Chapter Text
Waking up in the body of a sarcophagus-bound male vampire, in the Age of No Plumbing, was not what I wanted to do with my life. Thankfully, it would only happen when I went to sleep, so I could happily continue my life in the modern day with all the best things in life. Like plumbing, electricity and chocolate.
Still, it wasn’t overly pleasant to find oneself in a small, dark space. I will admit that I freaked out a little before I accidentally knocked the lid off.
Also, thankfully, the mausoleum the sarcophagus was in was derelict so I was able to see and get out fine.
One of the first things I noticed, before even the male ‘parts’, were the teeth. Contrary to popular literature, it wasn’t the canines that were sharp, it was the eye teeth. Think about it; the eye teeth are actually better situated to bite with the human mouth, especially considering what body parts are usually bitten by vampires. They were usually retracted up so they looked like normal, albeit sharp, teeth, but protracted to about two centimetres with a subconscious flex of sinew in the roof and jaw of my mouth.
The second thing I noticed was the soft, fluffy, uber-non-tangle-able silvery-white hair with the odd creamy-blonde sheen that fell past my waist, nearly to my knees, in smooth, loose waves. It was, I later found out, the kind of hair that curls into elegant ringlets when wet, rather than frizzing.
Third was the long, voluptuous, vampire-worthy cloak with the heavy leather-ish outer side and the soft, warm, inner side of silver-grey flannel-like material that was awesome to cuddle into when the wind cut right through the clothing the vampire, and so I, wore.
Next, was said clothing the vampire wore. There were the long, black leather pants that appeared to be lined with a flannel-like material inside, the totally awesome pirate boots and almost-as-awesome pirate gloves. Then there were the white cotton undershirt, the black silk waistcoat, the reinforced black and embossed steel leather vest and a large, black and orange-y gold pirate esqué overcoat.
And there was also a silvery silk neckcloth in a bow (a cravat?) that matched the cloak. Weirdly classy.
It was only after making sure I didn’t have a trashy (but still awesome) hat, that I realised that the clothing was both masculine and weirdly well-fitted. Then I noted the lack of breasts and the fact that I was, in fact, wearing a protective cod piece.
Awkward.
I ignored it as best I could, and tried to figure out walking.
Men and women walk differently due to different centres of gravity and due to differently shaped hips. I initially tried walking around the mausoleum like I normally did, and not only was it slightly uncomfortably, I probably looked like a male escort on the prowl. Eventually, I settled into a mix of my usual short-curvy-female walk and a graceful stalking stride that was probably the vampire’s usual mode of movement.
I was only after I left the weathered stone building into a derelict cemetery outside a crumbling fortress that I realised that everything had been muted in the small room.
I will admit that I sat down ungracefully on an overturned statue as the sights, sounds, smells and even tastes overwhelmed me.
I could hear the wind rustling the grass and both see and hear the owl tearing apart a vole in a tree a hundred metres away. There was the smell of rabbits (an oddly gamey scent) and mice (kind-of mushroom-y) living in the cemetery, their little hearts beating rapidly as they either hid from me or went about their business, unaware. There was also the taste of stone and grass and something identified in my brain as ‘old death’.
It was all overwhelming, but my senses told me that only I and various woodland creatures were around, and it had been that way since the last time it rained heavily the month before.
Looking around and enjoying the scenery now that I had adapted, I noted that the moon was waning, though still large and bright in the summer sky. To me, the sky was similar to something you only see in pictures from the satellite-mounted telescopes, it was so clear.
So I wandered down to the grassy slope and lay down to peacefully watch the stars and clouds pass as the moon wandered across the sky.
When false dawn began, hours or minutes later, I yawned and made my way back up the slope and into the mausoleum and the sarcophagus and lay down, pulling the lid half-shut to watch the advance of the dawn light spread across the stone wall.
As I became even drowsier, I pulled the lid shut and fell asleep, only to wake up, refreshed, in my own bed.
The next night, when I went to sleep and woke in that body again, there was that feeling at the back of the throat that said ‘thirsty’. Given that my fangs kept re- and protracting, and my attention was listless and flighty, I can only assume I was supposed to hunt.
I left the mausoleum and lifted my nose slightly to sniff the air. The stiff breeze from moon-rise (that’s east, right?) said there were a few deer and a bovine of some kind that way, within my hunting range, and a slight tang of warm fur and fresh blood that said there was a large canine consuming a kill.
Beginning to drift through the cemetery on light feet, I nearly stepped on a rabbit. Weird thing about rabbits, when they think they’re hidden, they will often not move even if the predator is right over them. My uncle and mum used to go shooting as teenagers with Pop, and mum had told me of the time my uncle had gone over to grab a shot rabbit and picked up the wrong one. It just lay limp and terrified in his grip, made no attempt to struggle.
I had no idea about how to ‘feed from’ a rabbit, and I knew from hunting with my own dad that rabbit blood has a pretty strong smell, so I almost stepped over it and kept going.
Then instincts kicked in and there was a squeal, a bite and I was then crouching with a limp, bloodless bunny in my hands with the heavy, copper-ish taste in my mouth.
Apparently, vampires have taste-orientated synaesthesia. It brought an odd mix of images and sound along with non-blood tastes.
This rabbit, particularly, tasted like running and winds-over-moonlit-grass and like an earthy burrow.
Feeling a bit guilty about killing the young rabbit (they’re called ‘conneys’ or something, traditionally), I looked around and noted the owl hovering above, so I left it on top of one of the tomb stones that hadn’t toppled yet.
As I wandered off, there was the soft sound of air and the click of talons on stone, followed by a soft, muffled bark and the tearing of skin.
Still ‘hungry’, I wandered down the slope, into the forest, wandering along on oddly silent feet, absently noticing that I was moving in the male vampire’s stalking manner again, but with an queerly low swing in the hip area.
There’s a trick to moving quietly over leaf litter that I knew about, but never quite managed to put into practice while hunting with dad, but it’s mostly walking on the outer edge of the foot and gentle placement from a slightly high step.
It was natural to walk softly in this body, drifting through the still, moonlit woods, following the scents and sounds of deer.
I ended up pouncing on a doe grazing in a small ditch, leaping down from above.
It was admittedly an even odder sensation of taste than the rabbit. It was snow and bark-stripping-off-a-maple-tree and fawns-in-the-grass and green and sweet-spring-shoots and stag-mounting-
I pulled away as that last one began coming through and left the dazed deer to eventually stagger to her feet as I wandered back to the ruined fortress.
The weatherworn fortress, I found, had been abandoned so long ago that even the treated wooden fixtures had wasted to dust and blown away. Most roofs had fallen in and the tower was thoroughly gutted unto a glorified chimney, but the walls still stood as a barrier against the winds, protecting the cemetery for all that I could read not a single name, word or date.
The owl had a nest in a niche in what might have once been either a smithy or pottery, crowded by three fluffy chicks. Field mice abounded and rabbits had thoroughly entrenched themselves in burrows dug into the steep slopes around the fort’s hill.
The overgrown cart-track winding around the hill showed no sign of use in decades, having rounded off to a grassy, tree-dotted spiral.
It was peaceful, and my night-time wanderings continued for weeks, with the occasional hunting for blood, as I lived my modern-day life by day. I never caught sound or scent of humans aside from the existence of the fortress and cemetery in all my wanderings during that time.
It was on the full moon months later, on the edge of winter with frost glittering on the grass, that I heard a wolf’s howl much closer than the far-distant symphony of the pack a few mountains over.
There was something familiar in the sound that caused the body I was using to go stiff, my sluggishly slow heartbeat to speed up, and a desire to go to ground rose.
I was away from the fortress and my resting place, a mile or so into the forest while hunting, and I generally didn’t bother with the sword, shield and talismans the vampire had and left them in the mausoleum, so I began running.