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onlyoneroseIt's over. But nobody knows that, not yet. While their sadistic, unseen hosts prepare to do whatever it is they must to end this experiment, a vampire continues to hunt, scrabbling for survival in a body made unfamiliar. Breathing, sleeping, mortal.
Persephone makes sure to test the branches this time (she'd taken a painful, embarrassing fall a few days ago) as she climbs up towards a bird's nest, her claws digging into the bark. There's no way she'll catch the mother, but eggs are edible, right? She doesn't remember how to cook them, but she's fairly sure mortals can eat them.
The mother--cardinals, the nest belongs to cardinals--divebombs her instead, and she catches it, her reflexes still intact. She might be more jubilant about her lucky break if she wasn't still unnerved by her death in the store. Death meant waking up in her coffin again, not that awful, cramped nothingness.
Now it's just survive. Survive so she never has to endure that again.
She lifts the nest and tucks the fresh bird corpse into her winter coat's pocket. Someone had stolen her satchel when she died, so she had to bear its added warmth to carry anything. But she could, at least, take it off when she went to prepare her meal. She takes a shortcut down by subsuming everything into her wolf form and fall-running down the boughs, landing with a grunt and a doggy shake to loosen caught twigs...next to her fellow vampire!
Maybe they were the one who killed her. Maybe they weren't. All she knows is he died, too, and that was an awful experience. Out of a desire to aid her kin, the only kin she's had in months, she reverts and offers the nest.
"Hello again. I found these; do you know how to prepare eggs? I am willing to share."
Persephone makes sure to test the branches this time (she'd taken a painful, embarrassing fall a few days ago) as she climbs up towards a bird's nest, her claws digging into the bark. There's no way she'll catch the mother, but eggs are edible, right? She doesn't remember how to cook them, but she's fairly sure mortals can eat them.
The mother--cardinals, the nest belongs to cardinals--divebombs her instead, and she catches it, her reflexes still intact. She might be more jubilant about her lucky break if she wasn't still unnerved by her death in the store. Death meant waking up in her coffin again, not that awful, cramped nothingness.
Now it's just survive. Survive so she never has to endure that again.
She lifts the nest and tucks the fresh bird corpse into her winter coat's pocket. Someone had stolen her satchel when she died, so she had to bear its added warmth to carry anything. But she could, at least, take it off when she went to prepare her meal. She takes a shortcut down by subsuming everything into her wolf form and fall-running down the boughs, landing with a grunt and a doggy shake to loosen caught twigs...next to her fellow vampire!
Maybe they were the one who killed her. Maybe they weren't. All she knows is he died, too, and that was an awful experience. Out of a desire to aid her kin, the only kin she's had in months, she reverts and offers the nest.
"Hello again. I found these; do you know how to prepare eggs? I am willing to share."
no subject
Date: 2026-01-13 09:33 am (UTC)She doesn’t sound at all disappointed, though she should probably be warier of having another vampire around.
She suddenly realizes something--she is making herself breathe. Persephone exhales, and keeps her lungs empty. Seconds pass. They do not demand to be refilled.
She breathes in again to speak. “Are we…restored?” Freed? she doesn’t quite dare to add.
no subject
Date: 2026-02-16 01:08 am (UTC)Are we... restored?
--the hunger as it was is gone. They don't - that awful constant gnawing desperation to bite and tear and swallow, hungry as they'd ever been and nothing that'd ever satiate it, is gone.
...which means - if they've been reverted to their prior existential states- she needs to find a human population. Preferably several. Or within the week she'll be too damaged to move and too delirious from pain to strategize.
Not ideal.
"Were there things you could no longer do, as a prisoner there, that you once could?"
no subject
Date: 2026-02-26 10:08 am (UTC)She'd been trying to collect enough stone for a Heart, but was getting little of use from the gravestones, and her body required more fuel, more frequently. She didn't know if they'd taken that, or if their soil--she can smell the difference now, the ancient blood in the roots of everything that wasn't in the ground of Witherd Branch--would even interact with one properly.
Well, there was one thing neither of them could do there.
Her blood reserves were long gone. Replaced in the ghost town with something that mimicked living blood, made in dead marrow and pushed through a heart forced to beat.
It lingered weak and useless in her veins. Preferable to being starved, but that was about it.
"We could find prey. If their hold on us is gone, we should be able to feed properly."