-The fields are filled with desires-
Task one.
"They will come for you at night..."
Note to readers: -Alessa and "False" are the same person. “Heeey, Lil, moooveee…. Lilith, you need to move so I can get through…. Lilith! Augghh, Alessa,” A rather tall man whimpered as he peeked over the tops of the boxes that were stacked up in his tattooed arms.
“Lilith, move,” came the woman’s stern, accented voice from one side of the people-filled, tattoo machine-buzzing, shop. Violet eyes looked up for a second to watch the blonde haired child scoot in exaggerated slowness to the right towards the wall.
“How’d you do that?” Asked the man as he moved forward, finally, and deposited the boxes next to the entrance desk and behind Alessa’s chair. He straightened up as he fixed his black shirt and watched the child begin to carefully examine one of the framed drawings that hung on the wall.
“Christ sake, Hayden, its not that hard. I just told her to move.” The Aussie had stopped her tattooing once more and turned in her chair to face in the direction that Lilith was in.
“I did tell her to move, didn’t you hear me? Though I don’t even know why I tried, she doesn’t listen to anyone but you.”
“Not true.”
“Yes true.”
“She listens to Aris.”
“You mean she stays away from Aris… She doesn’t listen to him.”
“Then maybe you should wear a cross around your neck then, or garlic. That might work too,” False smirked.
“Oh ha ha, funny funny,” Hayden rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest.
The pair continued to watch the child across the room. She had abandoned looking up at the framed drawing, as she was too close and just too short to see it. Turning to the left on the heel of her black dress shoes, she hopped forward and almost smacked into the waiting bench. Pale hands went up in front of her chest for a split second before they slowly fell back to her sides. Pale purple eyes watched the chatting patrons owlishly. Internally she was laughing at how they hadn’t seemed to notice her despite her being just inches away, so close in fact that she could count the hairs on the nearest woman’s fat arm. Lilith examined those people for quite a good while, long enough to make Hayden lose interest in watching her and her guardian to go back to her job before she lost her customer.
‘Finally.’ The child mentally sighed. Her light irises slid from their corners and back to the fat arm in front of her. With a quick glance upwards to make sure the woman was still talking, Lilith extracted a safety pin from the pocket on the side of her dress. With nimble fingers, for her age at least, she took the “pointy”, as she liked to call it, away from the rounded top. Twiddling it for a second between her thumb and forefinger, the child positioned her little weapon just so and held it above the plump arm flesh. Only a second later and there were three medium yelps that rang out in the shop simultaneously from the three people on the bench. Chaos followed after as the targeted woman leapt up to her feet and started waving her arm around and screaming like a madwoman. She made a mad dash towards the back of the shop, but instantly tripped. Two people were taken down with her; one being another customer and the other was Hayden. The newest stack of something he was carrying went up and everywhere and a tray of inkpots from the other tattooist’s area, just in front of False's area, went flying up as well and splattered all over the floor.
False just continued to sit and watch with a raised brow as everything unraveled and fell apart. Amidst the cries from the woman and the buzz made from the repeated “what happened/who did it?” questions, deep violet eyes were already searching out a particular child who had ducked inside one of the cabinets to safely watch what she had caused.
---
“Now tell me again, for the twentieth time, why did you shove the damned pin in that woman’s arm?” The question was genuine, not harsh or threatening, surprisingly. Alessa was standing in the doorway, watching the pale blonde child stop putting on her nightgown to look back at her.
“Because I wanted to hear her scream,” her reply was paired with a devilish little smirk that’d make the exorcist girl run in terror.
Alessa, however, just rolled her eyes and sighed. “You…. I have no bloody idea,” she ended lamely and just turned out of the room. She wasn’t mad, per se, at Lilith, but it wasn’t like she was going to congratulate the girl for causing a ruckus and making the shop lose some money due to the ink spillage and that the “pinned” woman vowed she’d never come back there again. The only good that came out of that day was seeing Aris’s face at the sight of the chaos, seeing Hayden get squished, and Collin (the tattooist who’s ink had gotten catapulted through the air), almost wet himself from laughing.
Lilith stayed in the position with her nightgown “half off half on” until she could no longer hear her guardian’s footsteps. When the gentle thuds ceased, she pulled her arm through the sleeve and let the clothing fall around her body and her ankles. Bare feet slid dryly over the floorboards of her square room towards the door and closed it quickly to keep the squeak of the hinges away. Turning to her left, she bent down and yanked the plug of the lamp, the only thing supplying light to the room at the time, out of the wall. With glowing eyes she watched as the room became dark and as the silver moon light and shadows stretched themselves over her bed and floor. A calm sensation washed over her small body. She liked the dark, the moon… not the evil that was the day, the sun, where she had to go everywhere under a black parasol. At night she was free and could plainly stand in natural light without being burned or feeling sick…
Coming out of her dark sky reverie, the curly haired child crossed back over to her bed. With the aid of a stepping stool, she was soon up and in the bed’s inky covers, their fabric already twisting around her frame as she moved to get situated. Thoughts of the day skidded around her drowsy head as lids fell over pale lanterns, a small smirk lighting on her lips before all senses seemed to stop.
---
Something caused the “lights upstairs” to switch on, but the child’s eyes remained closed. Lilith could hear something, or someone, scuffling around her room. An unfamiliar scent drifted just about her nose; it was a cold smell, dusty and dreary, with dark blood… Her small muscles twitched, and her heart banged against her ribcage, but as a whole she looked unmoving. Its footsteps continued.
Perhaps it was Alessa? …No, her guardian did not sneak about like this in the house, and she didn’t smell weird either…It could be an animal? It was possible, since those things smelled odd, but there was something in the back of Lilith’s mind that told her it was bigger than a raccoon or opossum.
She could hear it touch things; start moving and then stop to pick up and examine whatever it was that had caught its interest. Lilith was content to stay perfectly still in her bed, pretending to be asleep, until there was a sound that made her eyes flick open and unlatch the coiled springs in her legs.
“Don’t you touch that!” She hissed. The child had made some crazy leaps over the bed and onto the floor, skidding to the side of a whicker chair where a silver violin and its bow were propped up. Lilith crouched slightly, lips pulled back in some type of snarl that flashed her longer-than-normal pearly canines. No one touched the instrument but her, not even Alessa, and definitely not whatever this thing was.
The mystery “creature” actually jumped back in surprise, landing in the moonlight. Its once shadowed body became that of a rather tall and thin looking man swathed in black clothing. His skin appeared paper white, and slightly blue from the current lighting. His hair was the color of the purest snow imaginable and it fell in feathery layers around his long, but smooth, face. Bits of thin silver chain, like those used in jewelry, glinted from his jacket pocket and around his neck, even a bit from his ear as well.
Lilith stared in what perhaps could be called awe, despite her hissing and almost feral manner at the moment. Pale violet eyes traveled up and down the man’s figure a few times, but became stuck on his face. Electric green orbs locked with her eyes and no matter what she tried to do, she couldn’t look away. There was a familiarity in them, but how? She had never met this man in her life and she didn’t even know if he was human or some…. thing from 40,000 leagues under the sea. “Who-who…”
The unknown man began to speak to her, his words a little slow, as if he were only talking to himself.
Lilith stopped her hissing and let an eyebrow rise just slightly in confusion. The mystery man spoke in a language she could not comprehend. It was smooth, and actually very pretty, but whatever meaning the spoken words had were lost to the child. She merely continued to watch him, her eyes locked with his.
The child stared for a moment and watched the man tilt his head as he spoke again in those pretty-sounding words that her mind couldn’t understand. “Who are you?” Lilith asked again, her tone sharp. Her snarl had regained itself in annoyance to this calm and foreign intruder.
The man’s voice was as calm as ever. “I am not so different than you, young one,” his accent was heavy, but at least this time his words could be understood.
“You’re not like me!” Spat the child and she glared at the man for thinking her to be so stupid. She felt as if he were mocking her, in some way, shape, or form, with his calm demeanor and lack of reaction towards her.
The unnamed man only gave a distant chuckle. He moved silently towards Lilith and only stopped when he crouched down so his face was mere centimeters from hers. “Oh, I would not be so sure of that, miss. You see, similar DNA runs through both our veins. We both fear the day and its light, and we are both preyed upon by the ‘Les Sangs de Saints.’”
Lilith couldn’t explain why, but when the man uttered the foreign name, she inwardly shuddered. The internal feeling to look over her shoulder tingled in her mind, but she dared not to; her eyes continued to bore deep into his emerald ones in an unblinking manner. “You…who are the “Les Sangs de Saints?” She asked in a curious, but wary, tone.
“Ah. They are the ones who shadow our steps, our lives. They are the ones who cause the tingling feeling in the back of your mind that makes you to look over your shoulder. They are always hunting us, looking for us. We run, but cannot hide from them for long, because the always find us.” He spoke in a cold tone; a serious tone. It was one that held malice, but fear as well.
The blonde child listened intently; her posture straight and slightly relaxed, her face calm and almost expressionless as it hid her true thoughts. “Us… You’re a vampire, aren’t you…?” She finally understood some and it explained why there was something familiar about him; he was like her.
The man nodded. “I am, like you. And it is because of that that I was sent here to warn you.”
“Warn me?”
“Yes. They’re here…”
“Les Sangs de Saints?”
“Yes…and they’re looking for you, for all of us.”
For the first time during this encounter, Lilith felt fear. Her heart pounded in her chest, her cold palms felt clammy, and there was that feeling that urged her to look over her shoulder. “But-,”
The man cut her off as he put up a silver decorated hand. His eyes had finally broken from hers and were now looking over her shoulder towards the door. Standing quickly, he spoke, “I must go now, dear child.”
“But…how do I know who the Saints are? What will they do? How do they act? When do they come and how can I stay away from them? … And you never told me who you were!”
The man was already at her window, the moon’s light glinting off the metal on his person. Lifting the bottom of the window, he paused, and looked over his shoulder. “Just remember, Lilith, that they will come for you at night.” With those last words he slid out and just seemed to vanish into thin air, never answering her last question.
Lilith ran after him to the window, but he was already gone. The cool air fluttered through her curls as she stuck her head out into the night.
They will come for me at night...
