November 22, 1800. 4:25 p.m.
factory basement
Fire. Fire blazes around her. No windows, no doors. The walls are fire. The ceiling above her is fire. And the whip that strikes her is fire as well. She no longer has the strength to cry out in pain as the welt upon welt forms across her back.
Ice. Closing in, suffocating. She collapses, tired and starved. The ice walls surge up around her. So cold, so cold it burns. She struggls to stand, but her legs are trapped. Ice and snow, covering her. Her fate seems naught but a white burial cloth.
Fire burns still, though she has ceased to notice it. They grab her arms, drag her through the flames. Her clothes are ashes, her hair cinders. Gaping holes have been burned through her bare fleash. Funny how if it hurt enough, a body stopped caring. Her mind screams at her to live, to survive. But her body can no longer bring itself to fight. Perhaps it is better....
Somehow she stands. She fights her way forward, but her body craves blood. She can bear no longer. She collapses into the ice again, this time for good. She cannot drag herself up again. To end like this...but better in the arms of the ice than at the hand of that monster who had...changed her. What he would do would be worse than death. Better to die...to surrender...
She is thrown forward. The cool of the stone is a comfort to her schorched body, but it is relief short lived. A new fire takes the place of the kind her torturers posess. She raises her eyes to witness a sight she had thought she would never see again...the rising of the sun. Smoke begins to rise off her charred flesh.
The wind is a siren, calling creatures to their deaths. She needs not fear the fire of the sun now; the snow has blocked out the sky. She lies facedown in the ice. Her body breaks under the weight of the drifts. Nothing left now. The wind howls on. Now she does not pray for escape or rescue. Only silence.
The sun is above the mountaintops...it is all over now. Suddenly, screams of her captors break the solemnity. She cannot see, only hear their shouts, hear them scatter. Her eyes are half-burned away. She sees nothing. But she feels her body raised off the platform by a pair of arms too strong to be those of a human. She feels those arms hold her close, carrying her away from the sun, from the fire. Feels the torture of flames finally cease as the darkness of an underground cellar shields them both.
The snow and ice cover her. She has no strength left to fight it. Even her spirit has laid down to die. But there...she hears something out of place. Crunching...soon nearly loud enough to drown out the wind in her ears. But before she realizes, the wind is not only in her ears, but against her face. A large hand grabs her stiffened arm and drags her up into the gale force. She feels herself gathered into powerful arms and puleed out of the snow drifts. She feels conciousness slipping from her still, but she forces her frost covered eyes open. The last she sees before she enters torpor are the eyes her savior gazing down at her...with eyes as blue as the ice itself...
She drinks hungrily of her sire's blood, feeling the vitae heal her wounds and restore her sight. The influx of his blood is the only thing that keeps her from torpor. She collapses into a deep sleep, though she knows nightmares will come.
She wakes in the coach. He stands over her; the man who changed her. He is shouting, berating her for running. But she does not hear. Where is the other? The one who lifted her from the snow? Gone...
Selendrile, her sire, her savior. He had saved her from death by the sun. Protected her from the flames. But the fire remained. It always would. Until the night of her Final Death, this morning would be with her. The flames had burned themselves a place in her soul. Fire would burn in her forever.
She sleeps now, a bag of earth clutched close to her. This was the talisman that would keep the cold at bay. She is certain that she will forget this night. Forget the snow, the ice...and the eyes above her. But until then, the memory persisted. Those eyes were watching her. But she would forget...
The fire remained forever...
She would forget the ice and those eyes of ice...
Fire
Ice
Fire
Ice
Fire
Ice
Fire
Ice
Fire
Michaela awoke abruptly, letting out a small yelp. The foot that had kicked her in the head quickly retracted itself.
"Sorry." the Tzimisce's voice hissed.
Mika growled unhappily, rubbing her head. She didn't remember going to sleep so close to anyone...
Carid glanced around and found herself a good ten yards from where she had originally lay down to rest. "Wow." she said in a low whisper. "How did I get over here?"
"Don't look at me." Michaela grumbled.
Carid didn't even notice the death glare the Gangrel was sending at her. She got up off the floor, sat down on a nearby crate, and began to rub her eyes with both hands. The dreams had come again. Why? She had her dirt. It was firmly attached to her belt right now. So why was she having a no-dirt dream when she had her dirt? Unbelievable. She sighed heavily. She had been so sure she would forget all about it...all about that night in the snow. Why did it keep coming back to her? Why?!
"Something wrong?"
The Tzimisce looked down at the Gangrel sitting cross legged on the floor beside the crate.
"What do you care?" she grunted.
Michaela narrowed her eyes. "I care because I can't get back to sleep with all the agitated energy you've got pouring out into the room. My kind is very sensitive to those things, you know." she failed to mention that she herself was still reeling from the disturbing dream/ memory of the Edinhoven morning. But there was no reason Carid had to know about that.
"So sorry..." Carid groaned.
"So since I'm obviously not going to get anymore rest today, you might as well tell me why you kicked me in your sleep." And give me something to think about besides that day, she mentally added.
Carid looked away. What business was it of hers?! She wasn't about to let some Gangrel she barely knew in on a deep personal secret that could easily be used against her if it fell into the wrong hands. Yet that annoying little voice in the back of her head kept nagging her. What if surpressing her memories of the event was what was making it come back? Perhaps letting the secret out would be the fastest way to make the memory pass from her...
"Just a bad dream..." she said cautiously. "More of a memory, really...."
To her surprise, the Gangrel snorted in amusement. "It must be contagious." Michaela chuckled, quietly so as not to wake everyone else.
"What are you talking about?"
Michaela shook her head. "Nothing. I was having one of those myself, that's all. Funny, isn't it?"
"That we both had nightmares?"
"Well, yes, but that's not what I meant. The Tremere say that the mind will block out and voluntarily forget the worst, most traumatic events of one's life. And yet they always seem to come back, don't they?"
"The warlocks never did know their arses from their elbows..." Carid smirked. "So what happened to you? Let me guess, it has something to do with the Society of Leopold."
"I asked you first....but it seems I'm going first anyway..." Michaela sighed. "And you're right. It has everything to do with the Society." she paused, staring off into space, remembering. "When I was a childe...about ten years dead...the Inquistition came to the Low Countries." she shook her head. "My sire and I were living in the forest outside of a small city called Edinhoven. We never gave the Spanish a thought. Didn't care, didn't worry...didn't take any caution. Especially me. I was...cocky. You know how it feels when you're finally starting to get a handle on your abilities, you're almost ready to be presented as a neonate...you're just full of yourself. You feel invincible."
Carid nodded in agreement. Every young Cainite knew the feeling Michaela described.
"They built one of their....execution pyres in my hunting ground." the Gangrel continued. "I thought it was a thrill. I spied on them, watched the executions...I was always planning on destroying it at some point, but there always seemed to be people there during the night, and my sire had ordered me not to be seen. So I just watched." she paused again. "Then one night...one night, I knew two of the 'heretics' being executed. My mother and sister..."
"And you tried to save them?" Carid interrupted.
"No." Michaela said simply. "I never had much love for either of them. I never missed them or anything. But...the fact that they were there fascinated me. I had thought them too weak to rebel against Regent Margaret. So I went in for a closer look. I don't remember why, exactly. To make sure it was them, to get a better veiw of their deaths... I don't know. But I was hypnotized by the sight of them burning. So hypnotized I never saw them coming."
"The Society?"
Michaela nodded. "They were the ones behind the whole Inquisition. They usually were, in those days. But I didn't know that at the time, ignorant fledgling that I was. They surrounded me with torches; to this night I'm not sure how they managed to get behind me. But get behind me they did...." her voice trailed off. After a moment, she regained it and finished her story. "They knocked me out and took me back to their base. I was tortured for the rest of the night, and almost put to death by sunlight. But at the last moment, at least that's what it seemed like, my sire found me and rescued me. We escaped and hid in some wine cellar...and fled to Amsterdam the next night." she sighed heavily. "That was the last time I ever underestimated the Society...and the last time I ever saw humans as harmless cattle. I'm not ashamed of what happened to me back there. I used to be; I thought it proved that I wasn't able to take care of myself as I should. But since then I've realized that there's really no shame in being weak and ignorant when you're a fledgling. So long as you learn from it."
"Which you did, from the sound of this." Carid commented. After a moment, she asked, "Is that why you enforce the Masquerade, then? Because you're afraid of humans? ARE you afraid of humans?"
"Damn right I'm afraid of humans. You would be too if you'd seen what I've seen." she saw the look of surprise on Carid's face. "You think I'm mad for telling you? You think I've revealed a weakness?" her tone and expression told Carid that the Gangrel had done no such thing.
"Apparantly not..." the Tzimisce murmured. What an enigma. But the story certainly explained what was driving Michaela.
"Now it's your turn." Michaela looked up at her. "What was so awful that you managed to move yourself halfway across the room and subsequently kick me in the head?"
Carid sighed apprehensively. She felt she should listen to the annoying voices and just get tis off her chest, but she preferred to try a less direct approach than the too straightforward Gangrel had used.
"How long does it take to forget theings?" she asked. "How many centuries does one have to live before one forgets about things in the past?"
"Depends on what the things are." Michaela shrugged.
Carid sighed. This was so against her principles it wasn't even funny. But at this point, she was willing to do anything to make the dreams stop.
"The night I was embraced..." she began slowly. "Well, it wasn't voluntary. I was traveling and this man who was supposed to be escorting me to Moscow decided I would make a good Tzimisce. Without telling me about it." she shrugged. "So yeah. I woke up a vampire and I panicked. I jumped out of the coach and just started running. I know, I know. Stupid. But like I said, I frenzied. I'm not sure how far I ran, but when I came out of it I was in the middle of nowhere with a snowstorm brewing. I ended up getting caught in the storm. Managed to wander around for a while before the snow got too thick for me to move anymore. I was starving, lost...half frozen..." she was uncomfortable with this, but now that she had started, she had to continue. "I finally collapsed. Thought I was gonna die. I almost went into torpor as it was."
"Almost?"
"Well, I did. But later. Not in the snow." she paused. "This is the strange part, though....someone found me. Pullled me out from under the mountain of snow and took me back to Dvoraky. My sire, I mean. I can't believe anyone else would have been crazy enough to be out there in that. Or that even if they were, they would know where to take me to." she shook her head. "Anyway, he -or she, I don't actually know- saved me, took me back to the coach, and disappeared into thin air. Dvoraky said he didn't know who it was either. And he told me that a few decades later, when we were getting along better. So I believed him." she sighed. "So that's my story. I keep having nightmares about being in that storm again. It's not like I have any difficulty with snow when I'm awake...just when I'm asleep."
Michaela nodded. "So why did you kick me?"
"I dunno....."
The Gangrel shrugged. "Okay then..." she circled around behind the crate Carid was sitting on. "You seem to be feeling better, so I'm going to try to get some sleep. It's still day out." she curled up against the wall.
Carid nodded, she actually did feel somewhat better. Maybe the annoying voices had been right after all...
She braced her foot against the edge of the crate, intending to jump off. But the minute she put pressure on the wood, a sickening crack assailed her ears.
"Uh-oh." was all Mika heard before one Tzimisce and several pounds of rice landed in her lap.
"That was a very poorly made storage structure." Carid grunted. "And why do they have rice here anyway?! I thought this was a textiles factory!"
"I think they use the grain for something....." Mika said, still slightly shaken. "either that or its just for feeding the workers."
"Yeah, well....can't they get their own food?!" Carid looked up at Mika. The Gangrel looked back down at her. What an odd position. Carid shifted a little, attempting to get up. As she did, she saw Michaela's eyes flash like a wolf's.
Carid froze. She would think there had to be light...but that didn't matter. The wolf girl's eyes...they had always been blue, but now....
Ice.
They shone like blue ice. Looking up into those eyes... something Carid now knew she could never forget.
It was her!
Impossible! Carid's mind screamed.
"Would you mind moving?" Michaela asked, attempting to dust some of the rice off herself.
Carid snapped out of her thoughts. She quickly scrambled away from the Gangrel, trying to hide her embarassment.
Michaela stood and combed rice grains out of her fur. "I think i'll sleep in the other corner..." she muttered. "Good day, Dvorak." she called absently as she wandered off.
Carid said nothing. She remained sitting in the pile of rice, unable to even think straight.
It was her.
How could this be happening?! Things like this just didn't HAPPEN in real life! Or unlife, for that matter. She used to have odd little fantasies about meeting her 'prince' again, but that stopped centuries ago!
It was impossible, but it was true. Those eyes....Carid would never forget these eyes. It was her.
She stole a glance at the Gangrel. Michaela had already curled up against another large box and appeared to have fallen asleep. She didn't remember. That much was clear. Maybe it was someone else then...most people's memories would have been jogged by the story Carid had told.
But what had Michaela said? Depends on what the thing is whther or not you remember it for centuries. The incident in the snowstorm had been crucial in Carid's life, but probably just another night for Michaela. The Gangrel had forgotton.
Well, Carid cetainly wasn't going to remind her! No point, anyway. What was she thinking? It wasn't like the knowing would change anything between them. So there was no point.
Carid pulled her legs up to her chest and laid her head on her knees. Best get to sleep. There was no point thinking about it. So the Gangrel had pulled her out of a snowbank three centuries ago. So what? It made no difference now.
She forced herself back to sleep, not even realizing that she was still lying in a pile of rice.