Blue Sky

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"The blue in the sky is just…like…this!"

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I walk along the busy streets of the city at night, looking for a new prey. I spot a young lady walking with her friends; one look at her dark eyes and she becomes hypnotized. She left her companions without a word, and comes with me, to an isolated place beside a run-down building. I devour her, but her blood was ordinary, naught but a plain meal.

As I headed home, I heard a faint sound of crying that sounded like those of a child's. I followed it, and saw a little girl, about the age of five, with fiery red hair and bright cerulean eyes.

"Mommy…mommy…" she sobbed.

The girl was lucky. I had just eaten.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"Mommy… my mommy's gone…" she replied in between tears.

'A mixed-blood child… abandoned.' I thought.

"Do you want to come with me?" I said.

"No! No! Mommy's going to come and get me!!!" she refused stubbornly.

"Have it your way. Stay there and die," I replied nonchalantly.

I left but stopped not too far from her, and as I watched her continue to weep, I felt a sense of pity I have never experienced before.

I approached her and pleaded, "Come with me. Please. I'll give you something to eat."

It was purely an idle whim.

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"Hey. Hey! HEY!!!" she shouted. "Why don't you eat anything? Why do you always wear black? Why do you wake up at nighttime?"

I was extremely pissed. "Why you… Quiet! Quit following me! You're just a morsel of emergency food!!" I reprimanded.

"Emergency food..?" she asked, quite puzzled. "What's 'mo-moresell' mean?"

"BE QUIET!!!" I bellowed.

By the third day, I was regretting having picked her up.

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The following day when we went out shopping, a lot of passers-by were picking on the girl.

"Oh my God… Do you see that girl?!" one woman told her friends as we passed by them. "That red hair! And the eyes! How freakish!!!"

I saw the look of fear and hurt in the girl's eyes so I said, "Ignore them. They are chaff."

Perhaps I didn't dispose of her because she was an aberration, like me.

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I bought her a few pieces of paper and crayons, to which she was extremely delighted.

"Blue…" she muttered as she colored on a piece of paper. "Blue water… Blue sky… Hey, isn't the sky pretty at morning?"

"How should I know? I've never seen it."

"You never saw the sky be blue? Really?!" she asked incredulously, then quickly returned to her art. "Hmm... I don't know how to draw it right. The real sky is more… Hey, why haven't you seen the sky be blue?"

"The sky at daytime? Not interested," I replied with an indifferent look on my face.

"Why not? …Ooh!!!" she exclaimed. "The blue in the sky is… Look," she chirped as she pointed to her azure eyes, "just…like…this!"

"See? So now you can see what the sky's like anytime!!" she said to me with a smile on her face.

I can only stare at her as she laughed happily. 'Such an enigmatic child…' I said to myself. 'Ostracized by society, spurned by her very own parents… How could she smile so easily?'

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I kept on planning to eat her. Somehow, twenty years went by.

I woke up one night. I called her, but she didn't come.

'That's odd,' I thought. 'She didn't come to wake me up…'

As I looked out the window, I saw three men harassing her outside, trying to take her away forcibly. I was enraged, and quickly came to rescue her. In my fury I attacked the men. I vaguely remember ripping open a couple of throats.

As we went back inside, she started panicking. "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! It's all my fault!" she apologized while she sobbed.

I hugged her tightly and said, "It's okay, it's all right… I've been hunted many times before. Now pack up your things quickly."

One had gotten away. I'd been sloppy. Mistakes will happen, sometimes. We fled the mansion at once.

We ran and ran until we came upon an old and abandoned church. It was chaotic, things were broken and scattered as we went inside.

'Of all places, I wind up making a church my home… How wry,' I thought.

As I stepped on a cross, she asked, "Aren't you scared of crosses?"

I smirked and answered, "What I'm afraid of is faith. A ruin like this is meaningless."

She looked up at me thankfully and said, "You're my savior. If anyone tries to come after you, I'll get rid of them."

I smiled. "I'm sure you will."

As I turned to left, she whispered, so soft I didn't almost hear it, "I love you."

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Twenty more years slipped by. I no longer thought of her as food.

As I sat down to drink my afternoon tea, she approached me with a worried look on her face.

"All you drink is tea," she said, "You haven't had any proper nutrition lately!"

"This is a small village. Even feeding on farm animals could attract attention," I explained.

She sat down across me and said, "You could have mine anytime. I'd gladly give it to you."

I chuckled and joked, "Eww! Who'd want to drink that vile blood of yours? You're horrible!"

She merely giggled.

"Tell me about the blue sky," I requested.

"Again?" she asked. She sat down and placed my head on her lap gently. "Well… Have I told you the light shines in the shafts through the clouds sometimes? It sometimes looks like a shining ladder. It's so beautiful.

"I wish I could show it to you, even just once…" she wistfully said.

Gazing at her sky blue eyes, I responded, "No. It's okay. I already have my sky."

She smiled and asked, "Oh, really? You're such a silly man!!!"

I was totally at peace. Our happiness was timeless. It felt…eternal…

Looking back, I wonder… How many hundreds of times did she tell me about the sky?

She was suddenly stricken with the flu…

…and she closed her pretty eyes.

I didn't shed a single tear for her because I knew where to find her.

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As I opened the window in the broad daylight, I suddenly remembered her words…

"The blue in the sky is just…like…this!"

Looking at the bright blue sky, I laughed and said, "Oh, there you are!"

"This is your...blue sky!"

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A/N: Hi guys! In case you're wondering, the girl in this story has no name. I never intended to give her a name, for no certain reasons. ^^

And also, I'm giving credit to my bestie Haruka-chan; she's the one who gave me the idea for this story.

So please tell me what you think. Review, please!

And for those who are reading my other story "When Worlds Collide", I'm planning to release the fourth chapter sometime near this week or the next. The setting of the story is delayed because of certain reasons, and I deeply apologize.

Love you guys!

x-x-x-x-x

-Satsuki-chan

[-HiMe'16.-]

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