Vampire Residence

II

Now, somewhere around seven hundred and fifty years later, the very same cloaked figure- granted, she wasn't currently cloaked- stood over Eleanor's bed, once more.

Standing over her bed was putting it in normal, human terms. What Daciana was doing was standing at the end of her coffin, staring intently at the lid. She was starting to get antsy. Usually, Eleanor would've been up as soon as the sun had set.

But not tonight, for whatever reason.

Daciana was growing quite concerned - it was nearing two whole minutes past sunset, and Eleanor showed no indications of stirring. The vampire found herself starting to tap her toe against the wooden floor, her impatience all too quickly getting the best of her.

Perhaps it couldn't hurt to check inside the coffin, just to make sure that nothing was amiss...

Daciana leaned down, reaching her gloved hands forward to pop the heavy lid on Eleanor's coffin open-

As soon as the lid was lifted slightly, an unkindness of ravens came flying out, the beating of their wings drowning out all other sounds for a few seconds until they all disappeared.

Once the flurry of wings had all calmed down, the room was still- until a soft, pale hand reached out of the open coffin and placed itself upon the edge of the lid.

Soon enough, Eleanor's head poked out from the dark space, her eyes blinking lazily while she adjusted to the lamplit room.

"You could've warned me," she mumbled, pushing herself up into a sitting position in the coffin as she stretched and yawned.

"I knocked three minutes ago, you did not answer." Daciana stumbled a bit on the word "three", still struggling with her accent getting in the way of her pronunciation of words, even after all this time.

"Couldn't hear you over the sounds of my deep and rejuvenating rest." Eleanor yawned again and stepped out of the coffin, smoothing down the creases in her nightgown as she did so.

"I do hope you didn't come here just to gawk at me while I slept."

"I was not gawking." Daciana stumbled again, "was" coming out as "vas", "Not until you made a spectacle with my ravens."

"Not your ravens, our ravens," Eleanor corrected, smoothing her hair back out of her face.

"And I didn't mean to send them all flying out. They... They got excited when they saw you standing over the coffin. Wanted to say hi, I suppose."

"Excited? Our ravens?" Daciana inquired. "Since when do ravens get... excited?"

She was certainly looking more than a little perplexed, glancing back at the still-opened coffin and then at Eleanor.

"Well... I feed them a couple of times. Give them little treats."

Eleanor turned her back to her companion and walked over toward the mirror set up against the wall, making various adjustments to her hair, even though she couldn't see herself reflected in the glass.

"They're not dumb animals, compare me. They're more than just messengers. They can recognize people, they can remember faces. And they do get excited. The big ones tend to get... very pushy, to be honest."

"The ravens do not do the pushing. They have no arms." Daciana made a face, her confusion evident in both her expression and her voice.

"Not literally, they don't," Eleanor answered bluntly as she pulled the nightgown off over her head.

"Yes, birds with no arms. No arms for being pushy-ing." Daciana quickly turned to face the opposite wall, giving her wife the privacy that she'd neglected to ask for herself.