31_days | [November 7th] [Original] A Thing of Fiction

Title: A Thing of Fiction
Day/Theme: 7. spattered across the pages of history
Series: My original post-apocalyptic vampire story
Character/Pairing: Aamu
Rating: PG-13

Human suffering has been recorded in countless tomes, some of them now irrevocably lost after the Shift. But the human mind remembers, and the Globe wide magic that rendered so many into simpering fools and robbed the memories of others was not able to eradicate all knowledge of the gruesome great wars of recent history, and the ones still fought at the time. I think that it was attempted, but ripping such a hole into the fabric of history would have made it collapse in on itself. Which it nearly did, regardless. Some of it became legends, as no-one could remember the mode of modern warfare. When I became aware that so much had been lost, I grieved for those who had lost their lives. Yet maybe it was better than the fallen were remembered, when those machines of war which killed so many were wiped out from memory.

Throughout the dawn of humanity, humans have killed and slaughtered each other in droves. Many of my kind, as much as a vampire with a conscience and a self-appointed mission to remember a world long gone can call other human appointed mythical creatures such as herself her kind, have accused humans of horrid atrocities. Calling them an especially violent race.

Yet, how are we any better?

Humans and mythical creatures alike have died in mythic hands. We have had war as like as the humans some of us despise and accuse of overt violence. We are no better. Not by a long shot.

I often wonder how those who chose to live in shadows as the dawn of industrialization and the age of reason was upon humanity, can be so cruel. Because our hiding did not mean the abatement of violence. At least before, humans knew that we were there, knew that when something not easily explained happened to them or someone they knew, that the reason was most likely because it was something that was later dubbed supernatural. I have always found that term lacking. It is decidedly the term of a scientific mind. Someone to whom there is only one world that can exist, that of reason, the natural world. Everything existing outside it's rigid boundaries is labeled as unnatural, not normal, above the normal.

Some of us decidedly think that they are above the normal. That they are somehow much better than humans. Above and beyond a mortal's grasp. It is folly. And such folly lead to the catastrophe known as the Shift. The great convulsion of the world which gave birth to a polished and broken world.

A world where my kind where out of the proverbial closet.

I have heard some, mostly those who were always most hostile towards “those lowly humans”, hail the Shift as a triumph. The stain of humanity's actions wiped away. How they could say so when many of their kind, too, died that night, I cannot say. Seems the price they paid was not too high.

Speaking for myself, I, too, have to admit that it is something else walking among humans once more. Not that much changed for me. My outward human appearance always gave me some leeway, as long as I adhered the appropriate precautions while among mortals. Vampires have always been the object of much envy from those who could not so freely mingle among humans. Even while there are many who have always been able to guise themselves so they could pass for human. But passing is not satisfactory. That is why I am not openly myself when, either. There had always been something terribly unsettling about my kind.

It is the blood. The drink. The only sustenance that we have. Our feral nature making us outcasts. To some, at least. Others, however, try to seek us out, beg for the bloody kiss, begging for us to drink and turn. There is a fine line, in-between. I have tremulously walked it myself, terrified of slipping, falling headfirst into murder.

That is not to say that there aren't other, werewolves, kappas, malevolent spirits, that will not attack a human when the opportunity comes. There are. But they... they never did make it as big as my kind. And our familiarity, our ability to pass had terrified humans.

Which is why vampires, I think, have always had such metaphoric potential. Our story is recorded more than that of others. We made it into the subject matter of fiction. I stumbled upon Goethe's when I was over a century old. I didn't think much of it. Then came the 19th century and Coleridge, Polidori and others. Lord Byron himself roamed the Continent in fiction, vampirized by poor Polidori, his physician. In Carmilla Le Fanu wrote about the then scandalous lesbian vampire love. I was inspired, even when I have never minded male advances, either.

Before the Shift my kind, my fictional kind, was reduced to a romantic, watered-down lover. I had my fair share of offers of those who thought I was only pretending. That my pallor was artificial, as well as my fangs and propensity for night-time living.

Then the Shift came and I was once again the stuff of nightmares, my blood-kin not ameliorating humans to our kind.