a glimmer of hope // chase

[Mikhail Vakhteiar Iul'ian]

It was about a week or so after the night of Chase's turning. The two vampires' situation hadn't changed too drastically, but at the very least, they were making some progress in various avenues.

Chase was starting to get a grasp on the nuances of her transformation, at least as far as Mikhail could see. He had no idea about her 'mental' state regarding the affair, though; it had only been a week, so the crystal clear image of Chase's figure, paralyzed with shock after having fed from him the first time, was still burned vividly into his mind. Guilt still weighed on his shoulders, then, even if he tried very hard to cling to the belief that it had been the right thing to do.

He still offered to feed her, though, and for now it seemed she was okay with it, probably preferring it to the scavenging he did on his own. He didn't mind helping; in a way he felt obligated, since he had been part of the reason she was what she was now. It was almost like weaning a kitten or something, until it was adept enough to go out and find food on its own.

What Mikhail was most excited about at the moment, however, was that Chase had brought him some books, possibly from a library, or maybe a used bookstore; he didn't know. The books were worn, though, but that wasn't important; what was important was that Chase read them to him at night, while he peered over her shoulder, following the words on the page as she said them aloud. He recognized some of the sounds, and occasionally, some of the words, grateful that the alphabet was more or less the same as the Latin one.

When she was off doing whatever it was she did, though, Mikhail stayed in that little room by the fire, or out in the sanctuary by his budding garden if it was warm enough during the day. He sat on the ground, huddled over one of the books, trying their foreign sounds on his tongue, syllable by syllable, and doing a decent job of butchering them.

It was rather frustrating, because, as many monks were trained to be, Mikhail was quite fluent, perhaps even eloquent, in his native tongues. There was much he wanted to ask Chase: about herself, about her life, about the world; he still didn't even know what country they were in, or what the date was. Did the calendar even still follow the same sequence? What if the years were numbered differently, now?

And of course he wanted to share what little he remembered of himself, or at the very least, explain what had happened between his awakening and his making his way over to this place.

So, in between taking care of himself and looking after Chase, he spent most of his time trying to grasp the language - 'English,' apparently. This endeavor was accelerated when she brought home a dictionary with Latin to English translations, and it was after paging through it a few times that he became annoyed with how many extra little words English had. What he could say in Latin seemed to take five times as many words in English!

Oh well. It was all a necessary part of his survival, he felt. The world was still very much intimidating to him, but he hoped that at least having a grasp on the natives' language would help him along. Still, he couldn't live in that cathedral for the rest of his existence, even if he had an eternity to wait. He had come here with the hope of finding a friend; he still felt there was one somewhere, from his past. But how could he know where to start if he couldn't even remember most of his life before sleeping?

Yes, coming to terms with this foreign world was the first step to discovering anything. Even if he was afraid of much of it.

He did miss home, though, even if home was long gone. The air here in the city was, to him, foul and polluted, not at all like the crisp, clean air of the countryside. People were rude, and always in a hurry. And the night was never peaceful and dark; it was noisy and bright, full of strange artificial lights and sounds.

One evening, he returned from scavenging for food, appearing visibly shaken. Blood stained his formerly clean, white robe, but it was certainly more blood than one stray cat ought to have carried. His fingers flexed and curled into fists, over and over, and he feverishly whispered strings of apologies as he stumbled to the bathroom behind the back room.

Hastily he washed his hands in the basin, grateful for the faucet that seemed to have limitless water. That done, he changed, and then took the bloodstained robes, scrubbing at them in the sink until the stains were gone.

Clearly distressed, he abandoned the vestments there, padding back to the room, where the hearth was empty. Instead of bothering with starting a fire, he simply lit one of the candelabras next to the bed, and then sank into a seat at the edge of the mattress, clutching at the skirts of his robe. With a lame sniffle, he sat paralyzed for a moment, before pulling one of the nearby books into his lap. It wasn't one of the ones Chase had given him; it was one of the blank ones that he'd been drawing and writing in, illustrating with elaborate illuminations. He did it mainly because it was a familiar art to him, and art was always therapeutic.

With his fingertips trailing over the dried ink, he blinked rapidly and looked up again, looking around anxiously. He usually enjoyed the peace of the silence and solitude, but for some reason, at that moment, he wished Chase would return soon.

[Emily Chase]

All things considered, Chase was handling her new life -or rather, lack of life- fairly well. She still was not comfortable with tracking down her own meals, but Mikhail had been quite obliging in that area, offering to feed her himself, and she had quickly learned when to stop so that they both had enough strength to face the coming days.

She had ventured out only a few days ago, and sneaked some books out of the secondhand store nearby. She had had the very good fortune of finding a Latin-English dictionary, as well as a few novels, which she read to Mikhail in the later hours of the night when neither of them could sleep.

She had noticed that Mikhail liked to spend time alone in his garden, which was coming along quite nicely. She usually let him have the days to himself, and she would go up into the choir balcony, where she would write in a journal (also lifted from the secondhand book store). She felt that writing down the things she experienced every day was the only way for her to maintain a grasp on her sanity. If she didn't empty her mind at regular intervals, her head began to feel heavy and cluttered, as though her thoughts had actual mass.

On one particular night, Chase returned to the cathedral with a plastic bag which turned out to be stuffed with clothes. She had located another shop, which sold secondhand clothing for ridiculously low prices, and she'd used what little cash she had to buy a couple of pairs of jeans for herself and Mikhail, as well as a few t-shirts that they could share, along with a cardigan or two. All in all, she'd paid about $15, and she was pleased with her haul.

When she made her way back into their makeshift apartment, she arrived to see Mikhail huddled on the bed, looking as though he had seen the Ghost of Christmas Past. He was visibly shaken, and Chase wondered what could possibly have freaked him out so much.

"You look like hell," she said by way of a greeting, before figuring that he probably wouldn't understand her anyway. She dropped the bag of clothes on the floor, scooped up the Latin dictionary, flipped through the pages, and found what she needed.

"What happened?" She asked in badly accented Latin.

She tossed the dictionary back onto the bed and went to retrieve the bag of clothes, sorting them into two piles- His, and Hers.

"Pants," she said, holding up a pair of men's jeans. "Er... Pantalones? Jeans? Oh, just try them on." She tossed the jeans toward her roommate and began folding t-shirts and placing them on a chair.

Chase noticed a spider inching its creepy way across the dusty floor. She recoiled, then slipped off one of her boots (her only shoes) and brought the boot down on top of the creepy-crawly with a satisfying thwap.

"Die, you eight-legged monster!" She gingerly lifted the boot to make sure the nasty was actually dead. She noticed with some amusement that one of the spider's legs was pointing upward, as though in a final "screw you, lady."

It occurred to Chase that she shouldn't be afraid of nighttime crawlies anymore, since she was one now, but she pushed the thought from her mind, justifying her prejudices against anything with more than four legs with the thought that spiders were just agents of evil. So were moths; they were the airborn division.

After concluding that the spider was well and truly dead, she grabbed one of the freshly folded shirts and a pair of jeans and slipped them on, being careful not to flash Mikhail as she changed. Just because she was undead, didn't mean she was a slut.

Once she was in the familiar clothing, she braided her hair over one shoulder, tying it with a piece of cord.

"I'm starving," she said to the room in general. "God, I miss cheese burgers. With pickles."

[Mikhail Vakhteiar Iul'ian]

Mikhail was broken out of his daze when he heard the doors in the distance creak open. Had it been anyone else, he would have immediately been on the alert, but by now he had come to recognize the distinct weight and rhythm of Chase's footsteps, thus, rather than being on edge, he calmed down significantly, even if he was still disturbed by whatever had had him in a panic earlier.

She greeted him with words he did not recognize, so he simply tilted his head, smiling placidly, and responded with a basic, "Hello."

His gaze, however, followed her, or more accurately, the bag she was carrying. The bags she sometimes brought back from her excursions were always loud and made rustling noises, like dried leaves did during autumn. They were also very flimsy; Mikhail had tried to use one to collect some stones to build a little wall around his garden, but had only ended up tearing a giant hole in the bottom of the bag.

He soon realized that she had brought clothes, and he watched her unpack them, eyeing them curiously, before he realized she had asked him what had happened.

Anxiety returned to his disposition again, but he didn't answer her immediately, half because he didn't know how to recall the story in detail, and half because he was distracted by the garments Chase was laying out. Reflexively he caught the pair of trousers she threw at him, and as she busied herself with the spider on the floor (Mikhail never noticed them; he was used to bugs sharing living spaces), he held up the trousers, turning them backwards and forwards and upside-down.

He'd just started to pull the trousers on like sleeves, slipping his slender arms into the legs of the pants (all without taking off his robe or anything), before he paused and frowned, wiggling an arm. No, that didn't seem right.

The loud thwap made him jump, however, and he hastily looked around for the source of the noise, before realizing it was Chase. Confused by her display, he concluded she was probably just fixing her shoe (of which he still had none), and so he returned his attention to the pants.

Another pause, and he looked at her. Then he noticed that the trousers were just those: trousers. They were like hers, just a different color.

Instead of actually trying to put them on, though, he pursed his lips and pulled the garment off of his arms, instead gathering it up in his lap to inspect the fabric. The material was stiff and hardy, but surprisingly comfortable on the inside (at least, compared to what he was used to). But he eyed it apprehensively because ... well, it didn't look very flexible or forgiving. The material had hardly any give, and why were there metal teeth on the front?

In wonderment, he picked at the zipper, never having seen such a contraption before. Momentarily defeated, he frowned, and, embarrassed, looked over again to make sure Chase hadn't seen his bewilderment.

He recognized the word 'starving,' and he blinked, wondering if she was expressing hunger again. If she wanted to feed, that was fine; he had just fed himself. Subconsciously he raised his fingertips to his throat, pensive, but he didn't recognize the rest of her words.

"Cheeseburger?" he mimicked, his head tilted questioningly again. "Pickles?"

He wrung his hands together, still grasping at the pair of jeans. He wanted to tell Chase what had happened just now; the clothes could wait. Sighing, he leaned over to scoop up the dictionary, paging through it.

"Earlier," he began hesitantly, "I find food. Animal, cat," he explained, gesturing to display how large it had been; just a stray cat, of course. "I finish, then, want to return to here," he went on, motioning around the room. Of course, that was his routine; feed and then quickly head back to the cathedral before anything bad could happen.

"But five man. Scent like ... vino ... uhm ... " He bent to scoop up one of the empty Eucharistic goblets to indicate wine.

Mikhail had been heading back when he had passed by the group of men, probably in their late twenties or early thirties. They had reeked of alcohol, and were engaged in their own raucous conversation.

"Not notice me. I walk past, one make sound like summon." He didn't know the word for 'whistle,' and poor Mikhail had mistaken their wolf-whistling for a summons, or a request for attention. He'd thought them in distress, so he had stopped to see to them. Furthermore, one of them had probably been drunk beyond what was socially acceptable, and Mikhail, thinking him ill, had wanted to help him.

"I go near. Maybe man need heal. Then other man ... uhm ... " He paused to flip through the dictionary. "Man grabs shoulder - " He pointed to the shoulder of his robe. "Say things, I not understand. I smell vino, man too close, maybe wants bite. But not vampire. Maybe kiss," he shuddered, cupping his hands over his chest and curling his fingers into his palms. "I say 'go away,' none listens. Second man grab arm, pulls it. Painful, I have fear. Not wish pain for them, but am trapped. So, fight."

Mikhail was grasping at the skirts of his robe again, looking distressed all over again. It was difficult to tell if he was more frightened of the men, or of having hurt them.

"Bite one man, other man yell. Want run away, but hungry. Drink first. Then run. Other man already run. Man I bite not move. Hope he alive, maybe ... "

He trailed off into uncertainty again, sniffling, frustrated at both the episode and at his inability to explain exactly what he was thinking.

"Then return here. Wait for you," he finished quietly, staring down at the floor and avoiding her gaze, like a child who had just admitted to breaking a window with a baseball.

"World is strange. I have fear. Know none." This realization sank into his thoughts every night. It frightened him. For one who had lived in community most of his life, only to transition to this ... it was a very lonely world by comparison.