The first weeks were hell.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwNkAxYB6XU
What you produced, those bright, unholy screams, could have driven even demons insane. And I was not far from it.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡef5Ycanhr7
But keeping you alive was the highest priority.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvsIoex6oiX
Newborns want milk. Milk, of all things. Blood was easier to come by: a sleeping wanderer at the edge of the forest, that took care of itself. Milk, however, was a logistical plague.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzRgjxP2iPZ
I could not simply show up in the village. The pale stranger, always at dusk, buying the same thing over and over. People always talk.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRXAdSPyN8V
So I made arrangements.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡW1CJt4VJs7
Through the gossip of old women I knew that goat’s milk was said to be better for infant stomachs than cow’s milk.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFUmwATbKeo
I struck a deal with a nearly blind farmer on the edge of the village.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGepuVBlTCJ
Sometimes I watched him on my rounds. He hobbled to the livestock before sunrise, feeling his way along the fence, sometimes speaking tenderly, sometimes harshly to the animals. I never seriously thought of using him as a blood source. First, the risk of being caught was too great. Second, he had already been beaten enough by life.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡe31ty271hs
I was sure he did not live alone. He must have had a family, children, grandchildren who cared for him. Alone, blind and limping, no one survives that long.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDoqQ1nk4Jj
One morning I intercepted him.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkPt7PqG6Q4
“Who’s there? I can hear you since the barn,” the farmer growled.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0PYqT3ytZw
“God bless, farmer. I need milk. Every morning at this hour, from the goat.” I put on my friendliest smile, though he could hardly see it. Still, the old man was suspicious.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSysbyJuLyv
“Plenty want milk. None come this cursed early.” His nose twitched slightly and I knew why. No matter how often I wash, I always smell faintly of rot.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8vdzgF0Mcy
Not like the plague corpses in the house. More like an old chapel that has existed too long. Of old stone and rotting wood. That comes with my condition. My body does not live, but it no longer ages. It is dead.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6Q7F9xmQjm
“I will pay a silver coin per week if you leave the jug at the stall. I will put the money under the stone.”327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbnIy56l5wo
“What is your name? Where are you from?” He blinked, feeling along my face.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnG0ClfrqcZ
“Do you want the money or not?”327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDHw4izEgQR
The old man nodded. “I am old. Milk is milk, money is money. Everything else is none of my business.”327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBMuVi4thkT
And he delivered reliably. It was always lukewarm, fatty, often with flies in it. So it was fresh.
Every night the same ritual. Into the forest, an animal for me, goat’s milk for you, back to the house, the jug in my hand like a deranged wet nurse out of a dark fable. Always hoping you had not yet woken. Most often you had. Your screams sliced the silence as I neared the house. Sharp, pleading. And by all gods, how they cut through my marrow.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡylxEOonfZX
A vampire rushing up stone steps, the bottle clutched tight. And you stretched your little arms out to me and the moment I held you, the moment I offered you the milk, you went quiet. It was bothersome. It was impractical. It was devastating.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbKfUv14wIx
I missed not a single night.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiF6h9WPt3o
Still, I made countless mistakes.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡG3IPoIPyqX
Warmth equals comfort, I thought. Only, I am undead. My sense of warmth is distorted.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡO7DZaImP5c
So I did what any clueless vampire would do. I laid you on the only wooden table in the kitchen, wrapped in my cloak, while I poured milk into a dented pan. I blew the fire until the milk began to steam. You cried, I tried to ignore it and focused on keeping the milk from boiling over.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvsAvAXlTTN
I filled an old goat skin, so hot that even now I still hear the screaming in my ears when I pressed it to your lips.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsFrYA02ajw
You screamed like a pig at slaughter. I dropped the goatskin. Milk splattered, steaming across the cold stone floor.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAD4hskkiDk
I held you desperately, rocked you somehow soothingly, while I cursed myself in every language I knew.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡftTG2vNASi
I spent the next hour like a clumsy village maid, cooling the milk on the window ledge until it stopped steaming and I could say with certainty:327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsGXRRjiNEq
“This one… will not burn her.”
But your picky taste lasted only a few days.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5f44cx4qdj
“What a miserable appetite,” I mocked one night as I held the cooled goat’s milk to your mouth as if it were a cursed artifact. After a few days you spat it out as if I had poured swamp water into you.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRjNWAl2p3z
“Picky like a noble brat and you can’t even speak,” I growled, frustrated. I had to find what worked. Goat’s milk you now rejected.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1W8UIcOk4O
The next morning I struck a new deal with the farmer, cow’s milk this time.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkFXGe2MI5Q
You liked that best. But it agreed with you the least. As soon as the bottle was empty, the wailing began anew. You squirmed as if I had fed you hot coals. I held you against my body the way I had seen wet nurses do. I walked the room, swaying you gently, speaking soft words.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4xRyq0dg0K
Nothing helped. I had never acted according to a manual, did not even have one.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHEG6vsVDkK
Then for the first time I thought of Grellborn. Not because I wanted to see him but because my alternatives were running out.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8LGkHkk4VS
Grellborn, a geriatric, half-rotted herbalist who always claims he was once created by lightning. I rather think he was conceived during a lukewarm summer rain that retreated after five minutes.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRZuridXHZh
I spare him because he is useful. He knows which herbs induce other states of mind, it drives away the endless boredom of eternity. And because his blood would taste musty. I sometimes confide my secrets to him, he forgets them anyway.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0T5fOXzgQv
For his very generous services I sometimes hunt him a rabbit or fetch some bones from a crypt for his powders. He says the cold in the crypt has begun to ache in his joints. I think he is simply afraid and will not admit it. Over the years a kind of purpose-friendship developed between us.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡu9h9aKPy5I
Because for reasons unknown my father found it important to teach a bastard Latin, I translate old books and scrolls on herbalism, alchemy or whatever druids consider important. Grellborn then sells the goods under the table.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiya82HchZR
When Grell takes them to market discreetly, the translations bring in a side income and he gets twenty percent of the proceeds for his trouble.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvn5UtjUZEo
I offered him more but he refused with following words:
“More is never more, Szandor. It is only heavier to carry.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnuxSkIFeiI
What you own also owns you.”
I could have strangled him for his pseudo-intellectual wisdom, but I had just woken up.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzrmGHxtYvY
He handled the worldly things while I served my curse.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡu9rr6N2eOK
I wrapped you in my cloak and went to Grellborn. Not a long way, but every time an ordeal. Visiting him usually meant admitting defeat. I was used to fending for myself. Visiting him meant admitting a defeat to myself.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡn3ozwMa9y8
The path led past rock and cold rivers mixed with the dense pine forests of Vargarin, through the mire that caked my boots to the ankles.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWpuxs7WHDR
As if I were a stable boy again. I did not want to be reminded of that.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtjq83EIRM0
You grew briefly quiet in my arms. Too exhausted to go on screaming. It never lasted long. The pain must have been cruel for you.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyPUtPRGTDj
I walked faster. Wolves should not scent us. And your howling I wanted to hear even less.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8rw4jPZGLj
My cloak snagged everywhere. On rotted branches, on twigs that reached for me like greedy hands. I tore myself free, cursed, trudged on.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1qRoV9DzZi
Your small body was like a bird wrapped in a wolf’s pelt. So easy to break and yet so hard to ignore.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXoIav16Q9i
It was like my own curse. To feel how near life and death lie and be unable to do anything about it.
Like me, Grellborn lived hidden at the foot of the Grymm Mountains in the dense conifer forest. His hut was simpler than my two-story manor, half swallowed by the forest, easy to miss if one did not know what to look for.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzNGptV76O9
A simple structure of wood and clay, roofed with straw. So old that moss had long formed a second roof. Stones stacked into low walls where he grew his herbs and plants.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZ9XQMrpPiH
I did not knock. I just entered. As always.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡN3naeVFghK
The hearth on the wall was already nearly out. Only embers glowed in the dark. I shut the door louder than necessary. On purpose. As always the whole room smelled of an earthy blend of mildew, herbs hanging over the hearth and old smoke. Grellborn had fallen asleep by the fire. The pipe had fallen onto his belly, crumbs of tobacco scattered. Now he was awake, not least because of your screaming.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxJDWEtscKl
“Uuhh,” he groaned and blinked out from under bushy white brows without looking at me. I had just opened my mouth to say something but you beat me to it and screamed full force into my ear. I growled, tore you from my shoulder and slammed you unceremoniously onto the only table in the room. Grellborn’s eyes snapped open. He turned in his chair to me, his eyes flicking confused between me and you. Then he smiled mischievously.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiZSWkVDksQ
“Ha by God, Szandor. What is this noise? Shall I fetch the exorcist?” Grellborn rose slowly and groaning from his chair.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIkSTY1o48Y
I ran a hand through my hair, jaw clenched.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4nMHENOUW9
“She does not stop. Days on end. I do not know what to do anymore.” I was beside myself, as if the last thread of self-control would snap.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoPu6ikYrg6
“And before you ask, no, I am not the father. I found her a few days ago. In the forest. Just help me before I throw this brat into the river,” I almost shouted.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgP9vfXaAnl
Grellborn said nothing more. He understood. Gently he took you from the cloak, bent over, felt your belly.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWK5qotD53l
“What have you given her?”327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUXd9hZ2BME
“Cow’s milk,” I replied dryly.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡw2oW2VZftQ
“By all the holy river nymphs, Szandor… Cow’s milk sits heavy in a baby’s belly.” He laid a hand on your forehead. I rolled my eyes.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEzdXPMC20w
“She refuses any other milk. Cow is the only one she does not spit out.”327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2FKgoEybu8
Grellborn turned his head to me. “Ah. She is like you. Picky with a flair for drama.” After a deep breath he reached for his staff and shuffled through his hut while I muttered under my breath, “I am not dramatic.”
Grell’s hut was always a sharp contrast to the cold, harsh mountain surroundings. The moment you stepped in, a diffuse scent of smoke, all sorts of herbs and Grell’s own smell enveloped your nose. Bundles of herbs hung from the ceiling beams like dried bats. A hearth on the wall kept one from freezing, and with the candles on the table in the corner the hut itself became a pleasant orange glow that never seemed to go out, especially in winter when darkness and frost lurked outside.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLDXuXnhbUz
He opened a few drawers, each creaking as if the worm-eaten wooden box wanted to die. Then he pulled a clay bowl from the shelf and crumbled various dried leaves into it with surprisingly steady hands, crushing them gently in the mortar.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡedBAUpuX6Z
“There. Fennel, chamomile, a touch of valerian. Not for exorcism but for a child’s gut.”
Eventually, after many nights I found out: cow’s milk, heated to exact body temperature and sweetened with honey, was the only thing you liked. Herbs helped against the cramps. I crushed them fresh as Grellborn had shown me, let them steep in barely cooled water and dabbed the brew into your mouth with a cloth or gave you a bottle of it. At least you had no more pain.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRaQ7eWoKf3
And if all else failed, only one thing calmed you. My voice. My voice, monotone and deep. No feeling. No rise, no fall. Only the steady murmuring of a creature that had long forgotten what sleep sounded like.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ731qeMni4s
You were so small I thought a strong sneeze would snap your spine.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡizAL2z19k3
I held you against me, my arm under your tiny head, the bottle at the right angle.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6lmRmNrXd9
It should have bored me. To my own surprise it did not.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhHEjWWRMCy
I watched your contented face. Felt your warmth against my chest, your heart beating far too fast. And then came that thought, piercing and intrusive.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQIuXI5MG7q
I could drain her dry. And instead I give her life.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsbJ8YhspsE
This reversal amused me. I, the hunter, you, the prey. And yet… I nourished you. Not with blood. With milk. It was no affection.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡID67XEDOZ4
It was a kind of control I had never known before. And I did not know whether it frightened me more… or intoxicated me.
And then to clean you? That was a tiresome duty.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsF7ULt8DZx
Would you believe I was completely unprepared for the sheer flood of bodily excretions an infant can produce? Blood I understood. Its texture, its sublime consistency. But this? This godless broth of milk and bile?327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5WWD2w5GWT
It was… humbling.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0k6eUZtZ0s
At first I wore gloves. Silk, of course. But eventually I accepted it as part of the experience, if you will. I washed you with river water that I heated over an old iron pan, muttering a string of curses like a deranged witch while you kicked and screamed. You constantly wanted to grab my hair. An exceptionally annoying habit.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdFc0kyWG8p
I prepared a pan for hygiene. Hot water, lavender oil if I could spare it, otherwise chamomile, and scrubbed each cloth until it was soft and spotless again. Sometimes I boiled them afterward on the stove in boiling water. For safety. Steam rose in the silent hours of the night, my hands red and raw from the soap. The scent clung to me, to the walls, to you. And do you know what was most impractical?327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAfrF5UfzUG
You hated the smell of lavender.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyFQISrjuE8
Wrinkled your little face and sneezed as if the scent had insulted your entire lineage. So I stopped using it.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHLIYzn68mr
Sometimes when I put the cloths into the boiling water I saw two bright eyes in the window frame. Golden, motionless, silent. Pointed ears like black brushes and a brown coat with black spots.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiraz5I2n8U
A lynx, too curious for its nature, too aware as it stared at me. It watched me as if nature itself wanted to witness how a creature of the night washes excrement out of cotton and even finds it amusing.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡE5tYqqwx1v
I decided to ask Grellborn about lynxes as soon as the chance arose.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqVFGfcHpH7
As a druid he knows such things, surely.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGQrueyCqko
I folded each cloth into a precise, orderly square. Stacked them so you could never reach them but always see them, only so you would know. Someone was caring for you and keeping order.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡICiQGLffyv
I, a creature of the night, spent my evenings scrubbing shit out of cotton. I could not believe it myself, but it gave me a sense I had thought lost.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfOcOj0MNjR
And I would do it again anytime.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvl2IktHNEZ
Because it meant you were alive and I had everything under control.327Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwL5RftvrTL
And perhaps it let me feel a hint of humanity again. It gave me a sense I had thought lost.
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