Metamorphosis

"Do you think," Laura asked, "That you will ever confide fully in me?" Carmilla smiled at her, but she made no verbal reply.

"You won't even answer that?" Laura sighed, both at Carmilla and herself. "Of course. You can't answer pleasantly. I ought not to have asked you," the blond shook her head in irritation and disappointment both when Carmilla refused to answer any of her questions, even though such a response, or lack thereof, was totally normal from the mysterious young woman.

"You were quite right to ask me that, or anything," Carmilla replied at last, taking pity on Laura. "You do not know how dear you are to me, or you could not think any confidence too great to look for," she looked at Laura in earnest, but then, her face took up a more mysterious expression.

"But I am under vows no nun half so awfully could imagine. I dare not tell my story yet, even to you. But the time is very near when you shall know all. You will think me cruel, very selfish, but love is always selfish. The more ardent, the more selfish. How jealous I am, you cannot know. You must come with me, loving me, to death, or else hate me and still come with me, hating me through death and after!" Carmilla finished, voice having gotten deeper and stronger the longer she spoke. The two were sitting together in Carmilla's bed, which was in the largest guestroom of Laura's schloss, and Carmilla was sitting up straighter and taller as she spoke, more animated with every second.

"Now, Carmilla, you are going to talk your wild nonsense again," Laura said hastily, sensing this oncoming change within Carmilla and fearing it. It would not be the first time Carmilla had spoken such fancies and frightened Laura a little with them. It was like she became an entirely different person in those moments and Laura still was not sure what to make of it. She tried to lower Carmilla back into the bed and calm her.

"Not I, silly little fool as I am, and full of whims and fancies," Carmilla gave Laura an unreadable smile as she let Laura soothe her. Then something akin to pity flickered in her dark eyes. "For your sake, I'll talk like a sage. Were you ever at a ball?"

"No. What is it like? How charming it must be!" Laura was still concerned that Carmilla might be about to lose herself to another strange bout of insanity again, but any chance to learn the young woman's mysterious past was one Laura was willing to take.

"I almost forget, it was years ago," Carmilla replied, a distant look entering her dark eyes again.

"You are not so old. Your first ball can hardly be forgotten yet!" Laura replied, unable to stop a small laugh. Although she did not know Carmilla's exact age, Laura guessed that it was around her own: 18 or 19. But Carmilla only shrugged, Laura's jest seeming to go right over her head.

"I remember everything about it," the young woman said at last. "But with an effort. I see it all, but it is fragmented. It is like looking through the broken glass of a picture frame at my past. Or it is as divers see what is going on above them, through a medium, dense and rippling, but transparent..." Carmilla trailed off for a moment before continuing. "That night was confused, its colors made faint. All I remember clearly was that I was all but assassinated in my bed, wounded right here," she touched her breast. "I was never the same since."

"Were you very near dying?" Laura asked, voice hushed with a mix of awe and fear. Carmilla nodded a little.

"Yes, very. It was a cruel love, a strange love, that would have taken my life. Love will have its sacrifices. No sacrifice without blood..."

"But you are here now," Laura interrupted again as Carmilla began to speak of blood and sacrifice. "You were not killed that night. You are alive! You are still here!" now Laura didn't know if she was trying harder to reassure herself, or Carmilla. This talk of blood, sacrifice and assassination was frightening the young blond and she was trying to pull Carmilla back away from such a dark and foreboding topic.