Für Sarah

A Spark of Something

Above the raucous, drunk laughter, and fiddle playing, a young maiden locked away from the world untied the strings to her white dressing gown, letting it slide off of her bare skin and down to the wooden floor.

With a small, graceful hand she tasted the water's temperature in the small bath by dipping the tips of her fingers in it.

It steamed and made her hand tingle with heat.

Sarah smiled and stepped into it, the hot water rushing over her skin as she submerged in its comfort.

There were little privileges the former wicked girl was allowed. Bathing was one of them. Sarah took immense pleasure in her nightly one, laying with her head resting against the rim of the bath as she would open her window, the moonlight pouring over her and making her skin glow.

She told Mama and Papa it made her feel renewed and clean to take one once a day. They believed her.

But truly it was for the thought that one day he would come.

Her window in her bedchamber was locked tight with a key. Sarah couldn't open it if she tried. But the washroom window opened wide. She often sang to him from the bath, her voice echoing and carrying on the wind.

But he never heard.

At least, he never made any indication that he did. Sarah hadn't laid conscious eyes on her Prince of the Night since he'd promised she would only have to wait until her eighteenth before becoming totally and completely his.

But she longed to be his now.

Nearly two years had passed without a word from him. The night of her birth was a few sunsets away and she ached with anticipation. Her two year long facade wasn't all for not- Graf von Krolock would come and rescue her.

Sarah would dance in red velvet boots, in a red velvet down in his arms and she would feel his teeth sink into the skin on her neck...

The seventeen year old flinched outwardly, bringing a dripping wet hand to her ivory column. Of course, Sarah was absolutely petrified at the thought of how exactly she was to become his Queen of the Night.

Would it hurt? And if so, how much?

She would die, this she knew.

Elisa's stories, Mama's fears... they soon became her greatest hope, desire, and terror.

Sarah relaxed once more with a sigh, taking her sponge and the bar of soap, dragging it across her wet skin, imaging something else was touching her instead. Or rather, someone else.

In a moment of weakness, she sat up at faced the open window, head tilted up to gaze upon the stars. The wind blew a breeze and made her shiver, her auburn loose braids tickling her collar bone.

Then, taking in a breath of the frigid October air, Sarah began to sing. Her melodious voice echoed a three noted harmony, one she heard in her dreams and on the breeze past the glass of the window pane. She sang to him. Begging for his attention and for his salvation. Must he make her wait? It was only a few days difference.... her body tingled in excitement and impatience. She'd been locked away for far to long. It was time now to become who she was meant to be. To live, to die, and to live again in the eternity Graf von Krolock promised.

But after her music faded away, a loud silence filled the air in its place. Disheartened, Sarah swallowed as her hands griped the edge of the tub so hard her knuckles turned white. The painful feeling of prickling behind her eyes forced them to water and her chest to shake. "Must you make me wait?" Sarah murmured. "I thought I was strong but I am not. I shall die here if you do not save me, don't you understand? This place will drive me mad!"