Hello people, and welcome to my world! Just a few thing to begin.
-I don't own True Blood or any of the characters (unless they are my own)
-This story is set in a timeline similar to the finale of the show, although I've altered a few things: Eric did not release Willa, that is all :)
-I know I haven't updated Walk the World in quite a while, but no need to fear, it's coming soon! I've been working on this fella for a while.
I don't think I've forgotten anything, but if I have, I will clarify that at the end! The "Pilot", so to say, got a little lengthy, so I apologize. They won't all be mother long... Also, each chapter is based off a song, and this one is based off of "Awake O Sleeper" by The Brothers Bright.
Happy Reading!
Chapter One
Awake O Sleeper
And You as Well Must Die, Beloved Dust
And you as well must die, beloved dust,
And all your beauty stand you in no stead;
This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head,
This body of flame and steel, before the gust
Of Death, or under his autumnal frost,
Shall be as any leaf, be no less dead
Than the first leaf that fell,—this wonder fled.
Altered, estranged, disintegrated, lost.
Nor shall my love avail you in your hour.
In spite of all my love, you will arise
Upon that day and wander down the air
Obscurely as the unattended flower,
It mattering not how beautiful you were,
Or how beloved above all else that dies.
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
XXX
Birdie's fingers shook as she grasped the paper cup, holding it under the steady stream of lemonade from the faded orange Gatorade cooler. It was printed in stars and stripes, a tribute to the American flag - probably left over from Independance Day, if she had to guess. Guiding the cup to her lips carefully, she took a sip of the sloshing substance, listening to the party around her. Hmm, it was watered down a bit, probably from excessive ice. Sugar might do it good.
Studying the crowd of locals that had gathered, Birdie gripped her cup, slick with condensation, while perusing the folding tables set up full of desserts, hamburgers and their fixings, other caterings. There were coffee pots set up at the end of the buffet where she found small pink packets of sugar intermingling with coffee creamers.
"Birdie!" she jumped at her name, immediately spilling the tiny grains all over the weathered wooden table she had set her cup of lemonade on. Smiling awkwardly, she turned around and greeted the cheery redhead who had snuck up behind her. "I'm glad you made it - I didn't see your face, and I thought -"
"I'm sorry, Arlene. My car - it can be pretty temperamental, and just as I was leaving, it decided to take a shit. Excuse my French."
"Oh honey, excused." The woman winked, leaning against the table to support her weight. "I sure hope you didn't walk here, then. I know your house ain't far, but," she leaned in closer. Birdie could smell her perfume, undoubtedly Liz Claiborne, and the unmistaken scent of baby powder. Her son was about three now, throwing things around and toddling into coffee tables - Birdie had met him a few times. "In heels like those, you're liable to twist an ankle or somethin'." Arlene winked.
Birdie shifted in her heels. They were uncomfortable wedges that bumped her up at least three inches, but they had little arch support. Struggling through the night in them hadn't seemed like such a feat when she strapped them on in the comfort of her home, but now, teetering around in the grass, she felt like the century's fool.
"They seemed like a good idea at the time. I was going to hitch a ride with Reverend Daniels and his wife - they don't live but a block away from me. Gave my junker one last try and it decided to get up and go." without swiveling around, Birdie reached back for her now sufficiently-sugared cup of lemonade. The paper had gone soggy, making the foundation of the cup questionable, but she took a sip and it seemed sturdy enough for its purpose.
"Well, good for you. I would hate to see you hurting yourself for a pair of heels, no matter how stylish. You know, I thought of you the other day when I saw this story on the news - something about scientists tracing back malaria or something, doin' experiments on mosquitos and what not, did you see?"
Birdie listened to Arlene's banter as she studied the strung summer lights, swaying in the amiable breeze, tuning out the woman's magpie chatter as she scanned the crowd around her. The lanterns laced amongst the sky, hung as if affable stars aligned them, gave the illusion of bringing the sky to earth instead of bringing the earth to the sky, twinkling orbs of light.
The sun had long since completed its tour for the day and had now been replaced by myriad stars, dotting the vast ever-changing expanse of pin prick lights in the inky canvas. The backyard church grove was lit up with all kinds of celebratory lights to symbolize the summer, ironic in comparison to the gibbous moon that hovered tenuously in the sky, protecting Bon Temps as a stoic guardian.
After she was finally able to unwind herself from Arlene's tenuous yet friendly grasp, Birdie wandered amongst the tents of patrons, citizens of this little quiet town. She'd met most of them, some for the first time tonight, but Bon Temps had become familiar to her over the past few months, what with its welcoming demeanor. Spinning around the church's back courtyard, foolish dancers nearly oblivious to the impending peril inevitable to the world of harmony. Birdie sighed. She didn't love this town. It was nice, it was safe, but she hadn't come to love it. Not yet, at least.
Mostly, she showed up to these events when it was appropriate; this town was so accepting of vampires, the reverend had moved the annual summer church picnic to accommodate them. Instead of starting in the afternoon, it started at dawn just as the creatures of the night were rising. It seemed foolish to think that they would even attend - didn't they have better things to do with their nights than to attend some podunk church picnic? Apparently not, because plenty of Bon Temps's vampires were here, maintaining their titles as part of the community.
Birdie had met many vampires in her day. They didn't make her uncomfortable - in fact, nothing really did other than awkward social interaction.
"Hey? Hey, are you okay?"
Birdie snapped out of her stupor, shaking her head. The loose curls she'd put in her flaxen hair before sunset were beginning to fall out, and it didn't help when she combed her long, slender fingers through them.
"Yeah, I'm - fine. Who are you?" she still felt dazed, staring off at some far-off time, some lost world of stitching in the stars.
"Oh, shoot - I'm sorry. Jessica. I'm Jessica, I think I've seen you around." The girl smiled, ultramarine buoyancy of her eyes floating in waves of night, bobbing amongst the lanterns. She extended her hand, light eyebrows raising towards the paleness of her forehead.
"Birdie Blaire." She smiled, reaching forward to receive the woman's offer - or girl, she couldn't be much more than twenty. She grasped her hand and let the cold seep in, allowing it to emanate into her skin. It seared for a moment and then fizzled out, but the redhead's smile didn't as she bounced excitedly, pulling Birdie to her feet. Even in her wedge heels, the vampire was still taller than her by a few inches.
"You're that girl from the paper, right? Uh, the - medical something. Medical..."
"Historian." Birdie stated proudly, taking another sip of her lemonade. It was bland, she much preferred Arnold Palmer.
"Right! You're the medical historian. That's so interesting - you must've seen a lot in your day, right? I've never actually looked at the study of diseases. I mean, in school we grew E. Coli, but that's about it. I think what ya'll do is so fascinating, just so - cool!"
"Thanks." Birdie smiled, raising her glass up slightly. "So, you live around here?" Familiarizing herself with the small town had been easy, but the people in it, not so much. There were so many outlying parts, so many historical buildings.
"Yeah, me and my husband live out at the old Compton place. Sheriff Bellefleur rents it to us, and - oh, hold on. Hoyt! Hoyt, come over here and meet Birdie!" Jessica was so outgoing, so - happy, just to be here, to be included. Birdie was starting to understand this town's relationship with vampires.
A man lumbered across the lawn, taking a swig of his Coca-Cola as he approached, seeming only to get taller as he got closer. He was rugged-looking with stubbly cheeks, hair askew, and tree-like frame, but there was a softness to him. He put one arm around Jessica's waist, extending the other.
"Hoyt Fortenbury, nice to meet you." he smiled, and Birdie smiled, shaking his hand. Hoyt's grip was firm, purposeful. "You're Birdie?"
"Yes. Yes, I am. It's nice to meet more people in Bon Temps - I've sort of been held up a lot the past couple months, researching, typing - you know, the whole lap-top-illumination party at three in the morning." She babbled, though the couple smiled at her genuinely.
They continued to talk for quite a while, enjoying the nightly breeze, but over their shoulders, Birdie was watching other people arrive. A few more people came late, and Reverend Daniels greeted them with open arms, a family and their little girl, a teenage boy and who appeared to be his girlfriend.
Listening to Hoyt speaking about his construction job and its shit pay, yet good hours, was surprisingly - homey. Birdie couldn't recall seeing a vampire-human relationship where the human wasn't just a blood bag and a sex toy, but they were married. And obviously in love.
"So, where do you shack up?" Hoyt took another swig from his can. From the sounds of the sloshing, the Coke was nearly finished. "I mean - I work on the roads, there's always some fallen tree, so I know who lives where." his arm around vampire Jessica's waist tightened as he went red in the face. Hoyt was small town charming, certainly. There was a gentle chivalry about him.
"I live up to the old old Bellefleur place. Surprisingly cheap rent. A foreclosure, I think, but it's a nice place. A little too big for me, but when I was looking for places to buckle down and get to work, my employance agency just plopped me down here in Bon Temps. Not that I mind, it's a great place - I just haven't had time to explore, you know?" There she went, babbling again.
"Birdie's a medical historian." Jessica piped in, intelligent light eyes darting between the two of them.
"Oh, really? What do you do?" Hoyt shook the can of Coke, clarifying its emptiness.
"Well - medical historians study diseases, document them, classify. Some people could tell you who won every Super Bowl, I could tell you how many people died of cholera in 1831."
"Is that why you're here?" Jessica asked in interest, combing through her auburn curls. "To study Hep-V cases?"
"Yes - to study Hep-V. It's only been about a year since New Blood, so documentation is just beginning. Not only do I study and document the history of it, I study the underlying causes. What it does to the body, how it dominates."
"That's amazin'." Jessica grinned, tilting her head to the side. She looked almost sunkissed in a way, a certainty that a vampire couldn't possibly have, but she did. There was that immortal deepness to her eyes, though - a glimmering hunter deep down, beneath the gentle church-goer look. "I'd love to hear more about it. Why don't you come sit with us?"
"Glady." Birdie obliged, following Jessica and Hoyt to the table clothed in a checkered red and white table cloth, surrounded by a group of semi-familiar faces.
Officer Stackhouse - she'd met him once or twice, she remembered he'd swung by her house as she was moving in. In the middle of the night, no less, and some dipship had called the police to tattle on her for making a racket. Instead of taking her in, he'd helped her carry in her messy cluttered boxes until dawn. He had a half-eaten hot dog in hand and was chewing, his arm around a blonde who was evidently his wife, because she held a tiny infant close to her chest, talking to Lafayette, the short order cook from Arlene's restaurant, who sat fiddling with his feather earring.
"Well, hey Birdie!" Officer Stackhouse sprung from his seat, knocking his folding chair backwards as he thrust out his hand. She took it, shaking the firmness of it as an unmistakably necessary grin spread across her face. He was just so - friendly. Incredibly so. "I didn't know if you'd be comin' tonight - you all moved in yet?"
"Still working on it, Officer Stackhouse. Everything's in the house now, thanks to you. It's up to me to unpack it, when I get around to it. I've been spending a lot of time working."
"Just give the office a call if you need a hand. And it's Jason. Least when I'm not wearin' the uniform." He smiled charismatically, leading her to a spare seat at the table. "Brigette, this here's Birdie Blaire, the new historian." Jason introduced her to his wife, who was a classically beautiful blonde woman.
"Birdie! It's nice to finally meet the infamous basket case who moved into the haunted house in the middle of the night." Brigette grinned, extending her hand. Birdie shook it, reveling in its warm softness.
"Haunted? I didn't hear about this." she mused dramatically, sitting down in the seat Jason had pulled out for her. The only way to act normal about this was to be into the humanity of "hauntings", or whatever the hell they called it.
"Ah, it's just an old kid's tale. I'm surprised you didn't hear about it before you moved in." Another woman who Birdie had yet to meet smiled, extending her hand. "I'm sorry, we haven't met. I'm Jason's sister, Sookie."
"Sookie. That's a different name. Different in a good way." Birdie matched Sookie's smile, taking a sip of her watery lemonade.
"So, you's the mad mofo who moved up in the haunted house?" Lafayette cat called across the table, interrupting. "I thought you was stupid for comin' in Bellefleur's every morning and ordering a heart attack on a stick, but you the real deal Miss Blaire." he lilted, stretching his arm around the back of another man with shaggy brown hair, a scruffy face.
"La's just trying to scare you." he stated, taking a swig from his can of New Blood, plastered with a pin up of Sarah Newlin's playboy face.
"I'm not afraid of ghosts." Birdie set her empty cup on the checkered table cloth, uncurling the soggy paper at the rim, studying the group that had gathered at the table. There was Jason and his wife, of course, and their baby swaddled in a pink receiving blankie. Lafayette, the cook whom she bantered with when she went to Bellefleur's to breakfast because she hadn't unpacked her dishes or gone shopping yet. The vampire who was obviously his boyfriend. She caught his name - James. There were Jessica and Hoyt, of course, and Jason's sister Sookie.
As usual, Birdie kept the banter of a conversation with the people who were becoming less than strangers while she kept account on who was arriving. More and more seemed to be showing up as the picnic continued - a bearded man with his son perched on his shoulders, sucking a juice box down, an old man who ushered a gussied up elderly woman with a plastic pearl necklace beaded around her neck. And a girl who arrived by herself, clothed in a floral dress that glowed underneath the bobbing lanterns.
Birdie noticed her immediately, just as she had been noticing vampires for the past - however long. Jessica had nearly slipped her radar, being so frilly and excited. She was as close to human as one of them could possibly get, but this girl screamed vampire, and yet the opposite.
Watching from afar as she greeted the reverend and Lettie Mae Daniels, Birdie continued to nod and listen to the conversation Sookie and Lafayette had struck up, not truly listening. She hadn't seen the vampire around, not in Bon Temps, at least.
"Did I miss much?" the girl leaned down and hugged her arm around Jessica's shoulders. Jessica was more than eager for a hug from her evident friend, who held a half-ripped plastic shopping bag and a case of Bud Lite in the other hand. "I brought refreshments - I didn't wanna seem rude."
"I'll take those." Hoyt smirked, taking the packages from her, heading back towards the refreshment booth.
"You didn't miss much, not at all - we still have time to dominate at the sack race." Jessica winked, and Birdie smiled at the brunette vampire, offering her hand.
"I'm Birdie." Suddenly shy, she hoped she didn't seem strange offering the vampire to shake hands, but - oh well. "Birdie Blaire."
"Willa Burrell." The vampire smiled, shaking her hand. She was cold too - perhaps, colder than Jessica, but that might have been a coincidence. Her dark hair was swept up into an uppercase ponytail, flyaways pinned, and she looked so painstakingly like a Southern sweetheart, it was nearly a joke. Although she didn't seem naive. Anything but.
"Here, have my seat." Immediately, she stood up, brandishing her soggy empty cup, pulling out the seat beside Sookie. "I'm up for another drink."
"It's fine, I -" Willa Burrell began, but Birdie held her hands up in surrender, backing away in mock defeat.
"No, really, I insist. I'll be right back." Damn, if her hospitality could wear off, that sure could kick in now. It was - old fashioned, at best, but what else had she expected from herself? Shaking her golden hair out of her face as she perused the dessert table, regretting her fluid yet awkward exit, she met Sookie's eyes over the cream puffs.
"It's not real hard to tell when people aren't from around here." She smiled, bow lips turning upwards attractively as she used the baby tongs to retrieve a slice of carrot cake from a platter opposite a batch of iced brownies. "Ya'll get a little antsy when Bon Temps residents poke you a little. Don't mind it - it's somethin' you get used to, livin' here like you will."
"I'll keep that in mind. I really don't - care all that much." Birdie reached for a slice of cheesecake, deciding against it and retracting her hand. "Small towns are my forte."
"Do the vampires make you nervous?" Sookie wondered, and Birdie watched her sage eyes alight. "You'll get used to them, too. Most of 'em are residents."
"Oh, no, I - I've been around lots of vampires, they don't bother me. Equality!" Birdie pumped one fist in the air awkwardly, resolving into a nervous snort. "I'm just really not the - uh, banner-holder-in-a-parade type."
Sookie nodded, filling a fresh cup of iced tea from a red cooler, suddenly meeting Birdie's eyes again. This time, she held them - gazed into them with curiosity, with vigor as her filmy brows raised in wonder.
"What are you?" Voice laced with eager interest, Sookie reached to touch her face but Birdie squirmed away in confusion, feeling her stomach drop into her hypothetical pants.
"Excuse me?"
"I can't hear you, not like normal - your thoughts echo around in your head like the Grand Canyon, and even then they're just - blurry pictures. I've never met someone who thinks like that." She shook her head, and Birdie backed away a few steps, feeling her wedges beginning to sink into the muddy turf left over from afternoon rain. "I'm real sorry to be intrusive, but you're not -"
"I don't know who you - or what you think I am, but I - I have to go." Birdie could feel redness seeping into her face, an intense heat, although per usual she felt the coals but remained cold. Wheeling away from the wavering blonde, she rushed back to the table and snatched her purse off the back of the chair where the vampire she'd given her seat towas laughing with Brigette.
"Hey, Birdie, where are you goin'?" Jessica called, vamping from her seat, but Sookie caught her hand.
Don't dare look back.
Don't dare turn around.
Don't dare say anything.
The world around her echoed in her ears as she searched for her car, the green Beatle parked amongst pick-ups and equally old sedans, fumbling for the keys in her purse as she pushed onward, blocking all of her sense aside from sight and the drive to get the hell away from this church picnic.
This was a mistake.
Becoming aware of a sudden overpowering darkness, Birdie blinked a few times, eyeing the rows of messily parked cars, eyes frantically flitting for her own. God, why had she parked so far away? Mind moving in undulated waves, she took a deep breath and gripped the keys in her hands, scanning for her Beatle once again. Something wasn't right. It was off. Perhaps it was only the feeling of dread she'd felt in her stomach moments ago, but - no, this was different.
"Hello?" Birdie called ridiculously into the night, scuffing her heel against the gravel. The cars had been parked on what appeared to be an old baseball diamond - through the tenebrosity, she could make out the bases and overgrown field, blanketed in vehicles. "Who's out there?" In stride, she began trudging through the weeds towards her car, parked amongst a rusty pickup and old Toyota.
Shoving the keys in the ignition, breathing hard, Birdie willed the car to spring to life, to somehow fly the hell out of this place. Cursing, she turned the damn thing again, hearing only backlash and static from the engine. Shit, she should have known better than to take the damn thing when it had barely rumbled to life in the first place.
"Damn it!" she slammed her hands against the dash, pressing her forehead against the steering wheel. Huffing loudly, she became aware of a prickling feeling on the back of her neck. Something - something was not right.
"Birdie." The voice beside her spoke, and she turned to view the gathering black mist circling - something empty, something so void that it created an intense feeling of dread inside of her. An immense need to get away, to leave this place forever. The blackness continued to grow, to growl, and she screamed, frantically trying to unlock the door with fumbling fingers.
A deep, guttural, inhuman snarl exhumed from the blackening mist, and as Birdie numbly gripped the lock, she tumbled backwards out of the front seat, straight into the wet grass. Oofing at the impact, she scrambled to her feet and looked behind her, the void mist gathering around her in a mockery as she let another unintentional scream rip from her lips, running back towards the church picnic.
Starving howling emitted from the picnic grounds, immortal, inhuman, and the bobbin lantern lights began to flicker. Frantic Bon Temps residents wove in and out of picnic tables, trampled scattered potato salad and hot dog buns, huddled in the mock safety of the gazebo as Birdie tried to figure out what the exact hell was going on.
The black fog streaked through the air, materializing before Arlene Bellefleur and a girl with matching red hair, her daughter, into the shadow of a man, mouth agape in an impossible proportion as it laughed, leech-like face yawning as it grabbed for mother and daughter.
The creature let out an insistent hiss as it inhaled, features becoming more and more human as it snickered at the cowering humans.
"Mommy!" Arlene's daughter, gripping her mother's waist, sobbed, and the man turned his attention towards Birdie, who stood dumb with her keys in hand. The man wore a tattered pair of dusty jeans and a green t shirt with the sleeves ripped off, his curly mop of hair shrouded in twigs. Completely black eyes narrowed as he viewed her, the small woman standing between her friend in this town and whatever monster of the mist had emerged.
With one last look at her, the man materialized with a roar, becoming the black mist once again as a blood-curdling shriek filled the air, piercing all of the terrified towns peoples' humanesque terrorized screaming. Birdie immediately could feel the anger bubbling in her stomach, the darkness taking over as her stony glare tarred into the empty black it would become.
Her skin was entirely numb now as the mist infiltrated the town's church picnic like bombs, surfacing again and again, terrorizing its innocent victims. The blackness materialized into figures, knocking over tables, pouncing on people, and then ye-hawing back into the sky where they collectively swirled.
"Shit." Her voice was becoming nothing but a whisper as she became nothingness, whatever lay in her wake beginning to hover and spiral as she searched for the owner of the scream. Birdie let out a whispy cry as she tripped over a body lying face down on the ground, immediately turning it over to Jessica's terrified and petrified face. A droplet of black sludge dripped from her mouth, like a drool of blood.
"No, no, no." she cried, scrambling to her feet. Another shriek filled the haunted air, and she turned to her left, seeing through the black of her vision, Jason Stackhouse ushering people into a shed, his own eyes filled with fear as he protected as many as he could.
Something grabbed her leg and pulled her back down to the ground beside the utility building, face to face with Jessica's beady glistening eyes as the creature pounced on her, speaking in tongues as her brunette hair hung in her face that came into full view as the black mist cleared.
"Parare rursus moriturae. Proditor." The woman cackled, face contorting into the same flesh-tearing appearance of the thing that had threatened Arlene, attacking her prey as she lowered her sharp-toothed void to her collarbone and pinned her wrists to the earth. Birdie could barely scream as she began to feel the life being drained from her, kicking her legs against Jessica's stone cold body as she began to feel her struggle weakening.
The woman, or creature, let out a low snarl as she was knocked from Birdie's chest, tumbling into a hovering cloud of blackness and regaining her strength into the human-like form. Vampire Willa hissed, fangs clicking from her gums as she stanced herself, floral dress fluttering at her knees. "Get the hell out of here!" She growled in her much-too-gentle Southern drawl, narrowing her dark eyes. The woman pounced on the vampire, and Willa screamed as Birdie regained the strength she had never once lost, crawling against Jessica's ironically lifeless body.
"No!" Birdie cried, extending her hand. The blackness pooling in her eyes darkened as she got back to her feet, prepared to kill whatever thing had a hold on the stranger who struggled against her.
As soon as it had come, the black void mist receded, figures melting back into the fog and fading away, or disappearing so quickly that not a soul could see it. Willa's body slumped against the brick of the utility building, as lifeless as Jessica's, and the same trickle of black melted from her gaping mouth.
The screaming subsided, Birdie immediately fumbling in the grass for her misplaced keys, grasping them with shaking hands as she scrambled to Willa's side, slapping her frozen face side to side. "Willa Burrell? Shit." grasping her keys, she sliced her wrist with the new house key, feeling no pain whatsoever as the gray scant of the wound began to seep the way blood never could. Taking a deep breath, she pressed her wrist to the vampire's mouth and exhaled sharply, feeling the memories seep into her. Sustenance.
A review would be very nice thank you - tell me what you liked, what you didn't like, and if I should continue! Thank you!