Aradia sat under the shade of a tree in the woods, she'd been there all night and now the sun was up it would be difficult for her to move. A beam of light made it's way through the canopy of leaves about half a meter away from her. Aradia reached out for it, only to pull her hand back in pain. She wanted to cry. Aradia hated not being able to feel the sun's warmth, to not be able to walk through a field during the day. She hated what she was.
Aradia had been a vampire for the past three hundred and thirty six years and she still wasn't used to it. She hated being stuck at sixteen for the rest of her never-ending life and most of all she hated Him. No, that wasn't true, she didn't hate Him, she hated what he'd done to her and that caused her to feel hurt, betrayed and broken. She remembered the day she became a vampire as if it were only yesterday...
"Hey there blue-eyes." Aradia grinned as she heard the familiar voice sound from behind her, she turned round only to find he wasn't there. A frown set on the girls face, it was after sunset so why was he still hiding? "Okay, okay, wipe that look off your face I'll come out now." Aradia could hear the laughter in his voice and she couldn't help but smiling. "Happy Birthday Dia." The voice said as a thin silver chain wrapped round her neck and a black mop of hair appeared out of nowhere, behind her. Looking down, Aradia saw hanging on the chain was a silver locket in the shape of a heptagon with a letter 'A' carved into it. Once more Aradia turned round to face her closest friend. "It's beautiful Marsh." She said looking up into the boy's dark eyes, too dark to tell what colour they really were "I don't know where you found a heptagon locket, I hope you didn't go to too much trouble." She smiled up at him sweetly and he grinned back down at her, revealing two very sharp looking canines. "You said you like the number seven, so I got you a shape with seven sides, It's no big deal, you're worth it." Aradia found it quite sweet that he'd remembered her saying how she loved the number seven.
They lay in the grass under the cherry tree in Aradia's back garden for hours, just talking. They'd been friends for two years now and had grown quite close, but that's another story. It was only a few hours till sunrise when Aradia said it.
"You know, it's kind of strange how I'm going to grow up and you'll just stay the same forever Marshall." She said, in a kind factual way. Marshall Lee frowned at this and began to fidget, suddenly he sat up and dragged Aradia with him. "Hey-!" Aradia began but stopped when she saw the look on his face. Marshall Lee seemed sad and angry at the same time and Aradia wasn't quite sure what to do. "Aradia," Marshall began and Aradia knew he was being very serious since he used her full name, "You can't grow up." He said it so calmly that Aradia was now very unsure of what was going on. "You can't grow old, you can't die, I need you." Marshall Lee carried on. Aradia began to wobble to her feet "The sun will becoming up soon, Marsh, You better-" He cut her off. It happened so fast that Aradia wasn't aware of what happened till she woke up hours later, no longer under the cherry tree. In fact she wasn't at all sure where she was. As the world began to refocus she started to hear Marshall's voice.
"I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm..." He kept repeating to himself over and over again. Slowly Aradia sat up, and ran a hand through her long blonde hair, it was then that she noticed her usually pale creamy skin now had a greyish hue to it. It all came flooding back to her, Aradia reached for her neck to find two dry spots of blood under her finger tips. Aradia began to choke back the tears that were threatening to flood from her eyes. Marshall's arms wrapped round the distraught girl. "I'm so sorry." He kept repeating, Aradia pushed him away and the tears broke through the barrier. "y-you said you'd never hurt me." She whispered, her hand covering her eyes. "You said you'd never hurt me and now I'm dead." She carried on, more to tell herself than to tell him. Marshall didn't know what to do with himself, it was true, he'd told her he'd never hurt her, he just couldn't stand the thought of watching her get older every year and eventually watching her die...
Aradia had fled from Marshall Lee's home soon after that. She learned the hard way that the sun was now an enemy. Over the years she'd watched her parents die and her younger brother and his family and their family till eventually she just gave up. It hurt too much to watch, never working up enough courage to speak to any of them. Aradia kept to the shadows, lived in the dark and hated every moment she spent not getting older. She played with the silver locket around her neck, she couldn't make her self throw it away or even take it off and it was a constant reminder of that night. She heard things about Marshall Lee, King of the Vampires, how he was mean and like to hurt people. She hadn't seen him since that night, she'd grown good at hiding and maybe he had even stopped looking. Aradia sit under the tree in the woods, waiting for enough shadow to form so that she could move on. The day she was born - and the day that she died - was two weeks away, she needed to mentally prepare herself for all the memories that would most likely haunt her that day, like they had for the past three hundred and thirty six years. Being three hundred and fifty two was not a piece of cake.