Chapter Text
Mortals, humans are the only beings that are born over and over, to compensate for their terribly short life spans. In terms of other creatures-- the vampires, were-wolves, faeries, witches, fiends, demons, humans were to them as the moth flickering over the flame to humans. Here today, dead tomorrow. Memories of her past life came to her in bouts of half-forgotten fever dreams. Their factuality and truth to be critically analyzed, to be suspiciously pondered upon. Ever since she could, Jude lived a half-life. But she tried not to force the memories. They had their own mind. They came when they wanted to.
Jude was a vampire in her past life. She was turned. She was a human again, yet humanity was a discipline or a feeling or a truth she could only touch with a heavily gloved hand, never truly gleaning what it felt like. In the superstitious town they lived -- her mother, father, and twin sister Taryn, with her father forging swords for the king's men, they were well-off and reputed. They lived in a big house with many servants. Jude watched everyone around her carefully. With a half-baked understanding of each life, she carefully imitated every human around her.
Sometimes she would get a feeling. It was not something but someone. She held it in her heart like a glowing ball of flame. It made her smile. Years went by and she slowly put a face and a name to her. To her. She thought a lot about her. She dreamt about her. She wept because of her. She wept for her. She remembered slowly, the weight of tragedy heavy in her chest. She was twelve when she promised herself. She would never seek her out, never find out what happened to her.
Jude witnessed a lot of deaths. She had forgotten what they felt like, in her long years as a vampire -- wars, inquisitions, plagues, creatures of the night. She could sense it like an oncoming storm with clouds gathering in the blue sky. But Jude had failed to truly glean in the contradictory nature of humanity. They really do go around, playing the victim card, when all they need to terrorize themselves are themselves.
Jude's mother succumbed to the ongoing plagues. The faces and prayers of her weeping father and heartbroken sister and their incessant prayers - 'bring her back', 'let her not be dead', made Jude step forward. She flipped the two coins she had made and placed her hand on her mother's chest. But when she turned around expecting gleeful and rejoicing faces from the two, she only found more, much more horror. But why? Their mother smiled the same. There was only now glowing blue light in her eyes. Her flesh peeled off in places, but she could get up just fine.
Her father, who had never hit her, had slapped her. Their mother went back to sleep. Now more permanently. He had forbidden her from doing so, again.
'The king's men will find you and burn you for being a witch'
'But father, I’m a necromancer. Not a witch.'
It was like a persistent itch, an unquenchable thirst, an addiction of wine. Dead mice and snakes hidden in the garden. Crushed earthworms. Stray cats and dogs, their father's goats, the moths lying under the lamps.
Taryn had loved her, the way sisters do, in a confusing, jealous, competitive, unconditional way. But now, she kept her distance, making sure to tell their father when she decided to reanimate any corpses. Soon, a persistent headache began to build up in her. A need to get away. Her father's weary glances turned accusatory. Her sister drifted further apart. The superstitious townsfolk threw her a more curious glance. They would soon turn suspicious, and then the very king’s men whom their father armed, would knock on their doors. The birth of twins was already a bad omen. One of them, as per folklore, must be a changeling. Their mother hadn't believed in such nonsense. But if she had to choose, she'd have chosen Jude to be the changeling.
Watching the sunset from her quiet room, she wondered if no one found out about her, what would happen? Would she become a wife, and a mother and just die, forever choking and suffocating on her true self?
Perhaps this was why she packed her bags one day when she was seventeen. It was her loving them, she told herself. The king’s men would soon come for her. Only one should burn, instead of three. She donned her cloak. In her previous life, she had a cloak black as night, capable of turning any blade. It flowed around her like water. She had gifted it to her.
Or perhaps, she was running from that ache in her chest, that twisting sharp pain of her previous life. If she stays too long in a place, it will catch up with her. There was deep chasm within her, a yawning gap only she could fill. But she would stay away from her this time, even if the longing would drown her.
As she was perched on the stairs of their house, like a bird flying into the burning sky, Taryn came up to her. Her silent footsteps in the empty house were louder than the words said between them. Her father was sound asleep after a long day in the forge. After their mother's death, he had many long days in the forge.
"You're leaving us," Taryn said. She knew. She had known awhile.
Jude stared into her amber eyes, the same as her own. Her reflection, yet entirely dissimilar.
"Yes. It's for the best."
"For you."
"No. For us all."
Taryn sighed. "I suppose so."
Jude stepped down. Her bag was across her shoulder.
"Take care." She said, "Have a good life please." It was love, wasn't it? What she felt now? But it can never be. It was always meant to end in a tragedy, no seer was needed to tell them that.
Taryn sniffed and turned away. In the unfathomable, endless night, with the stars splattered across the sky, she whispered an impossible prayer to her. One Jude never dare utter for herself.
"I hope you find what you are looking for."
***
It took her a while, but she made her way back, in a circle, to the place where she was born all those years ago, in the small, quaint town of Mordem. A hermit back to her home. She acquired an abandoned old house at the edge of the woods, a distance away from a vast river. Venturing occasionally in the nearby town for errands. No one really befriended her. But it was farthest away from the capital, the influence of the king's doctrine relatively less. The people there were a superstitious lot but lacked the courage to create a mob. It was going well.
Or so she thought, because Taryn's prayer, it seemed, was a prophecy instead. The town, at the edge of civilization, was the hub of other beings, excluded from civilization. She had an eye for such things, hence she could spot them easily. The harmless old woman in the vegetable market was a witch; a particularly hooded person in the midday sun was not a vampire but a hooded one in the evening was. Unexplained sounds -- howls and hisses in the woods-- not all of them were from animals. But she had her bank of guards-- a resurrected fox, a wild dog and a raven and an owl, and a crow. Torn skin, peaking flesh, glowing blue eyes, and unnatural strength-- they all kept watch and drove away anything that came close to the house.
Then in the marketplace, one evening as Jude haggled for the price of vegetables that would go bad soon, a hooded woman came up next to her. She couldn't see her face, but something rang in her heart. Was it a scream or laughter? She could not tell. Goosebumps littered her arms, hidden under her long sleeves. It was not hot that day, the wind was sweeter. Yet sweat, like dewdrops, formed on her forehead. Jude could always sense death. And the person next to her, had been straying away from death a long, long while. Her pale face and deep maroon lips that peaked from under the hood, were disguised by caramel skin and shiny, black hair. But she could tell. She bought cherries, cheese and mushrooms and as she left, she saw her talking to the seller. As the sun went lower, a few more such figures came into her sight, all hooded, all pale. A little more than usual. But it couldn't be. Surely, not every vampire could be her.
***
Jude wandered in brightly lit areas and twisted and turned in more shops and alleys on her way back home, determined to lose some of the trail. She ought to leave now, run away from the town. But running away from vampires? A fool's errand. She had been planning to leave soon because the glare of the people became similar to the way the people at her old town had begun to look at her. And yet, a strange excitement pooled in the base of her stomach, her heartbeat quickened and against her will, the colors brightened. She entered her empty three-room cottage. The room at the very end was designated to her necromancy, candle stumps bones and texts littered her work table. Her two rocks, which she had since she was twelve, were buried in a box under the floor. On the other end was her bedroom and the very front room had a small fireplace with two cheap chairs. The windows were always kept shut. Whenever she would come back, she would whistle for the fox, the dog, the raven, the owl and the crow. But today she kept quiet. Because like a fool she dared to hope.
She dared to hope that she had come for her because she recognized her. That after all this time, she still remembered her and missed her.