Darius awoke to the sound of an owl calling from a treetop not far from the open window above his bed.He lay there with his eyes opened, listening to the low tenor of its voice sound in three short staccato notes followed by a single fermata.It repeated itself every few minutes like clockwork and had been there each night since his return to Taifera, just as it had been there every night since his liberation.The owl arrived the night after his nine month stint as a hostage of the werewolves had ended.
The first few evenings hadn’t bothered him.While he wondered at the owl’s odd, nightly presence, it had been a welcome companion in those initial days.Its call was a distraction from the unrest he experienced being amongst his brethren again after so long in captivity.That solitary call in the waking hours of the night provided him with something to focus on; which was a mental discipline taught to all vampire in their training as knights.Applying his conscious mind to a single external object drowned out the torrent of other thoughts hounding him and by the time Darius would rise, bathe and clothe, the owl would be gone.It worked well for a time.But soon the owl’s constant presence each early evening began to nag at him.What did it want?What unnatural machination had set that nocturnal predator to trespass upon Darius’ waking hours with its repetitious hooting?Why would it not leave him be?
After a fortnight of visitation, he had become so bothered by the owl’s incessant presence and plaguing call that he decided to try and scare the thing off.First with rocks, and after a few days of failing to dissuade the owl from returning, with a bow and arrow.The owl was a smart one though.Just as Darius would be cocking back his arm to throw or drawing an arrow back to loose, the owl would take flight and disappear into the night.Darius might have attempted shooting it from the sky, but an archer he wasn’t.Nor did he want a stray arrow alerting his brethren and giving them cause to question his aberrant behavior.It had been almost two months since he’d been freed and near to a week since he had returned from the borderlands.The owl had followed him for the entire journey home; he’d given up trying to be rid of it.If the Goddess wished him to serve penance, then so be it.
He listened while to the owl’s unremitting calls overpowered the slow and rhythmic breathing of the sleeping woman beside him.Her back lay bare to the chill winter breeze that caused the thin white curtains to quiver just above his head.While the cold might send a human diving beneath the covers seeking warmth and refuge, her pale vampiric flesh merely blushed beneath the invisible caress.She was nothing to him but a nameless woman who had warmed his bed for the night; that bare, porcelain flesh but a momentary diversion.
He was certain that his patronage of the brothel would spark many a noble lip to flapping, but he no longer cared about the opinions of those vein, self-serving peacocks.Sixteen years of fighting the werewolf, sixteen years of conflict along the borderlands had done far more than turn a boy into a man.
He shifted to his side and trailed the back of his forefinger down between her shoulders and to the small of her back.She stirred from her slumber and brushed her hair from her face to look up into his eyes.She was a consummate professional.The time it took her to remember that she was sleeping in a stranger’s bed and to don the façade of a wanting lover for a paying customer took barely the span of an inhaled breath.He caught it, but just as quickly dismissed it as she climbed atop and straddled him.She wasn’t the only one who could play a part.
“My, you are an energetic man aren’t you.”She purred into his ear as she gathered him inside her.The only thing was, he didn’t feel that way at all. He felt old and weathered, like a piece of hide worn smooth from chafing.
In the distance, the owl was no longer calling.
-- Edited by A Noble Rising on Wednesday 2nd of December 2009 04:05:24 PM
