Author's Note: I'm back writing again and I'm excited! And I still own nothing Degrassi-related. However I do claim ownership of everything that doesn't include Degrassi-related character names.
Reflection
A foggy night.
Again.
A night most would classify as gloomy or depressing. But it was precisely that fog which permitted Saraiah to see all the more clearly. It allowed her to see the ancient wind that had risen up from the earth at its very birth time, to see it dancing in its wailing wisdom as it boosted the fog gently from its dark soil origins; and even more importantly and eerily, in a way that gripped Saraiah's heart in her chest, it allowed her to see her own reflection as she peered out into the darkness – an act that was supposed to be both excruciatingly painful and severely forbidden.
As a pure-blooded vampire – both her dead parents had been the same before Saraiah's birth, making her hunger for the blood of humans the most natural and the most powerful – to seek her own reflection was something that would never have been desired, let alone pursued, in her parents' generation of The Cross. But Saraiah, with her seemingly innocent eyes and almost humanly tender touch with all those she encountered, including her prey, represented a new specimen, a new chapter in her family's strictly religious and bitterly angry history.
"The Cross," as they called themselves, was a reference to the humans' Christian religion, which, unbeknownst to those naïve creatures, actually sprang from a timeless vampire legend about the secret power of their females. Saraiah had learned all of this from extensive research from the oldest of books, conducted only following Var and Cassandra Cross's bloody demise at the hands of another. Declan, as he was known, surname long forgotten, had once been a close family friend, and Saraiah's tutor ever since she could crawl. Fortunately for her, his secretly-held political views eventually led her to pursue the truth about The Cross. But she did so in deep sadness over his gradual succumbing to a paranoid-narcissistic personality disorder that destroyed her more conservative parents' lives.
Conservative, it was true, for although their name referred to a once powerfully suggestive story that permitted the magic held by female vampires – the power to conceive new life without having a seed planted in them by a male – to be utilised for good in a suffering world, The Cross branch had centuries ago latched on to the humanoid version of the tale and worshipped the male as hero, saviour, possessor, and controller; they followed a pseudo-Christian theology which permitted – nay, encouraged! – the taking of multiple wives by male vamps, the rape and torture of animals, and the confined breeding of humans for both food and amusement. It was no small wonder with such horrors committed by her family throughout the ages that they promoted a rule of never seeking one's reflection – it would be hell, a death sentence, to peer into the eyes that had observed their attached body in the act of such crimes.
Mirrors, of course, did nothing for her, but having divorced herself from friendship with Declan, one whom she had always, childishly, hoped to marry, Saraiah was lonely. Her only comfort was in her deep committal to "finding herself" – and discovering her literal reflection was a part of that journey for her.
It was a night much like tonight, a sad and solitary one, confined in her parents' old library, gazing out the one tiny window in the old mansion's parapet. A fire was burning, wild and hungry, in the grated hearth, and Saraiah was in the process of burning her parents' books, one by one, gradually replacing them with her own, the few truth-tellers she had as of yet come across in her travels. Her arms had grown tired of flinging those purveyors of violence and terror into their rightful place of non-existence, so she flopped on the window seat for rest.
A cloud of fog had gathered outside, she noticed, dampening the smoke smell and lending a spooky air to the forest which surrounded the property. Saraiah started when she thought, for a fleeting moment, that she glimpsed a face, not of someone on the ground, as would be expected, but hovering just by the window. Looking back to the fire to regain her composure, Saraiah shook her tired head to clear it of such illusions. She then returned her gaze to the window. The fog had grown even thicker, and as she looked out, she found herself actually searching, thoughtfully, for the face which had momentarily frightened her. And there, in that fog, the silhouette of a round and furrowed face appeared, slowly but surely. This time, Saraiah didn't turn away.
It was a small face, a pretty face, with a tiny bow mouth and puffy cheeks. The eyes were the most striking. They were the clearest Saraiah had ever seen, clearer even than Declan's, whose eyes she had always admired more than anyone else's, and had taken every opportunity to catch. They had a deep wisdom to them, a sadness in their knowledge, but also a sparkle that invited a quick smile in the cheeks. Feeling a tightness in her own cheek, Saraiah put her hand there to investigate, only to find that her own face was smiling as well. The face she saw…was hers.
Thinking back to that night, and realizing how much she had learned since then, Saraiah smiled now once more out at her reflection. Now she was surrounded by a library of books that suited her much better than Var and Cassandra's indoctrinating drivel. She had completed the process of winning custody of the mansion over the angry bids made by Var's other wives in The Cross, and made a home quite comfortably there with cats and birds and a stray dog as frequent visiting friends. And she had finally gotten over Declan. Although her parents had harmed her in many ways in their teachings of her, and although they had claimed to love each other but had acted as though ageless enemies, she had loved them and she loved them still. She could not forgive Declan for their murders.
Quietly in the back of her mind, though, she asked herself if she didn't still love him as well. No human that she met on her hunts for the blood that sustained her ever gave her as much satisfaction as she found in intellectual conversation and flirtation with Declan, even though she often befriended them to quell some of her loneliness before she bled them dry. And she kept no contact with any other vampires, for it was only The Cross that lived in this part of the world, and she refused to stoop to that level.
So, she had to admit, in a way she pined for Declan's companionship. Saraiah sighed. Could there be something more for her in this little world she constructed around herself than her readings and ponderings? Could there be someone out there besides Declan who would be a suitable mate?
Those questions, ever unresolved, fled from Saraiah's mind, as just as that one night long ago when she had discovered her own reflection, she noticed something outside that made her jump. Two tiny figures on a horse were galloping toward her home. Saraiah's heart pounded. For as much as she desired company, this seemed an omen – an omen that to her meant change, certainly, but that also foretold of a darkness that matched the figures' cloaked bodies and the horse's heavy, stamping hooves.
