Blue Eyes, White Lies

Chapter 11

I take a breath in. 

"So... I'm in a room with two supernatural creatures?"

Eric chuckles, Julian nods. Julian seems a little less tense. He raises an eyebrow.

"None of the stupid preliminary questions? None of the 'do you want to eat me'?" He seems a little confused.

I shake my head. "None of em."

He glances around the room, probably thinking. What he's thinking, I have no clue, but I can take a wild guess he's processing the fact I didn't run and scream at him. Eric snaps him out of it, tapping his shoulder. 

"I told you he'd be fine, Julian. Even if I'm a fellow creature," he uses air quotes around the word creature. "I didn't. No offense, but he didn't react to me, and I'm a whole lot scarier than you." 

Eric pats his head for a second, trying to cheer him up.

He still seemed confused, but accepting. I swear I saw him smile a little. 

I nod. "If I wasn't prepared for everything, I wouldn't have came here in the first place. I would've left a long time ago. And even then, if you really wanted me dead, I would've been dead a long, long, time ago."

His eyes seem a little brighter. Something about him seems just the tiniest bit happier. Like a weight off his shoulders. I think Eric can see it too. I relax my posture, about to ask a question.

"I do want to know one thing, Julian," I smile a little. "How long were you alone?"

He scratches the back of his head, sighing. 

"A long time. Lonely or alone? There's been times I've been one of the two, times I've been both. With as many years as I have, that's a difficult thing to answer." He clasps his hands and looks down at the table. "However, I can tell you my story, if you'd enjoy that. You seem to like tales like these."

My eyes light up. "Tell me everything. Every detail. I've studied as much as I can, but there's nothing better than a firsthand account."

"Well then." He gets up, motioning to the couch. "Get yourself comfortable. It's a long one."

He pulls a few blankets from a cabinet, making sure the fire was warm enough to last us a while. He sits down in a chair close to me, Eric and I sitting on the previously mentioned couch.

He takes a breath in and out, his eyes becoming that same ruby red from earlier. His canine teeth look just a little sharper.

"I suppose we should start at the beginning, as most stories do." He clears his throat, getting into his storyteller voice. 

"I was born close to here, a small settlers town. Something out of a bad historical fiction book, a calm town, as you'd expect of my time. You're going to have to know the time to understand this,  too. The sixteen-hundreds, more specifically, 1612. My birth year. I'm a lot older than I look, I know."

He's roughly four hundred, yet looks barely able to drink. He'd still get carded at most bars.

"Since I was born, everyone would talk about my eyes. Blue as the sea, they'd say. It was like they'd never seen someone with blue eyes before.  They've been both my pride and downfall many a time. That was what was notable about me. Nothing else, just my eyes. I was rather quiet as a child, I still am. I was lucky we didn't have bullies in the same way you do. Since my youth, books were my escape. It was rare I didn't have my nose stuck in one, as you'd say. I did my chores in the day, spent my nights reading by candlelight."

He hasn't had his nose out of a book much in the time I've known him, and he's right about the eyes. I understand why people found them interesting. 

"The storytellers were right when they said I was barely a teen, but there's so many things they got wrong. I hurt nobody that night. Sadly enough, it was 1626. The propaganda of Satan and witchcraft ran amok. I had family. Even they didn't believe me. Nobody was willing to hear me out." He looks up, intentionally making eye contact for emphasis. "I both love and hate the color red. It's the color of my eyes now, but it's also the color I ran from in the dead of night. It's the color of the leaves falling around my birthday. It's the color of the bricks I built that fireplace out of."

I lay back, getting more comfortable. Eric's sitting down beside me, but he still has room. Julian moves with us. Eric stretches his arms out as I bundle in a blanket like an excited child. Julian's far more comfortable now. I can see a soft smile light up on his face. 

"That night, I'd snuck out against my better judgement. It sounds rare that a boy in that time would've, but I still did. I didn't bring anything. I simply walked into the forest. I should've listened to my better angels, but as kids do, you have to learn to do that." He pauses to bring us closer. "I saw red eyes upon my entry into that forest. I felt called to those eyes. I kept going against my better judgement. Now, this is the bad part. I assume you've never been bitten by something that's trying to kill you?"

I shake my head. "As far as I know, no."

"I have. It hurts. Bad. Death would feel better than that. I was dead, actually. For a fraction of a second, I felt nothing. Absolute nothing. It all stopped. I was glad it did. That thing, that monster, had tried to rip me to shreds. With nothing more than its teeth and some animalistic instinct, it nearly did. You could imagine my surprise when I woke up to the sun shining down on me, those wounds I'd had completely healed. Not even a scar remained."

I mentally note every detail, filing it mentally.

"As I look back, I wasn't the only one who died that night. Several others did. I was the only one that came back. So, when I came back with my clothes torn that next night, eyes red, and flecks of blood on the remnants of my clothes, people did what they do. Chase out the outsider. They called me names, they tried to hurt me until I'd gone so far into the woods that they couldn't set foot there. Those woods were here. I came here. I settled myself. I settled and I never left. Here we are, four hundred nine years later, on the anniversary of that night."

The air feels like it's gotten lighter. I've seen him smile for the first time ever. He seems happy. 

"That might be one of the most interesting stories I've heard in a while. Thank you."

"You wanna hear about the time I lived through the revolution?"

We spent the rest of the night listening and laughing.