Like father and son

I'm sitting on my hammock, with my legs crossed and a shattered expression on my face. I'm looking at the wall made of bare rock in front of me, and I look closely at each projection and each fissure, then I lower my eyes: I'm too tired to fix my glance on something, whatever. My half-vampire eyes, even if strong and used to everything, start immediately to sting and I'm forced to look away after neither a minute. I close them, to make them rest a little.
I must really seem tiredness personified! It's an evening like many others, here in the Mountain, and I've at last a while for me, after a day completely taken up by my prince duties. But for me it has already become the usual routine, and I'm, even if slowly, getting used to. It's really stressful, and I don't know what I would give to have a little free time, even only to stroll about the Mountain or watching the night sky, like when I was a common vampire! Everything was so easy, in those days...
Harkat isn't in the room with me: I don't know where he is at this moment. He left his blue cloak and the hatchet on his hammock, and I wonder why. I see him so rarely since I had become a prince! I'm very sorry about this thing, he's a very dear friend of mine and I miss him really much.
Concentrating on these thoughts, I bend my head and I open my mouth in a loud yawn, without even taking care to put my hand in front. Well...most vampires has even no idea what are good manners, although each vampire has his own style and his own way to behave, totally particular and different from each other. And then...well, there is nobody in the room, apart from me, therefore why taking this trouble?
I can't hide a pleased smile, thinking again about how much my point of view and my way to judge the people who surround me have changed since I arrived here. I don't only belong to vampires clan anymore, now: I'm an integral part OF IT. I'm a vampire, or rather still a half-vampire and proud to be. I'm even something of more: a prince, a guide and a point of reference for each member of the clan. However, I don't boast about it. I became one only because of the absence of choice, if I could come back I think I would prefer remaining a common vampire. Less worries, less things to see to, less formalities and ceremonies...an no wars to run. I have never liked fighting. My life was much simpler before my investiture.
Despite I look only thirteen or fourteen, at first sight, in reality I'm a little older. Vampires (and half-vampires) get old respectively ten and five times more slowly than humans. I'm not certainly keen on this thing: how much I wish I was already adult! I already am, inwardly, but outwardly not. It's frustrating, really.
It's good had been accepted so well by the other princes, despite my age, the outward and the real one. They treat me like an equal of theirs, no more with the initial condescendence, they respect my opinion when I voice it and they never try to condition me, taking advantage of my tender age. They trust me and what I do, and viewing them behaviouring like that gives me a sensation of heat, like the Mountain were my home all my life.
I move my legs, to avoid them from getting numb, and I lean my back against the wall behind me, paying attention to not rip the light blue cloak I've still on against the pointed rocks. It's the same Larten gave me long ago, when I became his assistant, and it's already rather old and worn-out, there are also few holes, and it doesn't seem either light blue anymore, and despite actually I wear it only just for show and not so as it keeps me warm, I'm fond of it, and I put it on anyway.
It's like the stains and the creases it's full of are a sign of my past, of my new life that runs, almost like it was growing up and coming to maturity with me.
It's true that now a hole more or one less would make no difference, but I'm keen on making it hold out as long as possible, till it won't be really unusable.
I tidy it up on my shoulders, with a slight shrug, and stretching a hand out to pull the cloth I hear some steps in the distance.
I try to get who it is, and I listen intensely. Maybe Harkat? No, the steps are too fast. He could never walk so quickly. Who is, then?
I don't have to wait much to find it out. In the corridor, I see a familiar shadow coming up to me quickly, moving almost furtively along the walls. A flitting cloak, a wisp of very thin hair on his head. Larten!
He peeps out from behind a rock near the entrance, smiling jovial.
I return, with a smile even more cheerful than his. I'm so glad to see him!
It was quite a while since we stayed together last...with all the engagements I have, I didn't see him a lot, only sometimes briefly, in the Hall of Princes. Sometimes he kept me company, and he gave me a hand with war plans, moving the flags and suggesting me strategies and attack methods, but he recently had a lot to do elsewhere and, unwillingly, he wasn't able to spend a lot of time with me.
"Hello, Darren" he greets me, and he sits down beside me on the hammock, making the hooks that secure it to the rocky wall creak.
"Hi!" I say, turning my head to look at him.
"Am I disturbing you? You don't look very well...you are tired, right?"
"A bit" I say, without trying hard to hide it and stretching. I give another yawn, the gaping mouth like a hippopotamus one.
A moment after he gives one too.
"Hey...is it contagious?" he says, playful.
"Maybe! But it takes much more than that to make fall ill a sly one like you! You're tough!" I say, slapping him on the back and laughing.
We laugh together, happy.
Suddenly, while I'm still splitting my sides laughing, with my mouth wide open and almost tears in my eyes, Larten rises an arm of his and he knocks on my head, like it was a door!
"Knock-knock, is there anybody?" he says, laughing.
"Maybe so, maybe not. Who are you looking for?" I answer, like if I was really talking to an unknown interlocutor.
"Darren's brain. Is it at home?" Larten says, without managing to hold back a mischievous smile.
"Hey! You...you!" I say, taking the hint and pretending to be angry, but I burst out laughing again! I know he's only joking!
He's almost doubled up by the laughs, viewing my reaction. My expression becomes sweeter and I laugh even stronger, slapping playfully a cheek of him. Then, pretending to be serious again, I decide to give him tit for that.
I say: "I believe it has gone to visit Larten's one. But I really fear it will be a looooooooong search! It disappeared looooooong ago!" I say, lingering on purpose over some vowels to give to my voice a funny tone and also to not burst out laughing again.
"Sorry to not be able to help you, sir! Goodbye!" I conclude, making a gesture like I was closing an imaginary door.
Then I throw myself on the hammock, a prey to a new laughs attack, even being perfectly aware to be laughing because of silly things and to seem a perfect fool. But it's so good being distracted from worries, playing so breezily! It's a marvellous sensation, all my tiredness disappeared as if by magic.
Larten giggles too, and, when I expect it least, he spins round and he starts to tickle me behind my neck!
"Hahahahaha! No, no! Pleeeease!" I say, splitting again my sides laughing, and bending, giving slaps in the air to send him away.
"No, the tickling noooot! HAHAHAHA! Noooo!". Rolling, a prey to laughs, I get entangled in my cloak and I almost rip it with my nails, still wriggling. "Hahahaha! Go on, stop it!" I say, with a happy smile and with tears in my eyes.
But he doesn't want to stop at all, and he carries on tickling me, undeterred, this time under my armpits. Fortunately, there I'm a little less ticklish! So, I decide to react. While he's distracted, I spring up, I leap on him and I start to tickle him too, but on his arms! I know that there he can't absolutely stand him!
He's surprised by seeing me counterattacking this way, and he laughs his head off! But he doesn't stop to tickle me!
We continue to tickle each other for some time, till our sides are aching with laughter, and eventually we find weselves with our cheeks red and our chests sore. Laughing, I also fell to the ground and I knocked a side of mine. But it isn't anything of serious, fortunately.
"He he…Darren, you are really a scamp!" he says, all red in the face by the much laughing about.
"And what are you, then? You know I can't stand the tickle!" I say, pretending to had taken offence at it.
"And neither can I!" he answers, putting an arm round my neck, with a paternal expression on his face. He smiles.
"Did you hurt?" he adds after a while, palpitating my back.
"A bit. But it's nothing" I say, sincere.
"I have got a cream that might help you. It is better not undervalue these things" he says.
"Ok, then, doctor!" I pull his leg.
He hits me slightly again on a shoulder of mine, and he pinches a cheek of mine, however without hurting me.
But it's evident that, after all, he's having a wonderful time, exactly like me!
Then he takes out from under his cloak (that sometimes seems to me even more stocked than a supermarket!) a small bottle of pink glass, with a yellow cork. He unscrews it with the greatest of ease, and he pours out the contents on a span of him. It's a white and dense cream, but it smells good. He holds it for a while to warm it, then he tells me to undress. I take the cloak off and I put it in a corner, I do the same with the sweater and I lift the shirt so that he can spread the cream on the side that hurts. Although he has hold it, the cream is icy anyway. The contact with it sends a shiver down my spine, it was pleasantly warm under the clothes. But Larten spreads it quickly, and after a while it's relaxing like a pleasant massage. His hands move fast, without difficulty, even if he pays attention to keep his fingers slightly raised, to not scratch me with his very sharp nails. Then, slapping me on the back, he tells me to get dressed again. I lower the shirt, all rolled up, and I slip on again the heavy jumper, but I leave the cloak in the corner. It looks even worse than usual, it really seems a rag ready to be used for scrubbing the floor ! I cast a sad glance at it.
"Oh, I was forgetting about it, Darren!" Larten says, taking me away from the cloak thought. "I have something for you!...Happy birthday!" he says, cheerful, handing me a white packet, closed with a bow. Where did he take it out from? I didn't notice it, before.
My eyes pop.
"Birthday?!" I say, surprised.
"Go on, Darren! I see that you are going through a bad patch…but forgetting about your birthday! You cannot had gone so far as that, right?" he says, smiling again.
And on the contrary it was just so! How could I? I giggle at myself. I try to concentrate. It's June, I'm certain about this. But…which week? What day? Or…maybe it's already July? It's so difficult counting the days when you live inside a mountain, without seeing the sunlight even for a while!
"But how could you…" I'm going to ask.
"…know that it was just today?" he says, reading my thoughts and casting a smart glance at me. I start. "Seba gave me a calendar, one of those pocket ones, to bring always with you. It was hard remembering to turn over the pages everyday, in the beginning, but then I got used to. So I remembered that."
I'm astonished. My hands still stretched out forward, to get the packet, stationary in the air.
"Do you want this present or not?" Larten says, pulling my head.
"Of course!" I say, without thinking about it neither for a moment. I take it, then I look at Larten, with a languid and naive cast, full of thankfulness and amazement. It's the first time he behaviours with so much naturalness towards me…almost like…a father.
"I…I..." I say. "Thank you!!!". And in that impulse of joy I leap on him, round his neck, and I hug him tightly, giving him a kiss on his cheek. Larten smiles
tenderly, and with a kind gesture, he caresses my brow and he moves my wisp of hair away from my face. I'm so happy that I'd smother him with kisses, from head to foot!
"You are welcome…if there weren't a little of feeling, between assistants and mentors…" he says, blushing till the points of his ears because of those unexpected blandishments.
"To tell the truth…" I say, looking for the right words. "I'd say between father and son" I add, in the end, radiant.
Larten looks at me, moved, the look fond and sympathetic.
"It is what I feel for you, too, Darren. You are like a son for me" he says, removing again the locks from my eyes.
"I…I am fond of you. I do not know how I would do without you."
At those words, who is touched it's me.
I come near him, and I caress a cheek of him, removing a tears of emotion that is flowing down quickly. He does the same with me. I look at him, with a sensation of warmth and fondness in my chest. I'm fond of him too. I have grown attached very much to him. We went through all sorts of troubles, in the good and in the evil things, in the good and in the bad luck, and this did nothing but fortify our relation. Near him, I feel protected, safe.
I suddenly remember about the packet he had brought me. I take it from the hammock, where I had placed it. I touch it, curious, and I turn it over in my hands, trying to guess what it can be.
It's soft, and it doesn't seem having a very precise form. I feel the curiosity growing inside. So, I open it with a single but firm blow of my half-vampire nails, ripping the paper in a while. I can just see something of dark, and I finish to remove the wrapper, impatient.
And I'm speechless. I hold it in my hands, incredulous. I press my hands on it, frenziedly, to remove the folds, then I raise it in the air, to look at it better. It's a cloak! A new cloak! It's heavy and warm like Larten's one, velvet to the touch and soft. It's always full of handy inside pockets.
In the half-lights I notice that it's its colour is a lovely bright light blue, and that its edges are golden. There is also a fine little black string and a buckle, to keep it closed on the chest, star-shaped, golden too. It has an appearance almost…royal! It's simply…STUPENDOUS!
"Woooow!" I say, with my mouth still gaping for the joy and the amazement.
Larten has a happy smile on his face, the eyes half-shut and the mouth half-open. He must be really glad I liked it so much, more than he shows.
I immediately try it on, I'm sure I wouldn't manage to wait till tomorrow, when I'll be able to look at myself better in a mirror. I throw it with impatience on my shoulders and I remove the folds. Then I fasten it, making a little bow and using also the star, that shines in the darkness, jingling with a metallic sound.
"How do I look?" I say, turning towards Larten, with a bit vain expression, but proud.
"Now you really look like a prince!" Larten says.
I don't manage to suppress a smile full of pride. I shake my head, getting my thick curly hair ruffled and imagining myself with a heavy gold crown and sat with jewels on my head. I smile at the absurdity of that thought.
"But…but how did you know…" I exclaim, astonished, looking at Larten.
"I always know everything", he says, with a theatrical tone. Then he adds: "Well…it was not hard. You went always round with that old cloak I gave you long ago. By then it was very worn-out, so much then it was impossible not noticing that. So, I thought to ask someone to make you a new one."
"Who did he sew it?" I ask, curious.
"Harkat" he says.
"Harkat?!?" I repeat, surprised.
"Yes!" he confirms, with a smile. "He is so good at darning his tunic, so I thought to make it make by him. He did the best he could, he has said that now you are grown-up and that you needed a new cloak. Think of it as a present of his, he worked hard on it, and with zeal till a while ago. He has also helped me to prepare the packet of the present!"
Here it is where he had got to!
"Wow…I can't believe he has done that for me." I say, happy. It's wonderful having some friends…I'm again on the edge of sympathy.
"And that is not the end!" Larten adds, euphonious. "Did you thought I did not take something for you too? You do not celebrate your birthday everyday!"
And, with an amused gesture, he takes out from under the cloak another packet, smaller, and with a different bow. Where the hell did he hold on to all those things? They must be hundreds of pockets, under that cloth!
I smile, with my eyes that sparkles because of the joy, and I hasten to unwrap it. It's hard, this time, and my nails scratch the box of the mysterious present, leaving deep ruts on it.
What a careless! At last I pull it out, and, this time, my mouth literally opens wide! If I were a cartoon character, my chin would have landed in a while!
"A…a…" I say, without managing to complete the phrase, staring incredulous at that box, astonished.
"An iPod." Larten completes for me.
"But…but…wow!" I say, opening it, and holding in my fingers a little light blue metallized Mp3 player, that reflects the few light of torches.
"How did you know that I loved music, when I used to be a human?!? How did you manage to find one, here at the Mountain? And how will I be able to recharge it? What songs are there in it? I believe you hated this kind of things!" I say, a prey of euphoria, formulating the questions all together.
Larten opens his mouth to answer, but he stops, run over by the river of my words.
"Hey, hey, calm down!" he says, joking. "Nobody is running after you!"
"He he, sorry…but I'm too happy!" I giggle, punching the air and with my eyes glossy.
"Let us see…to tell the truth, I did not know" he admits. "But I thought you would have liked it, all the boys your age adore music. Working it will not be a problem." he adds. "Vanez had bought it during his last excursion in the humans world, I do not know exactly why. He had almost forgotten about it, but when I told him that I was looking for a present for you he has immediately remembered about it and he gave me it with pleasure." He makes a pause. "We have projected a sort of battery charger. It is not all that good, after all, and it sparkles a lot if you use it, but Vanez was a physics lover when he used to be a human, so he gave me a hand. However, you will have to leave it outside of the Mountain, maybe in a sunny place, so that batteries charge. It runs on solar energy."
"But do not count on me for that…he he." He hastens to add.
Vanez, the intrepid red-haired fighter, blind in both his eyes (unfortunately!), a physics lover? It's really difficult imagining it!
But appearances can be deceptive, like I had had a chance to find out many times. I can't believe that Vanez and Larten has taken so much trouble for me, I'm astonished. Most of all when I hold in my hands that little but massive wood battery charger. I'm moved, and I smile, thankful.
"As regards the music, there are already some songs supplied with it. At least, that's what Vanez told me." He tells me.
Then he smiles, amused. "Can I listen to some, too, in the future? You know…I was never interested in music before. I had never had the time. I might find something I like."
"Don't ask it either! Of course…dad!" I answer, in the height of happiness.
That last word: dad. Straight from my heart, beside itself with joy, packed with euphoria
Larten answers with a smile full of warmth.
I finish to take all the contents of the box out, then I make myself comfortable on a stool. Larten sits down beside me, peering, curious.
I start to bustle about the little round buttons, and much to my surprise, the screen lights up as soon as I brush against one. After some attempts, and had just avoided to scratch the little bright screen, I manage to understand how to reach the songs list. I've an absorbed expression while I do all that, nothing could take me away from it. Probably I wouldn't raise my eyes even if the ceiling caved in on my head! After a while, here it is a list appearing in front of me. I scan it, curious. The titles of many sound new to me (It had passed so much time since the last time I had listened to a song! How many years? Ten…or even more?) but there are also many others I know. Happy and excited, I start to tinker with the auriculars, I get how to join them to the player and I give an extremity to Larten. He takes it, smiling. He must be curious too.
"Let's see what we have here…!" I say, smiling and rotating with frenzy the little small central wheel. I choose a song by Green Day, always pressing with the greatest caution. I know the group, but I don't think I've ever listened to the song. After a calm beginning, here it is a drums. We both start, what a pain in my ear! Larten massages his, taking away the auricular for a while, grimacing with pain. I hasten to turn the volume down, shavering and running my finger down the little wheel till it doesn't arrive to the minimum limit. I had forgotten how much our vampires' hearing is acute! But keeping the volume so low, we should have problems no more. I make the song restart. Its rhythm is slow, and it's a bit sad, but it's terribly catchy. I immediately fall in love for it.
"On the boulevard of broken dreams…" I sing softly, unbridled, shaking my head and snapping my fingers.
Larten limits himself to listen in silence, absorbed. Probably he had never listened anything like that before. I carry on singing softly all the time, closing my eyes for the pleasure.
After some minutes, when the songs ends, I turn to look at Larten, to ask him what he thinks about it.
"Fantastic! My favourite genre!" I say, delighted. "What about you? What do you think about it?"
"I…I…I had never listened to something like that…" he says, in a whisper, but that gives a strange touch full of nostalgia away. "It seemed that it was talking about us. A boulevard paved with broken dreams, to walk down alone in the darkness…I…" he says, astonished.
"It's just for this reason that everyone loves songs so much. They identify themselves in them. Each song conveys feelings, emotions, memories. It makes you think over it and think. It's that the beauty of the music." I explain.
"I adore this song." he says. "I should take an interest more in human things, in the future." he proposes. "I must had miss a lot of things".
I smile, it's a pleasure living again a so normal situation. I didn't expect that Larten would have been so keen on music. On the contrary, he was! I'm incredibly glad of this. A surprise after the other, in this evening!
We continue to fumble still for a while with the iPod, listening to other songs and commenting on them together. After a while I notice that Larten starts even to hum and repeat them, like me! He has begun to enjoy it!
"I can't stop! It's incredible!" he says, shaking his head in time with the music.
"It's called rhythm!" I say, moving my head up and down like him, and blinking at him.
Suddenly, during a little slower song, I lean my head on a shoulder of him: I'm tired, but happy, but I think it's better continuing tomorrow, now. With a sweet smile I stretch an arm of mine out and I draw close to him, happy, rubbing my chin against his chest.
"Darren! You are asleep on your feet!" he says, noticing after a while about my position.
"Hmmm?" I answer, already half-asleep.
I don't manage either to keep my eyes open, the tiredness I had before he arrived is back, and centuplicated!
At any moment I'll be ready to drop, I'm sure about it. But it's like if I was sinking slowly in a sweet warmth…a happy smile still lights my face up. The notes of the song are like a gentle lullaby, relaxing and heavenly. I hear Larten turning the iPod off, exactly like I did to turn it on, and removing kindly the auricular from my ear, without almost make me notice about that. Then he puts all down somewhere, near there, and I feel that he's raising me lightly, carrying me in his arms, to lay me down with kindness on the hammock, then. While I turn on a side of mine, moaning happy and thinking again to that splendid evening, I feel also him wrapping me up and tucking me up gently in the bed. And then, removing once more the hair from my face with a solicitous expression and caressing kindly a shoulder of mine.
"Good night Darren, sweet dreams" he greets me.
"night" I answer, curling me up in the warmth. And, immediately after, I fall asleep, with a sensation of heat in my heart, feeling happy and…normal, a sensation I didn't feel since much, too much time.