Recovery

Family

Urdu

Urdu could feel her power returning to her a little more every day, even without reaching up to touch her partially regrown horns. It was not yet enough to allow her to move as she wanted, nor had she been able to shift into a more palatable form for this world yet, but she had enough.

Enough to do what, she had not yet fully contemplated, though she sat at a table in the sunshine after a couple hours of training people and didn't feel the bright, burning, light drain her as much as it had even a few weeks ago.

Most of the work had already been done, and she could smell a meal cooking from the meal house across the gravel pathway from her, though her back was to it. Some of the humans were finishing up, putting away their tools and offering goodbyes to one another as they walked around to where she could smell the assortment of vehicles parked and waiting.

There were a couple humans, and a newly made vampire, who was straining against the thrum of the sun, standing outside a paddock not far in front of her, watching what smelled to be a rather high-spirited equine that was prancing around and pawing at the ground. She smelled the maleness of it, the assured confidence of a stallion that thought he was impervious to the world.

Sketching what her power allowed her to see, Urdu grinned, wondering how such a stallion would taste.

"C'mon Oz, he can be the stud... but he will not be any use for riding." One human offered, presumably to the vampire.

"D could tame him." She heard the contemplation in the leech's voice. "Probably in a hot minute, too."

She heard him hop over the railing of the fence and the stallion went still, no longer protected from a predator by the fence.

Humans were predators, but a vampire was more of one.

Urdu could scent the caution of the horse, and she flipped the page of her notebook and continued sketching, ignoring the approach of the human-hybrid she sometimes used for demonstration while teaching.

Urdu could smell the concern on that one as well, feeling him poised for disaster as the vampire moved deeper into the pen and soothed the stallion. "You are enamoured with the Leech."

"Yes." The man replied, and as whatever the vampire was doing didn't immediately result in disaster, he relaxed, moving to sit down across the table from her, though his attention was on the ring. "His name is Oscar. You are even more supernatural than he is. Why do you use derogatory terms?"

"Habit." Urdu offered a shrug. "Because it bugs them. Easier to say than Mosquito, or bed bug.

"What about a Lamia... that is a similar idea, without the negative connotations." The man murmured. He almost sounded offended. Or what counted as offended for the man, which was amusing seeing as he had been created to hunt down vampires on this planet.

Urdu hummed softly, offering a shrug. "Because I'd soon call him a Baobhan Sith or Chupacabra. But those are actual supernatural creatures that differ greatly from vampires."

"I've killed a Chupacabra before." The man murmured softly, shaking his head. "They are far less rational than vampires."

"Vampires come from humans." Urdu continued sketching, even as the vampire cowboy in the distance continued to tame the horse merely by dancing and gently touching it. "It means that most of their abilities and flaws are mere advancement from that of a human. These other creatures they are born the way they are."

"Where did vampires truly come from?"

Urdu turned her attention to the man, raising a brow. "Some say that they came from the gods. Handmaidens of Lamashtu, perhaps. Humans provided immortality for a greater purpose in serving the world. Where I come from most recently, the vampires came from idiot humans, thinking they could gain demonic powers from eating the flesh of a demon."