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Nightmares.
They were just another thing that bound them together. Nightmares, that were equal parts fear and memory. The exact flavor between them might differ, but they all had them.
Morana did not even know what it was like to sleep without them. Without nightmares. She did not even know whether there once had been a time in her life in which she had not been haunted by them. After all those things that lay more than 500 years in the past were blurry in her memory, getting only blurrier as time went on.
She could only wonder if those things she saw in her own nightmares were things that had happened or ways of her mind to fill the blanks. It was not even the blood and death that disturbed her most about it. It was more the knowledge that the same thing would happen over and over again. That people would expect her to do it over and over. To be the harbinger of death. To be the harbinger of justice. To be so many other things to so many at that.
While she barely did remember the kingdom she had once come from, she knew of the many roles she had inhabited in it. She knew of the many obligations she had. Towards the people. Towards men as well. Because it seemed there was no world in which women did not have obligations towards men.
She had tried to sleep. In fact there had been a time where she had not slept for a whole decade. Vampires did not need to sleep after all. They could go on without it. But it had turned out that without the sleep, the nights would bleed into one another, would become less real to her mind. Without the sleep strange specters started to haunt her waking life. And thus, she gave in. Thus, she slept again – only to be woken up every other day, sweat covering her body, as if in those nightmares it still remembered humanity.
Now she was here again. Sitting upright in the bed she shared with the other woman. She knew outside the sun was still high in the sky, forbidding her to leave the room. Because life had cursed her in more than one way, it seemed.
She was over a millennium old by now. She was ancient, even by vampire standards. And most ancient vampires… they did not become immune to the sun, but would no longer burn. Rather get the worst of all sunburn. She was not it. Just as her powers did not allow her to fight, she never had gained the ability to walk in the sun again. She was different.
Instead, she was confined inside during those sunlight hours. Sitting here, unable to find sleep again.
She had been a goddess in her dream. A goddess bringing death and destruction down to the world. And yet a goddess chained by her obligations, by everyone who wanted her to be something she really was not. A goddess at the same time powerful and powerless. A goddess, who had been alone for centuries. A goddess, who was expected to serve the same civilization, that in the end crumbled to dust, now nothing more than ruins buried under desert sands.
The last part she knew to be true. She knew that the city, she had once ruled, was long gone and forgotten. She even remembered the name – being maybe the only being to remember it. It had burned, but she did not remember who had been the one burning it. It might well have been herself.
And now she was here. In a place so completely different from it. In a place that might one day burn as well. In a place…
“Love?” The voice of the other woman cut through the buzzing filling her mind. There was a strong hand on her shoulder, gripping her firmly, reassuringly, pulling her back into the here and now. Away from the past. Away from the possible future as well.
She looked at the other woman, who had sat up now as well. Those eyes looking surprisingly tired for a vampire. “It's alright,” she whispered. “Just another nightmare.”
“Which one was it?” Striga asked. She pulled Morana close, held her in those ridiculously strong arms in a way nobody had done before they had met. At least not for centuries.
“I was a chained goddess,” she whispered. “Chained.” Chained and enslaved, really.
It was the one thing she was rather certain of: She had been turned into a vampire to rule. Because vampires were better rulers, as they no longer were bound by those silly, little mortal desires. She remembered that all the rulers of her city had been like her. Vampires. Turned by one other vampire. But she did remember nothing of him but blood-red eyes.
“Maybe we should travel there at some point,” Striga whispered, her hand so carefully caressing Morana's shoulder. “We could travel there and… See the ruins.” She already knew how much it haunted Morana, that she only remembered bits and pieces.
“No.” Morana shook her head. “No. I'd rather stay here with you.” Here, where her life had been stable for the first time in centuries. Stable… Well, it had only been three years now, hadn't it? Three years since she had decided to stay.
“I am not talking now. I am talking in a few decades time.” There was a smile so clearly audible from Striga's voice. “We have eternity, after all.”
This, at least, made Morana smile. “We do, Love.” And maybe, over the centuries, she would find a way to unlock those memories she had lost. To figure out which part of the nightmares were real and which imagined. To remember what had happened when her kingdom fell.
“Shall I hold you?” Striga asked softly, making Morana nod.
She lifted her head to kiss the other woman softly, smile at her. “That would be wonderful, my Love.”