THE VAMPIRE VITTORIA | THE ACCOUNT OF AN IMMORTAL PAST

II-Blinded by the Son of Dawn

Within my grief, I had made for the fields and into the forest. There, I wandered further than I had ever dared to endeavor, until I was all but hopelessly lost.

The days were spent with the sweet of the berries, the sweet of wild anemones and pale pasque flowers, the sweet of the green, mossy grass. Everything sweet and sweet and sweet, that I might never leave.

Then, finally, with all the stupidity I could call upon, I had ventured into the heart of it, where the untrained wilderness was menacing and black. I had never known the eerie dark, or seen how the moon light cast down like silvery lace upon the bark of the trees, so that it seemed the forest held haunting life within the depths of it.

It was damp and cold and I was hungry. I slept among the roots of the oak trees upon the bare earth, and the nights were finally so frigidly cold, that my body shivered from aching fever. And then it was that no sweetness of the longing day could mend it.

The sun would rise and hurt my eyes, warm my already too warm skin, so that I lay helpless and warn, my cheek pressed to the cool dirt. It stuck to the sweat upon my face, clung to my heated lips.

    I thirst for water that my body had finally become too weak to find. My head pounded with aching fever that sent me into delirium. I slipped in and out of consciousness, and I couldn't know which state I had been during my visions.

Above me, I saw brilliant light all about a golden face, and gleaming white wings from which casted the barest, pleasant breeze like so many fanning hands. I felt myself reach for them, only to then fall limp onto the ground. I could not speak, could not part my parched lips to say the words, "I knew that you would come." I strained to look at their quiet gaze, the beam of light that was their face, until the light was gone away from my eyes altogether.

When again they were open, it was dark and that bitter cold again. Another night and I thought, no, I cannot go on. Every part of me was pain. Every part having their own particular sort of agony, that I felt sick upon vomiting.

   Shown above were the the swaying trees, the splendid stars, blurred in my vision in a half sleep. And it seemed they met to form a silvery face that looked on; cold flames to make glittering tresses, a silvery mouth that whispered, "you are found and you are safe." And I viewed it all with a feverish mind.

    And then it was as if one of those cold flames reached to me, touching my face, grazing my forehead, and then finally lifting me from the earth.

I was floating, the world passing in shadow and light in a mingling of vibrant colors that danced before my eyes.

Then nothing.