The tallest building in Mystic Falls was a mere five stories high and although it towered over the one and two story buildings circling the town centre it fell far below the heights he wanted to climb with her. But it would have to do. No grassy hilltop for this girl, no incline edge. He perceived her nature as glittering silver and tantalizing gold rather than trees and meadows.
They took the ridiculous elevator to the top and strolled down a short maintenance hallway and through a door, he had to force, that opened onto the asphalted roof. Outside again, in the night, street lights like a connect-the-dots of downtown, he heard the slightest hitch in her breathing and he smiled to himself. He wanted so desperately to show her the wide world.
On the rooftop, he let her wander and returned to the fifth floor for two conference chairs. Once returned he set them on the eastern side of the roof. He settled himself and kicked his booted feet up on the low cement edging, tipping the chair back on its hind legs, scanning the jagged horizon of this pathetically jerkwater town. Not long now. He glanced over to where he knew she was standing, hesitant, and she had begun to smile. It softened her face, partially closed her eyes, parting her lips and inside his chest his heart tipped towards her.
She drew closer to him, her arms were relaxed and her hands graceful. He knew, suddenly, if there was music she could be persuaded to dance. Perhaps he should have taken her to a hilltop, let her find her faerie wings.
"Can you sense it?" he asked.
"Sense what?" she walked behind him and sat beside him in the other chair.
He could tell something had been dampened inside her, she was quiet, reflective. She turned her face towards him and he saw a new openness there she had never worn around him before.
"What?" she laughed softly, gently. "Are you going to tell me?"
"Shhhhhh," he reached out and placed a fingertip on the bow of her upper lip. She allowed this for a moment then bent her face away. "Can you sense the sun rising? Or rather, I suppose, the earth turning towards her?"
She drew her perfect brows together, hard and fast. Eyes narrowed, doubtful. "No?"
He nodded. "Hmmm." He closed his eyes. Then smiled and looked over at her. "Why do you approach every conversation we have with such suspicion?"
"I don't trust you?" she said.
Her acquired valley girl inflection made him hungry. "Yes. I get that. But where is suspicion warranted in regards to this?" He waved a hand at the eastern sky.
She twisted her lips, shaking her head minutely. Then laughed. "That's dumb, isn't it? But yeah, I'm not sensing the sun rising." She indicated herself. "Eighteen years here to your bazillion, right? Maybe I'm not old enough." She smiled, a wicked sharp shape to her mouth.
He had to pull his gaze away from the knife's edge of her lips. "Leaving that for a moment, let's see if we can't help you to feel the sun rising, discern the earth spinning, shall we?"
She nodded, "Okay. If you think you can. I want to."
"Good." This would have been easier away from brickwork and cement, he surmised. Feet grounded to the earth. "Here, let's stand. Now face the east."
"How do you know which way is east?"
"Caroline. What do they teach in schools these days?" He placed his fingertips lightly on her back and pressed her shoulderward towards the approaching sunlight. "Now, close your eyes. Tip your face up, open your, I don't know, your lungs? Breathe."
He turned as well, breathing in the smell of petrol and damp asphalt, bricks turning to dust, somewhere a tomcat's markings, and beside him the headrush of this girl, her soap, her perfume, deeper, her blood and bones. He bit his upper lip. Hard.
"That daylight ring hasn't done you any favours if you can't recognize sunlight. An important skill for a vampire, don't you think?"
She stilled next to him, he could feel the night breeze stutter then smooth across her body. "That is important, isn't it?"
"Yes. But right now, eyes, lungs. Breathe. Good. Feel your feet on the rooftop here, feel the building on its foundations, now feel the earth, the ground, the core of everything below that." He let her adjust to his directions, felt her tense then relax. "Okay, now move yourself forward towards the east, towards the sun. Feel the warmth, feel the light of it. I don't know how to say this, bend your essence towards it?"
She gasped.
He could physically feel her leaning into the rising sun. "She calls to you, doesn't she, Caroline?"
Eyes still closed, he had stopped breathing, wanted to be stone still, wanted to feel the ancient cells in his body awaken to the new day. Suddenly, she had his hand in hers and they were leaning, leaning into the sliver of light cutting across the far dark horizon of the night.
"Open your eyes. Now."
The sky began to become an ombre layering of mottled grey, then pink, then a nearly transparent band of pure light.
He lowered himself back into the chair, their fingers un-twining. He felt the loss in each tip, in the cup of his palm, the bones of his wrist. He watched her in the man-lit dark, watched her as the sun's light began to illuminate her, reveal her.
After a long time, she sat beside him, turning her body and face towards him. He smiled, lips pressed together, contented.
"Why do you call the sun "her"? I thought the moon was a her and the sun was a him."
"You're right, of course. Poetry and myth." He narrowed his eyes, watching her watch him. "I'm beginning to see it differently. Just as of late, mind you. The sun is the bringer of light and giver of life with the terrible, awesome power to destroy everything in this universe."
She inclined her head, the familiar lift of her brow, the tightening of the corner of her lips but the whites of her eyes were sparkling in the new morning light.
"You are like the sun, Caroline. So surely the sun must be feminine."