"Life in Sedona"

By EsmeAmelia

Chapter 7: Vampire Tears

Te'ijal was cooking.

She couldn't believe it herself, much less expect anyone else to, but she had become quite good at cooking since she and Galahad moved to Sedona. At first Galahad had prepared all their meals, but for whatever reason, she soon decided that she wanted to learn to cook herself. Maybe it was an attempt to get used to human food, but if that was the reason, it hadn't been very successful so far. Still, it gave her something to do every evening.

Now she was preparing the salad while Galahad cooked the meat. Chopping the vegetables had a nice rhythm to it, not that she cared much for eating them, of course. The meat smelled more and more unappetizing the longer it cooked, but Galahad had promised that he wouldn't cook it any longer than necessary. She of course thought it was unnecessary to cook it at all, but Galahad insisted that raw meat wasn't good for humans.

Raw meat, drenched in delicious blood.

Blood . . .

She quickly shook her head in an attempt to drive the thought out – she would never survive the meal if she kept thinking about blood.

She was up to the onions now. Onions, yes, she should concentrate on chopping the onions. Chop the onions, chop the onions, chop the onions . . .

But the onions were quick to emit their fumes. Every time the knife came down, the fumes got worse, filling up Te'ijal's eyes, as if the onions objected to being cut apart. She felt her eyes stinging, growing moister and moister by the second. Finally her eyes could take it no longer and they started emitting tears. Clear tears, tears of salty water instead of blood.

She wiped her eyes with the hand that had been handling the onion, which of course made the stinging worse. Her eyes reflexively squeezed themselves shut, pushing more of those wretched tears out.

"Honey, are you all right?"

She barely heard Galahad's voice – she could only think about the pain in her eyes and the humiliating liquid running down her cheeks. Her eyes wouldn't be so vulnerable if she were still a vampire. In fact, she wouldn't be chopping onions in the first place if she were still a vampire. No, she would be hunting in the dead of night, running as fast as the wind, floating up to her prey . . .

And what was she doing now? Chopping onions.

Chopping stupid, stinky, fume-filled onions.

The more she thought about it, the more she felt like crying – like actually crying, not just reacting to onions. Why had becoming human made her so fragile? Vampires almost never cried, and when they did, their tears were made of blood, not pathetic salt water.

Blood, blood, her thoughts always returned to blood.

She was no human – she was a vampire trapped in a human's body.

Trapped . . .

Now Galahad was wrapping his arms around her waist, pulling her close to him. "Te'ijal, what's wrong?" he asked softly.

"Nothing," Te'ijal immediately snapped. "It's the onions, that's all."

"Are you sure?"

Te'ijal ground her teeth, her blunt teeth, no longer fit for tearing through skin.

"Come on," Galahad continued, "you can tell me. What's wrong?"

Te'ijal growled. "Only everything – or did you mean besides that?" She slammed her knife down on the cutting board. "Stupid little onions. How can humans be so weak that a vegetable overtakes them?"

Galahad smirked, gently ruffling her skirt with his hands. "Well if I recall correctly, vampires get overtaken by a certain other vegetable." He released her and stepped closer to the onions, wiping his own eyes from the fumes. "Garlic is kind of similar to onions, isn't it?"

"No!" Te'ijal spat.

"All right then," said Galahad, turning back to face his wife, "how is it not similar?"

"Garlic doesn't have stupid fumes," Te'ijal immediately declared with a sniff.

"No, you're right about that," said Galahad, "but then again, that's only if you're a human. Now if you're a vampire . . ."

"Stop it!" Te'ijal interrupted, baring her teeth, wishing so desperately that she still had her fangs. "Just stop it!"

Her husband showed his palms in a universal gesture meant to calm people down. "All right, all right, I'm just trying to give you a little perspective, that's all."

"Perspective?" Te'ijal shrieked. "Don't talk to me about perspective – you never listened to any of the perspective I gave you about being a vampire."

"Well that makes us perfectly matched, doesn't it?" said Galahad. "In that sense, we're exactly alike."

Te'ijal growled again, once more grinding her horribly blunt teeth together. She stormed back up to the counter, pushing her husband aside, and picked the knife back up. Perhaps she was intending to go back to cutting the onions, but once she had the knife in her hand, she raised it up and stared at it, at its sharp blade and her hideous reflection in it.

Blood . . . she wanted blood . . .

"Te'ijal?" Galahad asked in a worried voice. "What are you doing?"

Before she could think her way out of it, she plunged the blade into her own arm, cutting open a vein. Struggling to ignore the pain, she put her arm in her mouth and began sucking on her own blood. She heard Galahad screaming her name in horror, but she couldn't acknowledge it – all her focus was on her blood . . . which tasted horribly bitter and metallic. It was only a few seconds before she could stand it no longer and began spitting it out.

Galahad was next to her now, trembling slightly. "Te'ijal . . . how could you do such a thing? What were you thinking?"

Te'ijal couldn't answer – she merely looked at her arm, which was still bleeding.

Galahad produced a clean rag and tied it around her arm, panting all the while. "Sweetheart, for the goddess's sake, don't scare me like that again."

Scare him. She had scared him when she hurt herself.

Her husband finally admitted that he cared about her, but all she could think about was how much she hated her new existence.

The tears were coming again, but not from the onions or even from the pain of her wound, just from stupid human emotion. For a moment she wanted to hide her face in shame, but then her husband wrapped his arms around her, silently communicating that it was all right.

Later, when they had their dinner, the meat was overcooked and the salad didn't have much onion, but nothing was said about it.