Be Careful What You Wish For

Chapter Four

1 Truth be told, Irina Horváthová had never pegged herself as a nature person. She'd been fond of her hometown, Kremnica, back in the old Slavic territories, centuries before the founding of the state of Slovakia. It was beautiful, modern, and always teeming with life. Due to the mining operation, there were always people from foreign lands arriving, bringing news from abroad, teaching her snippets of unknown languages. She'd loved learning new things, meeting new people, gathering knowledge. All her life, her human life, she had dreamed of meeting a rich merchant or someone of similar means, and leave her home, travel, see the world as it was known back then. What she wanted was to see cities: Rome, Constantinople, any place with many people in it, tall stone buildings, dozens of different languages being spoken, culture, novelty. No, simple, quiet nature was all around her as she grew up, and it held little interest to her. Irina was going to find a foreign husband, she was going to leave Kremnica, and she was going to live a long, exciting life travelling the world.

It was almost funny how prophetic these wishes had turned out to be, even if not quite the way she had imagined.

"The first man I loved was called Lyubomir," she told the youthful-looking man sitting to her left on the park bench overlooking Elliott Bay Beach. The sky was overcast with heavy, dark-grey clouds and the air was chilly; still, there were plenty of humans around, walking, running, cycling, enjoying the lovely view. Irina herself had only learned to appreciate the quiet majesty of nature after her death – after her rebirth. There was a certain irony to this, wasn't there? Alive, she had not valued creation as much as she had started doing after losing everything that had made her human. "He was Russian."

"Human?" the man said. He was a baritone, which was surprising if one took into account his slender frame and almost boyish features. There was a trace of an accent there, too; he wasn't accustomed to speaking much Slovakian.

From the corner of her eye, she could see that he was watching her. "Yes," she said, idly brushing a wayward strand of her long, blonde curls behind her ear. "Loves the world, the name means. It was very fitting." A small, wistful smile played with her lips. "He must've been the kindest person I ever met. He told me that where he came from, my name was pronounces Arina, and so, he called me Arisha. I thought it was lovely. I thought everything he did was: the way he treated me, the way he treated everyone around him. I think that it's become a commodity, you know? Kindness – among us, among the humans."

"It has; I happen to agree," he said. There was a softness to his tone that she'd never heard before. Well, it wasn't as if they knew each other very well, but they had interacted in the past, when...when the unspeakable had happened. Back then, in Kremnica, right before she and her sisters had decided to leave. "You remember him well, then? This human?"

She nodded briefly. Two young women walked by, arm and arm, smiling – downright glowing, actually – and obviously very close to each other. Just looking at this obvious display of happiness, of friendship, of love, was enough to make Irina feel heavy and hollow and old. By God, sometimes, she just felt so old. "Yes. I didn't, at first. You know, after I was turned. It took me years, in fact. Eventually, though, I succeeded, and now, the memories are with me forever."

"I know how that feels," he said, sounding the tiniest bit melancholy, "although the only thing from my human life I found worth remembering in greater detail was my mother. Everything else has all but faded away, now. It's...blurred. Dream-like."

Irina closed her eyes for a moment. She breathed in deeply the scent of the water, the trees, the air, the people. The back of her throat hurt, but she had fed before coming down here, and so, the thirst was manageable. "What was she like?"