"Why the fuck not?" The man desperately yelled at me from across the small cleric table. "Do you think I'm so beneath you that you wouldn't even consider it?" Despite how brazen he was coming off, I could see him fidgeting with his fingers in his lap and his leg rapidly bouncing underneath the table.
"I'm uninterested. Now get the hell out, I've got better things to do" I responded shortly, masking my inner thoughts with a veil of boredom. In all honesty, the man was only doing what he knew to do. It wasn't uncommon for people to enter my store and bargain for favors. It was actually a tradition my ancestors began as a way to remain relevant to the growing modern society. I ran a hand across my face, how much fucking longer can I do this for?
I twiddled with a small glass blown dragon I'd crafted, a skill that had been passed down in my family for centuries. It seemed that was the only thing they gave me I thought to myself. Staring at the dragon, I thought of the stories my mother would tell me as a child of a world that was now a distant memory:
When the world was just a small, growing shoot in the palm of the Great Diviner's hand, there were two distinct branches: Solire, a universe that held a blazing star at its center, and Yueling, one that held a dark cratered planet at its center. The two coincided and with their different cores bred distinct life. The Sun's power granted Solire life that, almost, needed to bathe in its beauty: plants, animals, and humans. Whereas Yueling's moon infused its power within its creations, allowing them to use it as their own. Yueling's landscape also portrayed this gift with trees whose roots hailed from the sky, rivers that flowed against the laws of time, and a transparent sky to display the expanse of the universe.
Despite the Great Diviner's immense power, the two universes grew closer to one another, no matter how much she tried to twist their ever shifting vines. In anticipation of the inevitable, every year she bent the branches to allow the two universes to collide. A door into one another's lives, if you will, so that the two may be well acquainted by the time they'd merge. These yearly meetings were what brought substance to the idle writers in Solire, who told of the creatures they'd encountered. Ones that shifted form to entice their prey into joining them in the water or had antlers and hunted their prey on two legs. But the stories that were the biggest hit in Solire were the ones that spoke of those that were human-like with immense strength yet dined on blood or those who spun the moon's power into vile curses. These are how Solire got their so beloved "myths". And because of such stories, the relations between Solire and Yueling did not go as well as the Great Diviner had hoped; and eventually neither crossed the border to the other.
This continued for a milenia. In this time period, humans transformed Solire, inventing and creating what you see now as the modern world. However, Yueling did not follow suit. So once the inevitable occurred and the two lands were merged, Yueling kind did not recognize the once simple human race they knew. The collision was not pleasant and many Yueling species were massacred, their entire existence truly becoming myth. In order for some of us to remain unscathed, we made deals with the humans by offering our services to them. Your ancestor devoted our lineage of divine weavers to serve mankind so that they would think twice about slaughtering us. In exchange for these services, they requested that we also scatter ourselves and hold our affairs in secret. We've now adapted to these ways and this world has become our own as much as Yueling once was.
—
I stood at the storefront waiting for the last hour to go by. Truthfully, I don't want to run this store like a regular nine-to-five but appearances need to be upheld. Yet all I could think about for the past eight hours was how excited I was to go and buy the latest fantasy book from Barnes and Nobles. It was everything I was looking for wrapped in one: fantasy storyline with a forbidden lovers trope drenched in raunchy scenes. How could I not pass it up?
Ding! I glance up at a man frantically rushing into the store. He seems to be about five, eight with dark brown curly hair drenched in dirt and splatters of blood. In other words, he looks like hell. Desperate beggars are nothing new to me given I dabble in an industry as caked in blood as the drug cartel, but this guy is a totally new kind of distressed.
"Ms. Elara Morilae? That's you right?" The man squeezed out between his panting.
"And you are?" I responded curtly. Over the years, I've learned I have to be more frank with these people than customer-service like.
"Please, you need to help me! I'm being targeted by a vampire, I need your protection!" He pleads, quickly darting between the door and me.
"I'm not interested" I responded, hoping he didn't see how much I genuinely wanted to help him. I've wanted to help every single person that's come in here, but I can't.
"Please! I'll give you anything. Money, my life, I don't care!" He begged, looking deeply into my eyes this time.
I…CRACK!
The door completely flew off its hinges as a man entered the door frame. He was roughly five, eleven with pin straight hair that dropped slightly in front of his eyes. His shoulders and back weren't very large but you could tell that he had some definition to his body. I didn't dare try and imagine what that could look like. His presence filled the room as he stared down the quivering man in front of my desk.
"You've got to be fucking with me man?" The, I'm assuming vampire, said to the man as he quickly appeared at his side. "You're going to beg a diviner for help in your last moments instead of taking your punishment like the bitch you are?" He clicked his tongue, "shame." The man waved his hand in front of the beggar and he fell into a dazed trance, not a thought behind his eyes.
"Can you do this elsewhere?" I asserted as the vampire stared at his feast.
"I'm sorry love, I didn't notice you" the creature sang. "Tell me darling, do all diviners give off this much fear or has it been so long since you've seen another of your kind?" He dragged a hand down my pin straight, black hair, petting me like a dog. With him this close I was able to look at his eyes, which were an exquisite green that I'd imagine were once the colors of Yueling hills. Considering the merge took the living from Yueling and dumped us in Solire, I'd never get the chance to confirm.
"I'm not afraid of you, get out now" I responded, trying to hide the fact that I was undeniably terrified because he was right. I had never been this close to another Yueling in my life, let alone felt this kind of power pulsing around me.
"Ah denial, how sweet" he purred, cupping my face and bringing it closer to his, his lips brushing mine as he spoke. "I wonder if you'd be this mouthy pinned under me while I…"
Instinctually, I grabbed his arm to try and pry him off of me. Instantly, I felt something flood through my body and rupture. Like a bomb it shattered the glass displays and windows that lined my shop. The vampire, while slightly jarred, was not as affected as our resident beggar, who now lay limp as blood seeped from his ears.
"I…Shit! What the hell just happened?" I mumbled, in complete disarray.
"Well looks like it's my lucky day, I demolished my foe and found a truly rare specimen all in one go" the man declared, smiling like a cat that just caught its mouse by the tail. Shit, he knows! He knows I can't use my magic.