By: Brianna Lee Hubler
Copyright © 2023 Brianna Lee Hubler. All rights reserved.
The Springtime Scent and Its Sickness
__________The air thickened with a pleasing aroma, a scent stronger than wildflowers and sweeter than perfume. Fruyr stopped, raised his chin, and sniffed. His eyes watered, and his pulse quickened, but his tongue and throat dried.
__________A springtime scent in a wintery realm? he questioned.
__________He rubbed his eyes on the cuffs of his sleeves, but his tear ducts swiftly refilled and reflooded his eyes. His sclerae itched and reddened. The more he rubbed his eyes, the more his condition worsened. Hay fever, Fruyr realized. I thought that only happened to humans.
__________I’ll just singe the source, he smirked. Flames rose in his irises, as he searched for the source of the smell. There was no sign of an incense burner or a potted plant anywhere within sight. The halls and chambers of Dafyunesh Manor were unsettlingly dark, as morbid as the grounds upon which the manor stood. Specifically, this hall was lit only by the orange flames of tall, thin, reddish candlesticks, set in silver candelabras. The candelabras sat on stone pedestals, beneath portraits of unusual creatures adorned in fashionable, foreign attire.
__________Though an avid reader of bestiaries, Fruyr could not recognize any of the creatures the portraits featured. To him, it seemed silly that skilled artisans would paint personified animals, who wore clothes and grim expressions, and it seemed even sillier that wealthy lords and ladies would hang such laughable artwork in their homes. Fruyr rolled his eyes and bent down to inspect a candlestick. He pinched its burning candleflame to absorb it, and then scraped some of the colored wax from the candlestick with his fingernail. He lifted his finger to his nose and sniffed.
__________Fruyr scrunched his face and frowned. I don’t think its scented, he decided, but my nose is so congested, I can’t really tell.
__________He flicked the sliver of wax out from under his fingernail and turned his attention to the stone statue of a winged woman, which occupied the center of the hall. Her large, feathered wings cupped around her. The fingers of her left hand bore gaudy rings, none of which matched one another. The same fingers curled around a shaman’s staff. Her stone lips were parted, and her hair was shaped to look as though billowed by a gust of wind.
__________An idol? Fruyr wondered. Didn’t really expect that among vampires.
__________Again, he rubbed his itchy, watery eyes on the cuffs of his sleeves. Can’t read the plaque underneath like this, he realized. I’ll burn the whole room and move on!
__________Fruyr bent his fingers into a casting position, but before he could utter the first syllable of a spell… Whoosh! Like parashoots, satin capes descended from above, and then… Smack! Leather boots hit the floor. The satin capes dropped and draped about the shoulders and ankles of their red-eyed wearers. Surrounded, Fruyr looked up. He spied the chromatic gleam of gothic fencing, barely visible in the darkness above the portraits.
__________Moments ago, this fence would have appeared to Fruyr as nothing more than another item of gaudy décor in the manor’s unorthodox, hallway gallery, but in the midst of ambush, Fruyr realized the fence was as threatening as the sharp tips of its spear-like posts. It was not a fence designed to match the hall’s aesthetic or to prevent residents from falling to their deaths from an upper story of the manor. It was a perch, from which the half-starved reapers, who occupied the manor, could descend upon their hapless prey.
__________Fruyr spun to face his assailants. Although his head dizzied from the rosy scent in the air, he neither clapped a hand to his forehead nor reoriented his unsteady gaze. Instead, he steadied his limbs, perfected a hands-at-the-ready stance that would channel his magic out from his heart and towards the four bloodthirsty vampires, whose elongated, semi-retractable, canine teeth extended past their lower lips, like daggers drawn from their sheaths.
__________Fruyr channeled his thoughts deep within himself and communicated his will with his internal flame. As he tapped into his share of the Eternal Flame (the reservoir of his bond to Fierey), the fire in his heart sputtered and tickled him. He chuckled in the midst of ambush, and the flames in his irises brightened and blazed. In the dimly lit hall, he appeared uncharacteristically sinister, more so than his reputation as a mischievous boy (who branded a piglet with an alchemical diagram to study its effects) awarded.
__________His assailants’ eyes widened. One leapt to smack a hand across Fruyr’s mouth. The others leapt away from Fruyr with their vampiric speed. They grabbed onto the rims of some of the stone pedestals, but they could not flip them over or snuff the candles in time.
__________“Ricochet,” Fruyr managed to say in Elvish, mere seconds before the pale hand of the bolder vampire squeezed his lips shut.
__________The candleflames beneath the personified, animal portraits shot out from their wicks, shot through the vampires like tiny bullets, and then pierced Fruyr’s heart. The vampires’ flesh smoldered aflame through the tunnels of impact. The vampires threw themselves at the floor, screeching and wailing. They rolled from side to side. They sought to put out the flames that threatened to consume them.
__________Meanwhile, Fruyr’s internal flame accepted the bullet-like embers, as an angry spirit accepts a sacrifice. His internal flame absorbed the incoming energy, grew bigger and livelier, and strengthened him. Fruyr looked down at the bolder vampire writhing at his feet. More energy in this reaction than I put in, he assessed. Lucky break.
__________Fruyr resisted the urge to rub his itchy, watery eyes, adjusted his fingers, and prepared another spell. But, before he could string the correct spellscript in his thoughts, the rosy scent in the air thickened. Fruyr entered into a coughing fit, while a preteen vampiress slipped out from behind the angelic, stone statue. She dropped down from the podium the statue stood upon and stood beside Fruyr. There she rested one hand at the nook of her waist and raised the other hand into the air, like a politician, who sought to silence her audience, as she opened her mouth to speak.
__________“Pathetic,” the girl remarked at the sight of the writhing vampires.
__________So is how desperate you are to look more adult, Fruyr thought in the midst of his sporadic coughing. You’re what? Maybe a hundred years old? Girls make no sense.
__________“We were… so thirsty… Miss Sireling,” the bolder vampire moaned.
__________The girl kicked him where he lay. “Then tame your tongue,” she hissed.
__________The bolder vampire released a defeated groan, and then the girl knelt beside him. She eyed his wounds but avoided contact with any unquenched flames.
__________“Hey, Houseguest,” the girl called to Fruyr. “Take these back, and for propriety’s sake, sheath your hands!”
__________Fruyr waved his hand meekly, unable to speak through his coughing, which worsened the nearer the vampire girl stood. Residual flames pulled free of the writhing vampires’ flesh and siphoned through Fruyr’s hand to his heart.
__________The girl bit the palm of her hand. Then she squeezed her bleeding palm over the bolder vampire’s bullet wound. Droplets of the girl’s blood streamed through the tunnel Fruyr’s bullet-like embers dug through the bolder vampire’s flesh. The bolder vampire’s burns smoothed and faded. New flesh grew and filled the tunnel, repaired damaged or missing skin, organs, and bones.
__________“My gratitude,” the bolder vampire offered the girl who healed him. stood and fled, as swiftly as a passing shadow.
__________The girl moved to the others of her kind, who lay crippled and pained. She healed them as she had the boldest among them. Once all those she repaired departed her company, she unfurled her bleeding palm and waited for her medicinal blood to erase the wound she inflicted upon herself.
__________While the girl awaited self-rejuvenation, Fruyr charged down the hall, away from the girl and the sweet-smelling, toxic perfume she exuded. He ran from one chamber to the next, blinded by his teary eyes and panting from the exertion of his contaminated lungs, until he unexpectedly smacked into the silver-haired seamstress.
__________As Fruyr and the seamstress collided, a stack of clean, folded towels launched from the seamstress’s arms. The towels deposited themselves, in scattered, wrinkled heaps, atop an ornamental rug. Were it not for her vampiric grace, the seamstress likely would have been tossed with the towels. With it, she steadied herself and caught Fruyr by the arm. Like the frustrated mother of a boisterous toddler, she held Fruyr back from the rug and examined the mess he had made.
__________Without releasing her careless prisoner, the seamstress leaned down. With her unoccupied hand, she reached for the nearest towel. “The young master was expecting these,” she protested, “but they’re no longer fit to be seen!”
__________Fruyr rubbed his itchy, watery eyes on his sleeve. “Fancy frivolities everywhere, but not one of them pleasing to the eyes,” he remarked.
__________The seamstress ignored Fruyr’s comment. She pinched the corner of the nearest towel and lifted it up, as one might the tail of a dead rat. Then she shook the towel violently, as if she wanted to be certain the metaphorical rat was as dead as it appeared. Finally, she flattened the wrinkled towel against her thigh, folded it in half, and threw it over her shoulder.
__________“I don’t know what to make of you, elf-child,” the seamstress expressed. “Didn’t your parents teach you to look where you are headed? To mind your manners indoors?”
__________“The girl’s perfume made me sick,” Fruyr whined. “I can’t see a thing!”
__________The seamstress dragged Fruyr along, as she retrieved the towels, refolded them, threw them over her shoulder, and restacked them. “Which girl? What perfume?” she inquired. “Even the Elfera discouraged lying, you know?”
__________“I’m not lying,” he pressed. “I just don’t know her name.”
__________“How convenient,” the seamstress expressed doubtfully. “Don’t know her name, can’t assign the blame, can’t be blamed either.”
__________Fruyr scowled. How convenient, he mimicked. Whenever I tell the truth, no one believes me. You’d think I was the Boy Who Cried Wolf from that parable humans tell!
__________Across the ornamental rug was the door to another chamber. Warm steam streamed out through the gaps between the door and its frame. As the steam trailed into Fruyr’s nostrils, it momentarily soothed his contaminated lungs and eyes. The seamstress turned the doorknob to this next chamber and ushered Fruyr inside.
__________A wave of steam washed over them both and lightly dampened their skin and clothes. Fruyr blinked rapidly and inhaled deeply. The warm, soothing steam cleared the toxins from his eyes and lungs. The seamstress shut the door behind them, and Fruyr peered through the steam to investigate what lay beyond.
__________Decorated with colorful, mosaic tiles, two oversized, ceramic tubs occupied the western and eastern sides of the chamber. Sculpted bars of pastel-colored soaps—designed to look like seashells, sea turtles, and sirens—rested in wicker baskets, beside the faucets of pumps. These pumps drew water from an underground well and poured that water into the extravagant tubs. Both tubs were full, but only the western tub was occupied.
__________The back of a dark-haired boy’s head was all Fruyr could see of the bather. Across the chamber was an enormous fireplace, where a massive, iron cauldron bubbled over with boiling water and steam. The dark-haired boy stared reproachfully into the amber flames of the fireplace. The rest of his body was submerged in layers of water, soap, and bubbles. Fruyr sensed the boy’s mind’s eye upon him, but the boy did not attempt to probe Fruyr’s thoughts, and the boy’s gaze remained fixated on the fireplace.
__________I feel you there, Fruyr warned, but he received no response from the boy, who neither recoiled his mind’s eye nor stretched it. Was the boy disinterested in Fruyr’s approach? Or was his silence a threat? A confident assassin allows his target to know he is there, but only after he has cornered his prey and closed off all routes of escape. Fruyr looked from the back of the boy’s head to the seamstress and from the seamstress to the door she closed behind them. Then he eyed the full tubs and the bubbling cauldron. He shuddered, There’s too much water in here.
__________The seamstress shoved Fruyr towards the eastern tub. “Strip down and get in,” she ordered. “I’ll be taking those clothes back to be cleaned and altered.”
__________Fruyr scrunched his shoulders, crossed his arms over his chest, and shook his head defiantly. “No,” Fruyr insisted. He glanced at the back of the other boy’s head. “Not without privacy.”
__________The seamstress rolled her crimson eyes. “Keep your shorts on, if you must,” she offered, “but the scent of blood oozing from your leaking stitches is unbearable, even for me.”
__________She glanced at the dark-haired boy in the opposite tub and added, “I can only imagine how difficult it must be for Master Vujeera.”
__________“Did you bring those towels, Noveirn?” the dark-haired boy interrupted.
__________The seamstress rushed to the side of the boy’s tub. She unstacked the towels that lay over her shoulder and laid them out over the rim of the tub. She lifted the edge of the last towel she placed and traced its embroidery with her finger.
__________“Exactly as requested, Master Vujeera,” she insisted.
__________The boy examined the towel and smiled, exposing his fangs. “A bird in flight,” he acknowledged. “Is there anything freer?”
__________Noveirn shrugged. “I wouldn’t know,” she admitted. “Our clan has been down here for a very long time, but if the sight brings you joy, then it was worth every stitch.”
__________Vujeera grabbed Noveirn’s hand before she turned away. “Draiden’s curse is why I wanted you to make these,” he explained. “Your handiwork puts me one step closer to seeing the real thing.”
__________Noveirn blushed. “Flattery, my lordling? What would your mother say?”
__________Vujeera smirked. “She’d tell me not to let the mouse escape with the treat.”
__________Vujeera raised Noveirn’s hand to his lips and fiercely bit the back of her hand. Noveirn’s eyes widened, and her face paled. She placed her second hand over her heart. Otherwise, she stood rigidly still, while Vujeera sipped blood from the veins he pierced.
__________While the two vampires were distracted, Fruyr stripped down to his shorts, and climbed into the unoccupied tub. He left his new clothes in a heap on the floor, snatched one of the decorative soaps from the wicker basket beside the faucet, and halfheartedly washed his arms, legs, and torso. He trained his pointed ears on Noveirn and Vujeera’s exchange. Since Fruyr was trapped in a room full of water, not far from the fangs of two bloodthirsty snakes, he listened cautiously and attentively to the feeding and hissing of those snakes.
__________Vujeera withdrew his lips, as elegantly as though he had kissed the hand of a princess. “You’re important to me, Noveirn,” he said. “I hope you know that.”
__________Noveirn inhaled and exhaled deeply. She placed her pierced hand atop her other hand and waited for the bite wounds in her pierced hand to close. “A servant aims to please, my lordling,” she replied.
__________Vujeera splashed some water over the top of his head to rinse off the blood that dripped from his mouth. He threw back his head to shake out his hair. A few stubborn bubbles remained in his dark hair, sparkling like jewelry, as they caught the glint of the fireplace.
__________Suddenly, Fruyr’s nose itched. A musky, floral scent wafted from Vujeera’s wet hair and invaded Fruyr’s nostrils. Fruyr covered his nose with his arm. He peered over his arm. As a snake peers over its coils, Fruyr glared at the boy in the opposite tub.
Meanwhile, his mind’s eye tracked Vujeera’s, like a circling dog. Don’t think I’ve forgotten you’re there, he warned.
__________I haven’t, Vujeera replied. You’re a flare waving before the eyes of a predator with infrared vision. Insufferably rude and precariously reckless.
__________Noveirn examined her pierced hand, turning it over before her eyes. Her skin was as smooth and unspoiled as it was before Vujeera bit her. So, she dropped her hand, sniffed the air, and smiled. “You are in excellent health, Master Vujeera,” she announced, “and your natural cologne is slowly maturing to enticing. I pity any young women who cross your path several seasons from now.”
__________Vujeera glanced at Fruyr. “They don’t have to be female,” he reminded. “The scent of a Pureblood draws all kinds of prey.”
__________Fruyr laughed, but his laugh turned into a sneeze. Embarrassed, he redirected his gaze to his lap and stared into the water in his tub. All your lure does is make me sick, he chastised.
__________Not just a lure; It’s allure, specifically vampiric allure, Vujeera corrected.
__________He tilted his head to the side, like a curious pup. Then he added, Although, for it to make you sick—not lovesick, just plain sick—is definitely new and genuinely intriguing.
__________“Is something the matter, my lordling?” Noveirn inquired. Since she was not privy to the boys’ private thought-conversation, her young master’s sudden change of disposition concerned her. She was like an attentive, mother bird, whose chick unexpectedly rejected the worm she fed him and opted to play with it instead.
__________“I think our guest’s bathwater chilled him,” Vujeera lied. “Could you warm it before he gets any sicker?”
__________Noveirn smiled. “Such a considerate thought!” she praised. “I’ll attend to it at once.”
__________As soon as Noveirn turned her back, Vujeera grabbed one of his embroidered towels, stood, and wrapped it around himself. He stepped out of the bath, retrieved another towel, and roughly dried his hair. Then he tossed the loose, dampened towel to Fruyr.
__________Fruyr caught it, sneezed again, and then dropped the towel into the tub. Isn’t that a little low for someone so proud to be highborn? he challenged.
__________Vujeera smirked. A reminder that this hunt isn’t over, he warned.
__________While Vujeera exited the room, Noveirn gloved her hands with a pair of oven mitts, which someone had carelessly left atop the mantelpiece of the fireplace. She glowered at a metal hook, fixed to the stone wall, beside the fireplace, and quietly but verbally scolded whoever failed to use it. Although the culprit was not present, or possibly because the culprit was not present, Noveirn muttered reproachfully, “Such laziness could be the death of us all.”
__________Then, with her protected hands, and with the strength that her vampirism and many years of clan servitude provided, she lifted the enormous, bubbling pot of water. She carried it to Fruyr’s tub and poured the boiling water into Fruyr’s bathwater. Fruyr scrambled backward in the tub to escape the sudden influx of heat. Noveirn set the emptied pot on the floor beside the tub and placed her hands on her hips.
__________“Rather skittish for someone who absorbs fire,” she remarked. “Did you think I was about to dump it on your head?”
__________Fruyr wrapped his arms around his knees. “Boiling water and blazing fire are nothing alike,” he insisted. In thought, he affirmed: The former is Kimio’s element; the latter is mine.
__________Noveirn shook her head and retrieved Fruyr’s clothes. “You’re alive, aren’t you?”
__________Fruyr scowled. He stretched out an arm and reached to snatch his clothes from her. “Not for long,” he argued, “if I stroll back down your twisted, portrait menagerie of a hall in nothing but drenched shorts.”
__________Noveirn jerked the clothes away and stuffed them under her armpit. “Not until I’ve altered them,” she persisted. “Stay here and soak awhile. I’ll bring your clothes when they’re ready.”
__________Fruyr jumped to the edge of the tub and climbed partway out. Noveirn pushed him back into the water. “Not so fast,” she declared. Her crimson eyes glistened, as she added, “It’d be a shame for your infected back to taint your healthy blood. None of us want that, do we?”
__________Fruyr crossed his arms. “Anything to get you all off my back,” he grumbled.
__________Noveirn glanced at the bathwater, as it began to swirl and recolor in front of Fruyr. “Best not to keep an important messenger waiting,” she said. “I’ll leave the two of you to talk.”
__________When Fruyr’s gaze fell upon the changing water, Noveirn turned away and speedily departed. Slowly, the colorful swirls became colorful ripples, and those ripples became the animate image of a familiar face.
__________“Mongrel, you’ve unraveled your stitches!” the waterborne image of Draiden insulted.
__________Fruyr growled. “Not a mongrel, not your pet, and already done playing guard dog,” he replied.
__________Draiden’s image laughed. “You sound just like one though!” he teased.
__________Fruyr punched the water, which temporarily distorted Draiden’s waterborne image, but Fruyr’s fist smacked into his leg and splashed soapy water into his eyes. He snatched the drenched towel from where it floated. Fruyr wiped his eyes with the towel. The toxins Vujeera shed mixed into Fruyr’s tears. Again, Fruyr’s sclerae itched. He sighed dramatically, I wish this day was a rabbit, so I could gut it.
__________He smacked a hand to his forehead. Now they’ve got me thinking like a dog too! he accused. Ashes to this place and all its blood-sucking leeches!
__________Once the water settled, Draiden’s image continued speaking for Draiden. “Be careful what you do, say, or even just think, Mongrel,” he lectured. “Once you’ve bitten, you can’t take it back.”
__________Fruyr turned up his nose and looked away. “Absurd!” he claimed. “A dog can easily unclamp its jaws and pull its teeth from the neck of its prey.”
__________Draiden’s image rested a palm against his cheek. “But at what cost?” he teased. “Either the prey is dead, dying, or striking back, as soon as its released. It certainly isn’t going to kiss the mongrel on the cheek and play nice!”
__________“Speaking of playing nice,” Draiden’s image continued. “How is it going? Oh, that’s right… You snapped off your stitches and cracked open the scab on your back, while brawling with your vampiric hosts! You just can’t help yourself, can you?”
__________Fruyr crossed his arms. “Same as you,” he criticized.
__________Draiden’s image laughed excitedly. “No kidding! I just can’t wait for our duel,” he exclaimed. “Waiting for you to heal up is so boring, I’ve decided to let the vampires fix you!”
__________Fruyr nervously pushed up his bangs with his hand. “What?”
__________Draiden’s image grinned mischievously. He folded his small, juvenile hands. He stacked his hands in front of himself, and rested his chin atop them. “Go make nice with Clan Dafyunesh!” he explained. “If they like you, they’ll heal you. If they heal you, you’ll be ready to fight for a lasting role in my domain.”
__________Before Fruyr could protest, Draiden’s image disappeared. The water cleared, and the door to the chamber opened. Fruyr frowned and wearily turned his head to view the open doorway.
__________Noveirn strutted into the chamber with a child-sized, satin nightrobe dangling from her shoulder and a folded towel pressed against her bosom. With her forearm crossed over her chest to secure the towel in place, she looked almost too proper of a servant, but she carried the aura of an irate woman, who would rather be anywhere other than where she was. With her opposite arm, she grabbed Fruyr by the wrist and yanked him out of the bathwater.
__________Fruyr shivered, as he stepped over the edge of the tub and onto the floor, as obediently as a marionette. She’s mad at me for something, he realized. Mom gets the same look.
__________Noveirn shoved the towel she carried into Fruyr’s hands. “All your romping around with an injured back has ruined your new tunic,” she accused. “You’ve bled straight through it!”
__________Fruyr shook out the towel to unfold it, and then he wrapped it around himself. His gaze dipped to his bare feet, but his eyes narrowed in chagrin. “I don’t care for fancy clothes that can’t be ruined,” he remarked.
__________Noveirn retrieved the nightrobe from her shoulder and wrapped it snuggly around Fruyr’s neck, as if it were a scarf. “Put that on,” she ordered, “and then we’re off to your bedchamber to put you down for the Deep Night.”
__________She wants to strangle me, Fruyr swallowed, as he clawed at the nightrobe, until it loosened enough for him to pry it off his neck.
__________“Deep night?” Fruyr asked.
__________He dropped his towel from his shoulders and rewrapped it around his waist, like a kilt. He pushed his arms through the sleeves of the nightrobe, wrapped the nightrobe around himself, and tied it closed. Fully covered from his shoulders to his ankles, Fruyr let his towel drop the rest of the way to the floor, as he maneuvered out of his wet shorts, without exposing himself.
__________Noveirn sighed impatiently, as she retrieved the items Fruyr discarded on the floor. “In ever-dark realms, children go to sleep in the Deep Night,” she explained, “and they wake in the Even’morn.”
__________“Oh,” Fruyr accepted. “That’s… sensible.”
__________Noveirn nodded, as she wrapped Fruyr’s wet shorts in his towel. “But,” she added, “nowhere and never—in all the lands and realms—do children cease to carelessly clutter clean floors with their soiled clothes.”
__________Fruyr blushed guiltily. Noveirn’s harsh but motherly character reminded him of his mother. Their likeness both comforted him and disconcerted him. Inside Dafyunesh Manor, most of what Fruyr had witnessed reinforced the differences between vampires and elves, despite their peoples’ shared ancestry. Nonetheless, Noveirn’s domestic prattle revealed a certain sameness, which Fruyr had not anticipated could be found within this den of vipers.
__________“Sorry,” he offered.
__________Noveirn’s demeanor softened. “No matter,” she replied. “Children will be children.”
__________She stuffed the damp, wrinkled bundle, of Fruyr’s bath towel and wet shorts, under her arm, and marched to the door. “Come along now,” she coaxed. “Off to bed.”
__________Fruyr rubbed his eyes. “All right,” he replied. “I’m coming.”
__________Noveirn led Fruyr to the guestroom her clan had prepared for him. Fruyr climbed into a large, canopied bed and nestled himself underneath a heavy, goose-feather quilt. He rested his head atop a pillow so soft that its fluff sank underneath the weight of his head, but he refrained from closing his eyes, because the door was still open, and Noveirn was still in the room.
__________I’m a little tired, he admitted to himself, but since I’m lying under the drooling maws of fanged leeches… I don’t think I’ll ever fall asleep.
__________Noveirn lit a candle that sat atop Fruyr’s bedside table. As it melted, the candlewax streamed down the length of the candle. The hot wax pooled, and then cooled, in the base of a glass bowl. The glass bowl rested atop a lacey, black doily. Underneath the doily and the tabletop was a drawer.
__________Noveirn opened the drawer and retrieved a silver dog whistle. She cringed, rubbed one of her ears with her unoccupied hand, and then placed the whistle atop the doily. “Most vampires will not enter a private room unless invited,” she explained. “We’ll take the sound of this whistle as an invitation. Your door will remain locked until and unless you blow this whistle.”
__________Fruyr wrinkled his nose and turned up his lip. “This is a dog whistle, and none of you are dogs,” he affirmed. “I’m not blowing the whistle.”
__________Noveirn frowned. “It’s a very big house, Fruyr,” she warned.
__________“But it’s not a doghouse,” he insisted. “Can’t you just knock?”
__________“Very well, elf-child,” Noveirn consented. “I’ll knock come Even’morn.”
__________Noveirn exited and shut the door. Fruyr closed his eyes.
__________Courtesy won’t stop any bloodthirsty vampires from barging in anyway, Fruyr decided. If I don’t want to be juiced like a grape, I need to stay awake tonight.
__________Fruyr attempted to keep his mind’s eye open, to be mindful of his surroundings as he rested his body, but as the Deep Night carried on, his mental vision slacked and then lapsed. Despite his painstaking efforts, sleep overtook him, and there would be no sunlight to shine through the gaps between the curtain panels and wake him in the Even’morn.
Endlesslore 