel weaker? Within, is there still pain? Pain like… like before? When it rained?”

No answer. Not exactly the response she was looking for.

“If you are to revert, you will revert starved of nourishment!” She yelled, more fearful now than fierce. “The moment you return, you will return frenzied. You realize this? I know you do – so feed! Here – !”

I heard the soft squelch of flesh, and the dead woman’s limbs were dangling loosely in the air. Amelia hoisted her up, thrusting her forward like a dinner to a picky toddler.

“Dead. Her blood’s no longer fresh. Barely enough to sustain you, but like this, even you’ll be able to bear through it because who knows when you’ll fully regress? Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow. We cannot risk it – you need to feed again.”

Yet the silence only persisted. A bitter cold ambiance exchanged from one sister to the other, and through it, the fiery rage between them gradually seemed to wane.

“You are angry, sister,” Amelia dropped the corpse with a hard thud. “I understand. I know it is hard. Please, sincerely I assure you, I do not blame you at all for being the way you are, acting the way you do, but – ”

“Angry?” Adalia suddenly roused again, snapping back toward her sister in an alarming instant. “All we’ve done, all I’ve done – I am now supposed to accept it is all for nothing? That I am resigned to a lifetime of suffering. That I am going to die no matter – ”

“You are not going to die!” Amelia took a frantic step forward. “Don’t say that, sister, please! Terestra – !”

Adalia ignored her, speaking over her, slowing her tone rising, thawing the ice, the cold with a simmering hatred that had long been festering.

“For months we begged her, pleaded with her – didn’t we? Relented ourselves to her whims. We played her games. We pretended to be her family, her daughters, for some senseless reason or another – all for this one chance, for her to grant this one single request – and the pain, the agony of the process – and now you tell me to accept that she had actually screwed it all up after all?! My one chance of survival? At finally living a life worth living? That no, I’ll never be normal, I’ll never have the right to be alive! And you… you bring this filth to my doorstep, you fill my walls with the very echoes I dread, unhesitantly at the ready to condemn me back to a worthless existence, and then you tell me you understand?!”

And then another one of those unexpected things happened again. The scene, the reality which I thought I was ready to face but never actually was – I heard Adalia chuckle. The sound of her laughter resounding in the night, so low, so derisive… spine-chilling.

Then she came to a dead stop, and with her voice twisted by anger, bitterness, she spoke again.

“Fuck. Off.”

Another bout of silence came again, and yet I could still hear her voice, her manic laughter racing, looping across my mind. Beside me, the real-Adalia maintained a distant gaze from the current moment. Indifferent, muted, even as her younger sister’s head began to fall – an inky silhouette tainted deeply in the shade of despair.

“So, you think… this really is nothing, then?” Amelia spoke up quietly after an eternity, her voice smothered and placating. “That this, your ailment… nothing more but a passing phase?”

“That is what I have been saying all this time,” the shadow of Adalia heaved in annoyance. “I am no longer a Matriarch. I am no longer that weak, helpless excuse of sentience, and I’ll never be again. I do not need you to fret over me any longer, so just stop it, stop… stop treating me, seeing me like I’m useless.”

Amelia seemed too defeated to refute, to argue any more than she already had. Like, even as just a splotch, a murky outline of the real thing, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her this dispirited, this… this vulnerable.

“Very well, sister,” She stiffly replied, nodded. “I shall choose to trust your judgment on this.”

Adalia then promptly turned her focus back to the body, slumped sideways with a stream of inky black ebbing against her sister’s feet.

“Her blood’s tainted. She has bred before. She might have offspring. She might possibly be missed, searched after, have you – ?”

“No one is looking for her,” Amelia mechanically replied. “I have seen to it, I assure you.”

“Then see to it that no one finds her too,” She turned away again, slumping back against her bed, thoroughly indifferent to what was just said. “Take her and leave. You’ve ruined my slumber, I wish to reclaim it.”

“Of course…” with a soft rustle, the woman was once more hoisted to the air, and like a log fallen by the cleave of an ax, Amelia rested the body over her shoulder. “I’m… I’m sorry for being here.”

“Don’t…” a sudden silence as Adalia quickly silenced herself, seemingly holding back words she nearly let slip. “Do not apologize. Just go, Amelia. You cannot be here, remember?”

But Amelia did not go just yet. With another audibly rustle, I heard the clatter of coins jangling, and with a blurring black, a small pouch landed right next to the candlestick by the bedside, nearly snuffing the flame with the plunging breeze.

“What you owe,” Amelia said. “And much more. It shall last you,” slowly she turned away, then passing us closely by, a little quieter, I heard her speak again, almost saw a hint of sadness swirling in the nothing. “I hope it’ll last you…”

Then with the slam of the door, Amelia was gone, and with a gust of wind, so had the flickering flame.

So had this passing memory.