Dreamwidth Vamptober writing prompt: @meli_writes — Vampire who is offered a yearly tribute, takes care of them as a pet, and when the year ends—
Zaudida enters the palace of the vampire on her seventeenth birthday, as is customary.
The palace of the vampire is large and cool, its windows few and draped with curtains. They say the vampire is wealthy beyond a lifetime’s counting, though few suggest where the wealth comes from. They say the vampire is wicked beyond comprehension, though few explain when, where, or whom upon these decadencies are visited.
Aside, of course, from the tribute. One person, body and soul, once per year. They enter; sometimes they are seen about the dark palace, during their year of service; and then, at the end of the year, when the next comes due, the palace is…empty. Save, of course, for the vampire.
Zaudida enters the palace, eyes down, silent.
Given that the vampire eats no meals (save the blood of the innocent) and sleeps no sleep (save the daytime clutch of the stillness of death, which they have robbed of themself) and is old and wise and cruel and powerful and wealthy beyond a lifetime’s counting (if you believe gossips), Zaudida perhaps did not expect to see very much of them. Or rather, only in a sense in which she has been sold into service, as part of an age-old bargain to rein in its rapacity.
Not to see so much of them, perhaps, but there be more…more to it.
The vampire scuds soundlessly about the place, surprising Zaudida, it’s true, but more like a prowling cat than a sinister shadow. The vampire watches her cook; watches her eat. (She does not inquire whether the vampire watches her sleep.)
The vampire asks questions.
Who taught Zaudida to cook? Are the dishes she prepares traditional? Does she have all the spices she’s accustomed to, here in the vampire’s palace? If she were not tribute to the vampire, what would she be doing?
Zaudida, some week and days in, slips while peeling a root, as the vampire asks something particularly confusing; a bright dot of blood wells on the pad of her thumb.
The vampire frowns and comes to her side and takes the root and knife out of her grip, puts them aside, washes Zaudida’s hand in the basin of water for washing hands.
“It’s little enough,” the vampire declares finally, and releases Zaudida’s wrist. “I’ll finish with those roots; you sit and let it close.”
Zaudida clutches her hand to her chest, eyes twitching between downcast and wanting upward, wanting sight of the vampire.
”…Is that not what you expected?” the vampire says.
Zaudida hesitates, then moves her head no a tiny little.
“Did you expect me to—” the vampire mimes snatching her hand up, bringing it irresistably to bright lips. “Perhaps take the knife, score all your fingers with criss-cross marks from tip to palm, lick greedily at them, grind salt from the sea into your wounds to hear you scream?” The vampire dances across the kitchen, dips into the jar of salt, capers back holding up a pinch of white crystals.
Zaudida looks into the vampire’s face, the way it’s laughing at her, and moves in a tiny shrug.
The vampire pushes two or three small rocks of salt to the yielding gate of Zaudida’s mouth instead, thumb pressing them melting onto her tongue. Watches her lick her lips.
A month and some days in, the vampire watches Zaudida bathe, which freshens the bright citrus of fear and anticipation in Zaudida’s mouth, where it has dulled to the must of extended unease.
Where do they bathe, in the village where Zaudida comes from? Is it far, her village, from the place where they trade bodies and souls to the vampire in the palace? What do they think of it, the bargain, and the tribute, in Zaudida’s village? How does Zaudida braid her hair?
Zaudida, knees drawn immovably up to her bare chest inside a beaten copper tub of water, offers to turn her back on the vampire and demonstrate. Anything but keep feeling flushed and shivery in case the vampire is looking, or not looking, at Zaudida’s nakedness.
It seems that having her back turned will be less exposed, but only until she does it. Now she couldn’t tell whether the vampire is looking or not looking, even if she dared look to find out. She unwinds her arms from her knees, and begins to separate out and weave together her long hair.
The vampire’s hands join her own, after a little. The vampire, it seems, already knows how to braid hair.
Some months and days in, Zaudida is tormented. The vampire has become a fever beneath her skin, which worms about and flays her from the inside. She burns when it watches, and withers when it does not. Unvoiced laughter in the face when the vampire looks at her is cruelty; open kindness in the voice when the vampire speaks to her is worse.
Perhaps she is meant to offer herself, rather than simply be an offering. She creeps from room to night-darkened room of the palace, but hers is the only sleeping mat she finds; no throne to abase herself before, face to the floor; no pit of wickedness in which to cast herself; no vampire.
She weeps in self-indulgence at her own disappointment.
“What happens to the tributes when you’re done with them,” Zaudida finally asks; the year is not yet burned low, but close enough to shadow over her.
“Everybody knows that,” the vampire says easily, reclining on cushions. Zaudida has fussed and pined and sulked her way into being coaxed skittishly close, head laid on the vampire’s lap for gentle stroking, as if she might bolt at any moment. “I bloodily devour them.”
“Do you,” Zaudida says.
“I have wicked vampire ways of travelling swiftly beneath the moon,” the vampire says. “All the way along the river to the sea, where the proud wooden boats sail to far-off islands, trading cloth for spices and so on. Everybody there knows that once a year, I bring an apprentice I have found at my country estates, and send them across the water to serve my interests.”
“Do you,” Zaudida says.
“What would you prefer to believe?” the vampire says, tracing the shell of Zaudida’s ear.
Zaudida tries to turn her face away, but the vampire catches her by the chin; narrows eyes down at her.
“Perhaps I’d prefer that I am too special to send away or use up for food,” Zaudida says, more wobble and less defiance in it than she’d thought there would be.
The vampire smiles.
“Do you,” the vampire says.
