This story is based on the awesome book Dhampir by Barb and J.C. Hendee. The end of the book deals with Magiere and her feelings, so I wondered what Leesil was thinking and feeling. This is after then end of their part, after Magiere has found the sword in the ashes and all. I kind of got the feeling in the beginning of it's sequel, that there was more between them so this is kind of Leesil's growing love for her. Anyway, thanks.
-I don't own Dhampir…duh.
My Home Is Gone
My home is gone…our home. Burned as though it was just another building. An eye for an eye, I guess. I took their home, and they took mine. Burned as though it was just another building…but it wasn't. It was the first home I have ever had…excuse me, had ever had. It's gone now, just broken boards, smoking embers and red hot stones inches from where I lay. I can see the Sea Lion as though it's still there, the bar where Magiere used to stand, serving customers. These thoughts and images aren't startling me as much as the feelings I'm getting.
Magiere, those are my feelings I decide. With my eyes closed, I watch her behind the bar, her black hair loose and falling around her shoulders and onto her tightly laced bodice. The red glints in her hair are catching my eye and making my breath catch in my throat but now we are alone, my vision erasing all the patrons who should be around so it's only me and her.
Magiere. The mysterious, the darkness, the light. She is a riddle wrapped up in a bundle of half truths and lies, topped with an enigma. My beginning and my end. By all the dead deities, I still marvel at her, sitting with me now. I open my eyes in time to catch her shiver, from cold or nerves I can't decide which. I try to understand the crash of emotions I feel when I see her there, shivering. The urge to pull her into my arms. I know not where we stand, so confusing we are. A relationship complicated by sexual tension my sick mind tends to think, yet I can't seem to justify it to myself. I love her, somewhere deep down, in a place difficult to find, in a soul so marred by losses and grief. Love seems like an absurd notion. I was raised as a slave, son and assassin under the rule of Darmouth.
Though Magiere believes it a well spun tale, I fear the day she finds it true. What will she do the day I am no longer her…semi-innocent thief, for my eyes may claim my innocence but she knows different. I don't think she's put her finger on it but it was the night we broke into the warehouse…the night I burned down the vampire's home. She had looked so confused and hurt…and afraid. I hate that look; I never want to see that look again.
Here she sits with me now, her pale face streaked with black soot and a slow forming bruise. I watch her through my keen, half-elven eyes, somehow wanting her to look at me while, at the same time, praying she keeps her face averted. Her blood red lips glisten in the dawn gloom, her dark eyes narrowed, still and staring at the desolate remains of our home. They glisten sickeningly in the dim light and I feel a misplaced sense of ire that she could break down now.
The Sea Lion Tavern is gone. Karlin, the Miiska town baker and tavern friend had said something about the money they had been given us to rid the town of undead. Now, it seems, we will need it after all. Charity, the last thing I wanted.
"Magiere." I say, my normally smooth voice rather husky. She looks away from her shattered dreams and catches my eye, blinking her own rapidly. Me, her co-hort, her best friend in the entire world…or as close as she will ever allow. Both outsiders, her a Dhampir and me a strange half-elf with more secrets then the ocean depths. What a pair we make.
"Leesil?" She asks, leaning close. I am secretly grateful she's so close. One, I won't have to speak so loudly because I hardly feel the need to speak at all. Two, I feel a sense of comfort as her long black hair, with crimson streaks, falls across my neck. "Are you alright? Karlin will be back here with the door any moment to move you." I snort painfully. The door, their stretcher makeshift.
I'm not dying though I feel like it. A splitting headache, probably from fainting and smacking my head against the barn's stone floor. My ribs ache as do wounds on my face, compliments of Ratboy, that damn undead who I'd love nothing better then to repay fully for the scars he's marred me with. Taking his head would be a perfect end to this horror show.
"No, I'm alright. I can wait. Are you alright?" Magiere stiffens and I understand. She hates anything that makes her seem weak, even if I've never thought her weak.
"Yes." She answers crisply, giving me a dark look. "But I don't look forward to being your nurse for the next few days." I smile as slyly as I can with so much pain racking my body and gesture with my eyes to the blanket covering me. I'm thankful for Magiere's thoughtfulness in trying to keep me warm but it is a feeble attempt. The chill stone road beneath me plunges cold into the smallest of my body's bones. It isn't as bad as I first woke up, because now I'm numb.
"There's room under this cloak for two, if you so wish." I say. "However, I would appreciate it if you left Rashed's sword a way from me. It could damage something." Far from cheering her up, she seems more aggravated and rightly so, seeing as that was my desired effect. Anything to keep her mind off the tavern and her broken, shattered soul.
"Shut up." She snaps, making me smile. I love when she says that. A happy Magiere is a mad Magiere, if that makes any sense at all.
"How do I look?" I ask, pressing my weakened state on a gamble that whatever I say won't upset her to the point of physical abuse, even a slap on the arm. My gamble pays off.
"You look awful." Magiere answers. I sigh and look past her, blowing a few strands of long blond hair from my face as I do. Karlin comes now with Caleb and Darien, carrying the door between them. My heart skips a beat. Now maybe I can drag Magiere away from the Sea Lion, even for a little bit.
"Mistress Magiere." Caleb calls, his old face stoic as usual. He stares at me and I smile back, trying to reassure him that I'll be okay. Magiere, who had been lost in thought, jumped and whipped around, her slender white hand tightening on the hilt of Rashed's charred and blackened sword. Slowly, she stands and turns her back on me, staring at the smoking remains near by. I wish to call out but I can't. I don't know whether my voice is stalled by weakness or simply an inability to speak to her…
"Okay, up we get, Leesil." Karlin says gently, his hands sliding painfully between the stones and my shoulders. As I'm pulled into a sitting position I hiss out a barely audible curse, wishing suddenly for nothing more then to lay there and rest a little longer, no matter how cold the stone. "I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault, Karlin. I'm alright." I lie, trying to reassure him. He squeezes my shoulders affectionately and helps me shift my way across the ground and lay down on the door. Darien smiles down at me, his eyes sad and haunted. Closing my eyes, I try to ignore the painful sway of the door as it jars my body.
Oh, if my parents could see me now. The sudden thought of my parents startles me and makes me open my eyes. The sparse clouds above me sway and Darien's grim face watches the way ahead of him. His long brown hair sways in a rhythmic motion that draws my eyes and announces its hypnotism.
My parents won't be driven from my mind so easily. They demand my attention and worm into my thoughts. Memories of sitting around the dinner table, eating in frosty silence, waiting to be called to Darmouth and go on a mission. What if I had known then that I would run away and they would die because of it? If only they could see me now, injured for a town that had become my home, all because of a flook meeting with a Dhampir who had shared her dream of settling down, even when I had found the idea absurd…or not having drunk myself to sleep in how many nights?
Karlin, walking at a steady pace beside me, mistakes the shimmer in my eyes for pain and pats me on the arm. "Almost there." He announces, as though I am a child or an invalid. I nod and allow my eyes to drift closed again, wishing to fall away into pain filled slumber.
"Well, he's not heavy." Darien says. I keep my eyes closed, not particularly enjoying the swaying around me. If I could have walked, or had Magiere allowed me, I would have. I feel, somewhere, deep down there is a mother hen buried inside her…deep inside her.
"What do you get from an elf, though? Hey?" Karlin remarks, making me open my eyes. I glare at him until I catch his attention. He gives me an innocent smile and then laughs. I can't take it anymore.
"I'm not an elf." I hiss in indignation. "I am only half." Why the title Elf has always bugged me, I still don't really know. Maybe it's simply a defense, a way to forget the horrors of my childhood and move on.
Finally, after what seems like forever, they bring me into the stuffy warmth of the bakery, now a make shift hospital. Moaning patients on other beds grab my attention, some wounded mortally, and others only flesh. I thank the gods mine are no where worse then middle and wrinkle my nose at the smell of blood, thick upon the air.
"We'll move you to Brendan's house when the healer has arrived. For now, we'll let you rest here though." They set the door upon an empty, makeshift bed, and slowly help me onto it. Magiere stands off to the side, her face scrunched in worry. She seems not to want to touch me and hardly looks at me. It wasn't her fault. When I am settled she moves forward and sits down beside me on the floor, staring at my injured, bleeding, arm. I want to say something but, for once in my life, words fail me. We sit in silence for a long moment, painfully long, until I hear a young, joyful voice nearby.
"Leesil!" It calls, and soon I am enveloped in arms and tangled brown hair. Rose pulls away and smiles at me brightly, our inherited child from the inn. Rose pats me on the head as though I am my dog, Chap, and turns to Magiere. "Some of the people want to thank you over there." She says, pointing to some place outside of my vision. I lift my chin slightly, ignoring the pounding protest it creates, and try to see what she points at. There are three upside down people across the room but my vision swims to I can't see who they are. Sighing, I let my head fall and stare up at the ceiling.
Magiere is watching the men, her face grim. Even through all the dirt, I feel that same strange twinge and try to ignore it. After a few minutes, Magiere places a soft, cold hand on my shoulder and holds out Rashed's sword.
"Look after this while I go talk to the peasants." She whispers. Although she is sitting so close, I barely here what she says. My mind is stuck on the hand on my shoulder. Nodding, I grasp the sword's hilt in my good hand, and try not to suck in a breath as she gently places the blade across my stomach. "I'll be right back."
"I wait with baited breath." I reply, trying to make her feel better about the situation. Although she doesn't show it, I've been with her long enough to know my bad humor is helping. "Be gentle on them."
As she moves away, Rose sits on my cot's edge and plays with her hair. I watch her for a long moment, exhaustion finally trying to push into my brain as it had in my body. The days and nights of constant stress and fighting were beginning to weigh on me and even Rose's calm movements make me tired. Finally, she looked up, sad.
"My paper got burned." She says sadly. My eyes, which had been drifting closed, open and I focus in on her. "I can't draw you a picture."
"Oh." I say, realization dawning on me. Slowly, I shift into a more comfortable position and smile reassuringly. "I can get you some new paper tomorrow."
"Can I come?" Rose's little face lights up and she smiles her most winning smile at me. I've only known her a week or so and yet, she still has picked up some tricks of my own design. "Please."
"I don't think Leesil will be going anywhere any time soon." Magiere is back and she seems a little happier now. Sitting down on the floor again at my side, she takes the sword from me and begins absentmindedly rubbing away the black soot on the blade with her ripped shirt.
I smile slightly, fighting to keep my eyes open. "I don't think that will work." I say. Magiere doesn't answer, just stares at the blade in her hands. "Magiere." Still, nothing. "Magiere."
Finally, she looks up, her eyes glittering. I can see the pain in her eyes, the lines in her beautiful face. She's hurting as much emotionally as I am physically. Although she's watching me, her hand still moves across the tarnished blade. Reaching out with my injured hand, I place it on her arm to halt the movement.
"Magiere." I whisper, watching as her eyes move down to my wrist. Just visible through the blood are the white scars from slashing my wrist and her teeth marks. I fed her so she would live and now all that might be taken away from me. She pulls her hand away from mine but stays seated. "Magiere." I reach out and grab her hand away. This time she doesn't pull away but her hand stays loose in my grasp. "We can rebuild. It'll be okay."
Her eyes wander across my torso and I realize the tavern isn't all she worries about. I squeeze her fingers gently. "I'll be okay. I have the best slave to look after me."
Magiere looks up then and a sneer spreads across her pale face. "Slave?" She asks, teeth bared. When she pulls away now, it's out of playfulness and not ill fear. "You think I'll be you're slave?"
"Well, someone has to be, may as well be you." A slight smile forms on her lips but typical Magiere, hiding her emotions. "Magiere…" I realize my words have caught and swallow, trying to catch myself. Magiere seems to see through me and rises to her knees.
"Okay, I'll be your slave for a little while." She says. "But, first, let's get this shirt off." I smile pointedly and glance down at her hands as they begin shifting my shirt. "Don't get any ideas."
Closing my eyes, I soak in the feeling of her hands moving gently over my bruised skin. For some reason that I couldn't quite fathom, this brought more peace then her sitting beside me…
The End