31_days | [November 3rd] [like they can think for themselves] Condescension

Title: Condescension
Day/Theme: 3. like they can think for themselves
Series: My original, post-apocalyptic-pre-industrial vampire story
Character/Pairing: Aamu
Rating: PG-13

A/N: This is rushed like hell, yet I like it's roughness.

Aamu found it galling that one part of the world had decided what was best for them all, for the whole planet.

After the initial shock, she had wandered through the city, looking at the chaos and destruction around her with sad eyes. How could this be better? Even when the part of the world where she was, had been spared the worst, or that seemed to be the case. In the chaos and the lack of modern means of communication, which she only now realized that she had taken for granted, she was at a loss as what had happened in other places around the globe. The world was big and now, more so than ever, she felt the distances between one place and the next keenly.

What shook her more than the lack of electricity and the pain of the humans, was meeting a creature she had never believed that she would see out in the open like this. In the middle of the town market place stood a full-blooded troll, in plain sight. It was hopping on the spot, it's bare feet jumping from one icy and snow-covered cobble to the next, while Aamu's own rather ill-fitting high heels made a clickety-click sound as she strode on the stony surface.

It shook her. Even when most of the people milling around took no notice of it. But she knew.

“What are you doing here?” she questioned the creature, keeping her distance, vary, especially on this night. What she had already seen had been more than enough to convince her of the fact that there would be no going back to the way things had been. The world had been picked up, torn asunder and put back together, changed, irrevocably so. She was sure that were someone to tamper with it again, at least too soon, that it would cease to exist entirely.

The troll regarded her, cocking it's head. It was draped in mismatching garments, which seemed to be human hand-me-downs. It was eerie, marking the creature more than anything as something, which did not belong. The troll's deep green eyes bore into her, the creature sneering. Then it spoke, and the clear note of it's voice, which lacked the deep bass rumble of male trolls, made her label it as a she in her thoughts.

“What are you doin' 'ere, I should ask?” the female troll countered her words, eyeing her surroundings with a disquieting grin.

She met the challenge head-on. “There were some of my kinda here, in the 18th century. And I was born here, bred in this country when it was Sweden.”

“Got no accent, give ya tha',” the troll drawled, seeming to eat half of the syllables it spoke. “Ain't this grand, walking here, with no-one screaming at ye?” The troll extended it's arms, sweeping them to encompass the buildings, some never, and some only a little bit older, within their sweep.

Aamu glanced around, nobody was paying them any attention. There were people around them, huddling together in small groups, deep in heated, panicked discussion. She nodded.

“Do you know what happened?” She asked, wanting to know. There was a chance, after all, that the troll might actually know. Even when trolls were not the most magical of the Finn Mythos. “What the hell is going on?”

The troll laughed at her face. The shrill voice grated Aamu's ears, making her cringe involuntarily. It laughed so loudly, that even some of the humans took notice.

“Out of th'loop, arent'ya?” The troll sniggered, it's distaste for vampires clear. “Don' kno' 'ither, but just look'a'em, all runnin' abot? Hilarious!”

“But is this better?” Aamu asked, “people have died, even here! I cannot even begin to think what must have happened elsewhere!”

“As if ya care,” the troll said maliciously. “Not like ya're one of 'em!”

“This isn't right, no matter what or who I am!” She yelled, not caring if she was making a scene. Let them stake her, the world was mad enough. What she had seen, wandering through the city, had chilled her.

“But we'll make it right, we'll teach 'em to act proper, or they'll ruin tha world again!”

The troll might have been right, but Aamu would not condone such actions, as what had been taken to put the world back to right. Who were they to say which way was better than the other?