Letters from Sarmatia (Children of the Night)

[thornsofmalkav]

Because when you're LARPing 24/7 it helps to have a friend you can write letters to under your own real identity in order to deal with the stress.

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November 8th

[thornsofmalkav]

Dear Alcuin,

Yeah. I know. It's probably a little ridiculous to be writing to you like you're just a town or two over, instead of in fuck knows where—I hope it's a separate sub-Jaunt like what happened in Questing Country and that the Trumps didn't just decide to junk half of us or something—but you know what? I'm writing to you, anyway. Because I miss you.

Well, I miss a lot of people who're either with you or Infiltrating, but I'm just writing one set of letters and sorry, Alcuin, but you're stuck with being my imaginary correspondent. Because I want to write to someone. I want to talk to someone about this Jaunt that's not on it, even if it's a one-way conversation. And I think I especially want to talk to you about it? Because in a lot of ways you're really the perfect confidante, as witnessed by how I come to you when I need to talk about shit to someone. You're good to talk to.

And, like, when I think about it, of course you'd be good to talk to, of course you'd be super fucking good at listening to people. I mean, considering what you used to do. But I don't mind that that's the reason you're so good at it. I honestly don't. I mean, knowing more about you, it makes you make sense. Not that you didn't make sense even before I knew, but it makes you make more sense.

But you know what? I'm still going to tell you all this shit anyway. I mean, you're retired. And I still do want to tell it. And I know you want to know what the hell went on with us while you were doing whatever you guys are doing. I mean, I want to know what you guys are doing? Because we're friends and also I figure it's just plain curiosity on either of our behalfs (hypothetical in your case.)

So. We're in a place called Samartia and it's full of vampires and werewolves. Not exactly my kind, but close enough that I've been able to fake being one of them. Actually, I'm pretty proud of what I did?

So, like, we materialized in this group of their human servants—they call them 'corvigers' here although they're basically what we'd call ghouls back home—and basically the first thing I did was find a place where nobody could see me, take off my boots, turn myself invisible—well, sort of invisible, it's a thing called Obfuscate and it's a neat vampire trick my sire taught me—and I spent a while listening into everyone's conversations.

I found out a lot of stuff. Like, there was a wake going on for the local vampire Prince when we got there and also people were there to claim human servants. It looks like the Prince committed suicide and his heir, Lady Elphaba, was his assistant for it and now they’re holding an actual election to determine his replacement. Lady Elphaba is one of ours. I talked with her after I told everyone about me being a vampire. She kept insisting I wasn’t a monster, which was very sweet of her. (If I’m not a monster, it’s only because I am trying every hour of the day not to be.)

I like her. I like her a lot, as her Infiltrator-self and as the Traveler I talked to. I hope she’ll be okay by the end of this. She’s feeling hella guilty because of what she did, but honestly, if I’d been in her position I’d have done the same. Her sire had asked her to do it. It’s… hard to refuse your sire when they ask you to do things. Maybe harder for me than mo Even if it’s things you wish you didn’t have to do.

So she’s one of the local candidates. The other ones are a guy named Baadur (who’s a werewolf) and another guy named Bagrat (who’s another vampire.) It really weirded me out that the vampires and werewolves here get along because back home we kind of hate each other a lot! Like, okay, I get along with Lyall, who is the Traveler’s local werewolf, but that’s like taking him as an individual werewolf. Speaking of which, he’s Baadur—like, that’s his Infiltrator-self. Baadur is all about modernizing how the supernatural world works. I like him too. (I mean, honestly, I kind of wish he and Elphaba could work as a team or something.)

Bagrat is this guy named Xigbar, who I’ve also heard people call Braig sometimes? He’s a nice enough dude as a Traveler, although kind of shifty-seeming? He worked for Leo when he was Blitzkopf. Chouko said he helped with the whole reanimation thing. That’s how he got his cool cyborg eye, which he doesn’t have as a vampire. He was polite enough to me, but some of the people I was spying on seemed to think he was a mobster?

Anyway, after I’d listened enough, I crept away and took the Obfuscate down and used my wardrobe manipulation bullshit to dress me up like the Election Observer would look.

I should explain her. See, as soon as I realized that we were in vampire central, I figured I had a chance to pull off a Malik Gambit and persuade people I really was supposed to be here. And since I’d heard about an election, the easiest way to do that was to pretend I was an official election observer who’d been sent to make sure there was no funny business with theirs. Like, the U.N. does that all the time with developing democracies back home, so I figured that it would be something they’d buy. And they did!

But, like, if I’d gone in claiming I was here while I was me, they’d never believe me, because, well, you’ve seen how I usually am. I’m not nearly as official enough a person to be able to pull off the deception. So I built a character up in my head—the Election Observer, Ms. Isobel Thorne—and I basically treated the entire night like an extended LARP (Live Action Roleplay) where I played at being her for the sake of everybody. When I get back, maybe I’ll show you her. She’s a lot more adult than I am, to be honest. Warm, but fairly businesslike. And she dresses like a grown-up as well, or at least more than I do. She wears high heels, for fuck’s sake. Luckily I’ve got some practice with those for cosplay purposes, so I didn’t twist my ankle.

I think maybe she’s why I’m writing to you now, more than anything. Because I’m going to be pretending to be her for most of my time here, so I need someone who I can not pretend with, even if he’s on the other end of a one-sided correspondence. And of everyone I’d want to pretend to write to, I think you’d appreciate my sneakiness more than most.

Anyhow, I’ve got Melissa, a woman named Rosalie, and guy named Ivan as my faux election observation team. Do you know Melissa much at all? She’s the person who explained Traveling to me when I first got snatched up. She’s pretty cool. I’ve talked a little about vampire stuff with her. I mean, before I told everybody. Rosalie’s another American and she’s either really into the 1930s look or that’s her native time period. (So, roughly seventy-five years before me.) She seems pretty smart and competent, thank fuck. I claimed her as Ms. Thorne’s personal secretary. Ivan is definitely not American. I think maybe he’s Russian? He’s kind of an idiot, though. But a cute one, if you’re into the clean-cut look. You’re definitely much prettier, though. (Well, duh. D’Angeline.) He gets to be Ms. Lyre’s (Melissa’s) personal secretary.

He was definitely checking out my boobs at the wake, which I suppose was somewhat inevitable, because the Election Observer shows a lot more cleavage than I usually do. But then of course I flung him at Melissa and she’s pretty hot herself, so I suspect that breast-ogling or not, he’s more likely to end up hitting on her instead. Which is probably for the best. I’d eat from him, sure—I’ve eaten from people a lot less pleasant, which is sort of inevitable when your usual feeding grounds is populated by nerds and gamers—but I don’t know if I’d want to do anything more? I mean, maybe someone cute-but-dumb would be a good rebound from the whole Joscelin mess, but… shit, after how that affected me, maybe I don’t want a rebound? (It probably doesn’t matter. Like I said, I flung him at Melissa.)

God, I’m down to random gossip now, aren’t I? Well, if I’m going to be gossiping, I might as well gossip hard. And about the most traditional subject of gossip: what everyone’s wearing.

So, okay, do you know Hajime? He’s Infiltrating as a werewolf named Joker in Baadur’s (Lyall’s) pack and for some fucking reason (probably because Joker got turned in the 1970s) he came to the wake in the most incredibly fucking ugly suit I’d ever seen. It was so hideous, Alcuin, I can’t fucking believe it didn’t spontaneously combust from pure concentrated fugly. I swear to god, Alcuin, I’m going to go out and buy a polaroid camera tomorrow night and take pictures of every single fucking thing he wears so that you can see them and we can laugh at them together. It’s just. It’s awful. It’s hideous. And evidently this is subdued with him? I don’t even know.

What else, what else? Man, most of the people we both know are probably with you. But, hm, do you remember that lady at the Uchinaan Embassy party that kept stealing everyone’s food? She’s another one in that pack, far as I can tell, and she came in this amazing power suit. Like, huge giant shoulderpads aren’t usually a look I think works well on most people? But she makes it work for her.

There were a couple guys in full evening dress. Genevieve looked like she was doing the whole Carmilla/Toreador thing. It’s when you sort of drape yourself everywhere, looking languid and faintly bored. Honestly, it’s a little pretentious, but that’s why it’s a Toreador thing. (Toreadors are a clan of vampires we have at home. They’re famous for being arty and pretentious.) That Lupa guy who came to our party is a werewolf and he had these adorable flowers in his hair. He wanted to know about supernatural goings on in America and I had to quick make up some bullshit for him, but I relayed it to Melissa so we could keep our stories straight. Oh, and that guy who was Vilmos the tailor showed up as a vampire named Wiktor who was an ex-priest and gave me a lecture on angels. I think I’m a magnet for guys like that. (Except I’m pretty sure Wiktor is as gay as hell because later I saw him crawling on the ceiling following one of the guys in evening dress around.)

I could probably babble about what everyone wore and did for, like, ever, but it’s getting close to morning and I need to get the fuck asleep. So I’m gonna end this for now and hopefully when I write you again I can enclose hideous pictures of Hajime’s new fashion sense. I hope shit’s going okay wherever you guys are.

I miss you.

Love,
Thorne (no Ms.)

P.S. You’re lucky I’m handwriting this and that you’re my good bro. When I type shit up on the internet I don’t usually bother with capitalizing or writing out my textspeak acronyms. But I figured I’d be nice to you.

November 22nd

[thornsofmalkav]

Dear Alcuin,

I’d apologize for taking so long to write you again, but you’re going to get this letter the same time you get the rest of them, so you don’t get that apology. Hah. Anyway, it’s not that I haven’t been thinking of you. It’s just that I wanted to write when I had something worth telling. And now I have a few things worth telling.

I suppose I should tell you first that I misspelled this country’s name when I wrote the first letter. It’s Sarmatia, not Samartia. I’m not going back to change it, but I thought you should know. By night, at least, it’s a beautiful place. I’m staying with your old bondmate Zed--so are the rest of my “election team.” Zed’s Infiltrated as a banker vampire here. I sold him the “secret of alcoholic blood,” which is quite simple really. All you have to do is get your blood donors thoroughly sloshed before you withdraw their blood, so you can get sloshed yourself off of the blood alcohol content of the donor.

Honestly, I’m not sure why no one here had thought to try it. We’ve been doing it since forever back home. Well, you’d know that. I mean, you were there when I told the Ballad of Philip McPherson, ☆Ace Detective☆, and how that one time he got himself completely wasted trying to talk to a tree. Someday I have to tell you the story of the rest of that party. And maybe show you the dress I wore. I’d made it myself, you know. I mean, I didn’t design it, I was copying a dress from Sailor Moon, which was my favorite television show as a little kid, but I did sew it. I made a lot of outfits from comic books and tv shows like that. Cosplay, it’s called back home. It’s the art of costuming yourself as fictional characters and it’s one I’m good at.

So yes. We’ve all been availing ourselves of Zed’s hospitality and since I sold him the secret we even have plenty of spending money. I even got that polaroid camera I was threatening to get. Enclosed is the travesty that Hajime’s Infiltrator-self actually thought was something you should wear to a nightclub. I have no fucking clue where he finds this shit. However, I asked him if he’d do a fashion show for me so I can take more pictures, so be prepared for the onslaught to come.

Oh, but speaking of Zed, I’ve met his arch nemesis and he’s absolutely adorable. His name is Right Suzuki and he and his tiny little friends transform into teenagers to fight Zed and his monsters with train robots powered by Imagination. It’s the most beautifully ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of and I can’t wait until we’re back in Liminal and I can tease Zed about how his greatest enemy is a little ten-year-old boy. No wonder Zed’s evil schemes are silly things like pantsing an entire nation when he has to fight little kids all the time, even if they’re little kids that are temporarily older.

Ivan--Melissa’s secretary, who’s cute but not even a fraction as pretty as you--turns out to be from the same planet as that guy who got kidnapped so Malik had to fight a bear. They don’t actually seem to know each other, but I still think they’re lucky to have someone else from their world around. It’s nice to have someone around you don’t have to keep explaining everything to. I know I like that about Melissa, even if do still have to explain sometimes thanks to to her being from a different universe where not all the vampire clans are the same as in mine.

He asked me to have sex with him after all. I couldn’t see a reason not to and he does find me attractive (despite being objectively less pretty than Melissa) and he had given me a very nice foot rub. And it was good enough as sex goes, better than any sex I’d had before Joscelin… but oh fuck it, I don’t know. It’s not that he didn’t make me orgasm. He did very handily. But there wasn’t that connection there was with Joscelin. It didn’t feel as hallowed. He wasn’t a fucking tease like Joscelin either, which I can’t tell if it’s a point in his favor or not. (I have a theory on why Joscelin is a tease, by the way, and it mostly revolves around the idea that if you were shacking up with the Queen of All Subs and you weren’t much for BDSM yourself then of course you’re going to find ways to torment her in small ways where no one gets hurt. Like being a fucking tease.)

Anyway, it’s probably because although Ivan’s a perfectly nice guy, if kind of dumb, I don’t care all that much about him beyond a general sense of camaraderie? Not any more than any other Traveler. On the other hand, well, I do care about Joscelin. Just… not in a romantic way. I wasn’t sure at first, but now I am. I want to look for my salvation with him, not embark on some grand love affair. Which is good, anyway. He’ll have Phedre for that grand love affair when we find her dungeon door someday.

I hope the two of you are keeping safe wherever-you-are right now. I hope everyone with you is. There’s a lot of people I miss that are with you. I wonder if you’re Infiltrating or Investigating. I keep trying to imagine everyone who’s gone with you here, trying to guess what they’d be doing. I’d like to think you’d be another Investigator so we could work together, but maybe you wouldn’t be, maybe you’d be a corviger serving some incredibly clever and subtle vampire lord or maybe you’d be a vampire yourself, ancient and unearthly beautiful. Not that you aren’t three-quarters of the way to being unearthly beautiful anyway.

But maybe for the best that you aren’t here, that you aren’t a vampire or a werewolf or anything like that, because it looks like we have Hunters here. Maybe just a single Hunter. I hope it’s just one. One’s bad enough. Two of them with an apprentice and some ghouls they’d subverted killed over a dozen of them in my home town, according to my sire.

That’s probably why Dr. B As much as I wish he’d have trusted to my loyalty without I wouldn’t have let myself

Hunters with a capital H are people who go after supernatural creatures with the intent to kill them. You’ve probably already picked that up by the context clues.

I really hope they’ll be easy to deal with. That there’s only one.

I should talk about something else besides this grim bullshit. I’m just not sure what.

Sorry, Alcuin.

The Town Hall Meetings. That’s what I’ll talk about. They’re a thing we did back home sometimes leading up to elections. The candidate would come to the meeting and let people ask them questions. Just people from the audience. I’ve spent the last couple days putting some of them on for the Sarmatian election. They went pretty good. I made sure there were snacks for the werewolves and the ghouls corvigers too. They’d neglected that at the wake for the old prince.

They were eating people in public that time. Two weeks ago, at the wake, I mean. The other vampires. I got them to give me blood in a champagne flute. I don’t think eating is a kind of sex for vampires here or they wouldn’t

I wonder what else is different. If being a corviger is like being a ghoul was for me. If their masters mean the entire world to them, the way Dr. B did to me once. He doesn’t anymore. That’s… kind of scary. I mean, I still-- I loved him. Before I was a vampire. Fuck knows once I was a vampire, he mattered more to me than anything else except maybe getting something to eat. And I’m not sure even about that.

I do still care for him. I do. I don’t think I’ll ever stop caring for him. But he was my world. I was the moon that revolved around him. I’d have done anything he’d asked of me.

That’s why I’m like this now.

He wasn’t beautiful. He had a long face and a downturned mouth and he always looked slightly seedy and I’d have to remind him to comb his hair. But it was a very dear face to me.

He used to tell me I was clever. “What would I ever do without you, Charlene?” I could never get him to remember to call me “Thorne.” Not usually. I didn’t mind.

I Fuck

Sorry. I didn’t mean to lose track of the letter like that. The Town Hall Meetings went well, I thought. Even if Lady Elphaba’s secretary snuck in to ask dirty questions of Bagrat.

I think you’d have smiled if you’d heard it. I was hard-pressed not to. But I was the announcer and I had to step aside and stop the questions after the secretary went from asking about Bagrat’s underwear to whether or not Bagrat was circumcised.

We never did find out the answer to that.

I don’t think we will by my next letter, either. But it’s getting closer to dawn and I should really sleep. I miss you.

Love,
Thorne

P.S. Sorry this letter is much less entertaining slash informative than the last. I’ll try better next week.

[Inside the envelope is a polaroid photo of Hajime Aikawa dressed in an orange plaid sports coat with matching trousers.]

November 28th

[thornsofmalkav]

Dear Alcuin,

Lady Elphaba’s secretary was murdered the night after the Town Hall Meetings.

Yes, the one who asked Bagrat if he was circumcised. Their name was Bærry--with an aesch, it turns out. And I use ‘they’ because they were what we’d call non-binary in my time. I don’t know what you’d call it. An androgyne? Both male and female anyway.

Their body was dumped on Lady Elphaba’s doorstep.

People think it was Bagrat or his people. Joker--Baadur’s second-in-command, the one who wears all those terrible clothes--he was attacked by someone who was definitely one of Bagrat’s people.

I used most of the rest of my personal share of the money I got for selling Zed the secret of alcoholic blood to get Joker a new computer. Mostly because I saw the cobbled-together wreck of used parts he had before when I visited him in his room. Not for sex, mind you. I mean, sex did end up happening and holy shit, is banging a werewolf super fucking primal, oh my God. He literally ripped my clothes off, I shit you not. Luckily I wasn’t wearing my own clothes but this black thing I found in his closet and only if you ask very, very nicely will I show you what it was because I sure as shit did not take a picture of it.

(I may have ripped his clothes off too. When you see the photograph you’ll understand why they were doomed to destruction.)

But no, it was for that fashion show he promised me. I’ve enclosed the photos I took of him. Maybe they’ll make you laugh. Taking them was the only thing this week that made me laugh.

Someone killed one of the Infiltrating Vampires as well. Adachi. His Infiltrator-self was decidedly apolitical. I think it was the Hunter. Or Hunters. I have to hope it’s a singular Hunter.

I’m sorry. I should be writing you a long, funny, chatty letter like the ones I did before. And I can’t. It’s not in me right now. I’m too… I don’t know. Tired, maybe. Of all this bullshit.

I was so proud of myself. How I tricked everyone. How I got them to trust me. I did all that and yet I can’t keep people from being murdered, even when I know exactly what’s happening.

I wish you were here with me. You’re clever. I know, I’m clever too, but you’ve got a different perspective. Maybe you’d know what to do. Or Joscelin. He’s good at strategy, isn’t he? Maybe he might. I wish you were both here.

If I didn’t know better I’d think I still can’t If there were anyone I could

You’re important to me.

You’re both important to me.

I miss you so much.

It’s not for the same reasons. That you’re important. I mean, with him it’s like I told you in my last letter. We’re trying to find salvation together. Trying to find grace. If such a thing exists for me. I have to hope that it does. Like I have to hope the two of you are together somewhere and that in a few weeks we’ll be together again.

It’s different with you. You’re my friend. He’s my friend too, but he’s my teacher and my priest-confessor and there will always, I think, be something of that between us. And it’s not a bad thing. It’s just how it is with us.

But you’re my friend. Not the only person I would call a friend among our band. But dearer to me than all the others. A true friend. Not that I’d call the others false--they aren’t. But--oh, dammit, I don’t know. I just know that in the short time I’ve known you--not even six months--you’ve become irrevocably precious to me.

It’s not for your charm--although you are charming. It’s not for your mind--although I admire your mind. It’s not for your grace or your beauty or the delicious way you smell--or even your ability to listen to me babble on and on and somehow extract the marrow of substance in my torrent of words and mixed metaphors.

It was because of your kindness, I think. Your kindness and your practicality. That the first thing you offered to do when you realized what I am was to make sure I had enough to eat…

It’s silly, isn’t it? That something like that could mean so much. A simple gesture of kindness. But it mattered to me. What was it that Willy Wonka and whoever he was quoting (probably Shakespeare or Wilde) said? “So shines a good deed in this weary world.” I think that was it.

(Obviously you won’t really know. Before After your time. But by fucking God, once I figure out how to make a TV and DVDs again I am going to show you so many movies, Alcuin. You don’t even know.)

So. You’re my friend. My friend. It’s not that I begrudge my Infiltrator-selves for the bonds I formed as them--those bonds matter too--but part of me is pleased that this friendship is wholly mine, that Infiltration didn’t add anything to it that wasn’t there already. With the way Traveling is, anything where we can stand and say that yes, this something I made by myself as myself, this is mine... these things are precious.

I’m glad I started to write these ridiculous letters to you. Even if you can’t write back. Even if you don’t know that I’m writing. I can imagine you reading them, imagining your head bowed over this page as you attempt to make out my handwriting, imagine your dark eyes grave in thought, your moonsilk hair trailing its ends against this sheet-- It makes me feel better about everything.

When all this is over, after I give you these letters, let’s spend time together, just the two of us, and just do something fun. Read together, listen to music… just be together.

I’m looking forward to it.

Love,
Thorne

P.S. There are also a lot of books I’m going to shove at you someday too. You are warned.
P.P.S. You are allowed to laugh if or when I show you the outfit I wore on Joker’s behalf. But no photos. We don’t need a record of how far I fell from sartorial grace.

[Inside the envelope for this letter are polaroid photographs of every single outfit Joker Ivanov is wearing in this thread.]

December 4th

[thornsofmalkav]

[Thorne’s handwriting is distinctly shakey.]

Melissa. It was Melissa. She was the fucking Hunter all along. I thought she was my friend. I thought she was my friend.

She fucking lied to me, Alcuin. She lied to me about everything.

We found out when she assassinated Bagrat. Armin found out. He followed her. And then she tried to use her stupid conversion bullshit on him and he shut them both up in his mind and then I had to go pick them up and cover up all the evidence that she did it and haul them both back to Zed’s one at a time except that moron Eren Jäger or Jæger or however you spell it found Armin’s body where I stashed it and dragged it back to his safe house and vampirized the hell out of Armin under the stupid belief it would help.

It didn’t help. And then I got stranded in the goddamn safehouse overday.

I’m back and I dumped Melissa in Liminal for Xigbraig to deal with and since she doesn’t have portals it can basically function as her goddamn jail and somehow I managed to cover up well enough that we haven’t been exposed, they still think we’re legit somehow I don’t even fucking know but.

Shit.

I trusted her, Alucin. I honestly did. She was my vampire bro. I thought we understood each other. I didn’t understand anything about her.

I hope you’re all right back wherever you are. I’m sure you must be. I were I was there with you. Whatever must be going on where you and Joscelin are can’t be nearly as much bullshit as this is. I mean, it would have to be really fucking bullshit in that case.

When we’re all back in Liminal, will you just hold me for a little? And maybe let me cry on you? I have to keep pretending I’m not completely fucked up about this for the sake of the Jaunt, to give all the other Investigators a good example and to make sure the Sarmatians don’t suspect anything but I am fucked up about this, Alcuin. I’m fucked up bad.

I wish you were here.

I wish Melissa wasn’t a lying, backstabbing bitch.

I wish a lot of things.

The Jaunt can’t be that much longer, can it? It’s practically been a month. Don’t the Trumps usually get impatient after six weeks? Something like that. God.

I can’t believe she did this to me.

I thought we were friends.

You’re still my friend, right? I’m right to trust you, right? Please say I am. When we’re together again and you read this, please say I am.

No. I am. I already know the worst of you thanks to Joscelin and nothing I know from him has given me any indication that you would betray me for anything less than me trying to bring down Terre d’Ange and I don’t want to bring it down I want to

Okay. I don’t think I actually want to live there no matter how cool it sounds because you’re from, like, the fourteenth fucking century and I would miss things like computers and indoor plumbing and stuff like that but. Still.

Also I don’t speak French d’Angeline besides numbers, days of the week, hello, goodbye, where is the toilet, and the lyrics to Frere Jacque and Alouette. And maybe a couple other vocabulary words I could probably use to pun with but the point is

I don’t know what the point is anymore.

Fuck.

Right. The point is that I’m not Melisande Sharizhai (what the hell is with betraying bitches having names that begin with ‘Mel’) or that human shitstain Vitale Whatshisface and I’m not going to do anything to threaten your country, so you’re not going to betray me.

I can trust you. And I can trust other non-Melissa people too. But they’re not the ones I’m writing this to.

I can trust you. I have to believe that.

I miss you.

Love,
Thorne

December 8th

[thornsofmalkav]

Dear Alcuin,

They’re holding the election tomorrow. That’s when all our hard work will have paid off. I hope to God that this is what the Trumps want from us. That we’ll be able to see everyone else again after it’s done and the votes are counted.

I miss you.

I mean, I miss everyone. I do. But I could use your advice. Because I ended up delivering blood bags to Melissa in Liminal yesterday and I finally gave her a piece of my mind and God, Alcuin, she told me about why she became a Hunter, she asked me what I’d have done if I’d seen what she’d seen and

And I don’t know if what I’d have done would have been all that different. Except I’d have done it in an awesome superhero costume with a cool codename.

I hate that. Hate that she made me feel sorry for her. Hate that I could see a set of circumstances in which I might have become like her.

And she told me that I’d never been on her kill list. That out of all the vampires and werewolves and whatnot around, I was the only one she had no intentions at all of eliminating. And I

I couldn’t deal. I still can’t deal. What right does she have to put me on a vampire pedestal just because we’re friends? I’m not different than anyone else like us and if I am it’s only because I’m conscientious. Not, like, out of some special virtue unique to me alone. I’m just as morally bankrupt as any vampire underneath the rules I’ve constructed for myself. I’ve just been lucky and conscientious.

Not even as much of the latter as I should be here in liminal.

I used to eat some guinea pigs before I went out to feed on my nerd herd. To make sure I had something in my stomach so I wouldn’t find myself draining them dry by accident. Because that’s really easy to do, you know. It’s one of those things you try not to think about most of the time, just because it’s a shitty kind of accident to get in, but it happens. Derek--he was my best friend as a vampire and could have--the night I met him, he accidentally did that to some poor fucker he’d lured out into an alley to talk about bitcoins. He drank too much. We all had to help him dispose of the body. It was kind of bullshit from beginning to end.

And, like, we weren’t even that pissed off at him about it. Maybe a little frustrated, yeah, because what the fuck are you supposed to do with the random corpse of some Aryan-looking dude? People notice when middle class white guys die. But not, like, super angry at Derek. Just kind of resigned. Because shit happens. If you go too long between feeding you might not remember to stop before you take too much. And sometimes people die. That’s just a thing.

Vampires are really fucked up, Alcuin. If anyone ever gives you a chance to become one, don’t take it. It’s a real shitshow.

But, like, I haven’t been taking those precautions. Not since I’ve started Traveling. I’ve just relied on Selene to play spotter, to keep track of that shit for me. And that’s not fair to her, is it? I’m sure she’s got better things to do than from keeping me from accidentally murdering people.

I can do better. I should do better. I can make blood now, you know. I’ve been doing almost nothing but practicing making stuff from Liminal Space since Kanji taught me and I’ve finally got it so I can make food. Including food for me. So now I don’t have to put you and Leo and Genevieve and everyone in danger. I can just eat the stuff I make. Sure, it’s not nearly as enjoyable as feeding straight from the tap, as it were, but it’s safer.

I don’t want to ever accidentally kill you, Alcuin. Even if the Trumps would bring you back.

I mean, I do like feeding directly. It’s great. You know what it feels like being fed from. It’s like that doing the feeding, only so many times more and it’s satisfying just by itself. And I do love especially feeding from you. You’re like cake if cake was made out of blood. (Actually, I think that’s a thing the Tzimisce can do, but who wants to eat anything a Tzimisce gives you?) And, like, it’s probably the whole d’Angeline thing, because Joscelin’s the same way. But, shit, I don’t know. I could probably just fill myself up with the blood I can make now and then take, like, the last pint or so from you, but is that entirely fair to you? I mean, yeah, it’s fun for me and you, but then you’re left with a wicked case of blue balls at the end and sure, you can just turn around find Leo and deal with that, but… shit. I just don’t know. (My offer to help with that is still on the table, but I don't know how fair that is to Leo.)

I never used to care so much about the ethics of feeding. I mean, sure, I cared enough to do whatever possible to make sure I didn’t accidentally kill anyone that way because just because I’m a vampire doesn’t mean I have to be an asshole, but. I don’t know. It didn’t really matter to me that I never went through with the promise of my bite. Even though I of all people should have known better.

But I guess it’s hard to think these things through when you’re stuck in love with someone.

Those months between when he turned me and when we were executed were the best in some ways. Because for once I got everything I needed from feeding from him.

They do vampires so much better here than back home. That’s part of why I’m so angry at Melissa. Because she was just slaughtering them like nothing and they’ve done so much better than at home. Their corvigers… the way they treat them is so much better than our ghouls. They even have a vote in the election, even though it’s weighted at the fraction of a vampire’s.

And it’s wholly voluntary. Being a corviger, being a vampire. They won’t turn you unless you want them to. They understand what a big choice this is. They don’t force your loyalty. They let you prove it yourself.

This is what Caine would have wanted us to make of ourselves. Not the mess back home.

(No wonder he’s coming back. No wonder everything will be fucked when he gets home.)

I… don’t wish I could stay. I’m tired of being here. Tired of being away from people I care about. Tired of being away from my second home--because somehow, that’s what you’ve all become. A second home for me. A home that’s people.

But I wish I could bring something of this place to my old home.

We’ll be seeing each other soon, right? I have to hope we will.

I miss you.

Love,
Thorne