A Vast Backyard [Solene]

[Lancaster]

Elliot lacks any real ability to lie about anything. And anyway, in this instance, he doesn’t feel the urge to evade the question. He has a perfectly legitimate fear, one that he would discuss with those he knew intimately as well as with those that he didn’t know at all. There were some things that he was ashamed of. Some things that he’d never want to talk about, or admit to, and would avoid the subject completely in order to keep it from happening. He was a professional bottler of woes, though that didn’t work out so well all the time.

And anyway, this girl wasn’t acting like some stranger. So happy was she with his company that she even took his arm, as if they were life-long acquaintances. He stumbled a little as she pulled him in the opposite direction of the Ancient, leaving the thing ambling and shuffling around behind them. He glanced over his shoulder, but otherwise was happy to leave it be. He had here the opportunity to have an honest-to-god discussion about something and he wasn’t about to let that slip by him.

He was of course glad when she said she could hear them, and could thus confirm that there was no tortured soul inside, wanting to get out. Her inflection on souls has him curious, of course. Does she believe in them? He doesn’t ask that question, not just yet. It is yet another concern that he holds dear, though he does have his own steadfast beliefs.

”There’s got to be some kind of magic involved, surely,” he says, enunciating clearly. Neither of them seem to be bothered by the noise that they might make, that might attract foes. The foes obviously don’t feel threatening. He’s quite glad to be led wherever Solene wants to take him.

”I suppose it’s more concern than curiosity. I want to know how they got that way. Because what’s to say that’s not where we’ll end up?” he asked. Though the question wasn’t particularly pertinent, now. Was he attached to his body? He supposed he was. He supposed he didn’t relish the idea that it could go on walking and attempting slaughter without his specific say-so. And weren’t they all supposed to turn to ash, anyway? What could have happened to these things? Were they once vampires? Maybe they weren’t. But why else? He shook his head and laughed.

”I just tend to over-think things, is all,” he explained contritely.

[Solene]

Though she spent her professional life researching the life and times of the dead, including religion and origins of faith, the girl hadn’t been brought up to believe in anything outside of what science could prove. Of course, most of science was based on theories not yet proven wrong, so there was plenty of wiggle room for her ever evolving mind, but no fear of the unknown. The unknown had kept her exhilarated and adventuresome, and even through her untimely death, she had conquered fear entirely. It was out of sheer luck that her life had been syphoned by a vampire and not a crazed serial killer, or that may not have been so.
Despite her lack of fear, Elliot’s concern was not brushed off. Giving his arm a warm squeeze, she shook her head and stepped over rubble, slowing their pace.
“Over-thinking isn’t always a bad thing. When I was working, it was often the one person mulling over where groups died together that led us to revelations about their religions and lifestyles… and even if I don’t understand their systems of faith, they did end up being beautiful curiosities.”
Her brows knit together at the exact moment she realized that her newly found vampire friend, in his pretty much immortal glory, was worried about the afterlife still. A human lifetime with fear of various post mortem torture chambers, she could digest, but not all eternity. “Wouldn’t you, being all fangs and super strength, have to try really hard to become part of the goopy and possessed down here, though? I think immortality’s ticket only expires when we get stupid or lazy… and you don't seem to be either.”

[Lancaster]

When I was working, she said, as if that was a state of being she no longer occupied. Elliot supposed it was the case with most vampires – they’d work in human jobs until they were turned and then that job became irrelevant. Well, not so much irrelevant, but tedious to uphold. Even in this city the majority of jobs run from nine to five, and that kind of job would be very hard to show up for when dead asleep, unable to shift unless in great pain. That’s why Elliot had made his own work. He was a man who was always on the move, always doing something, and if he got bored he’d move on. If he was going to stay in this city he had to find something to keep himself occupied or he might very well go insane. He had gone insane, for a little while.

Elliot was curious about this girl and her optimistic outlook; what was it that she did in her life that lent her, now, the ability to be so calm through observance? Beautiful curiosities, she said, and the term struck Elliot as being beautiful in and of itself. A smile played at the edges of his lips.

”Well thank you, I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said. He didn’t consider himself lazy or stupid either, and he was glad that he at least managed to give the impression that he was otherwise. ”Though I’d have to disagree. I think to end up like this, down here, there’d have to be a certain amount of… I suppose, giving up. It’s not laziness, it’s disenchantment. We were born to die and I lived my life with the knowledge that one day I would die. I enjoyed every moment of it, I didn’t get angry, I just… had fun. But now? Now, time has stopped. It’s just going to stretch out for eternity and I’m not sure I like it,” he said. He wasn’t sure he’d said this out loud to anyone before. But then, no one had ever asked what it was that weighed so heavily on his mind.

”So I suppose in these creatures I see myself. Someone who lived as long as they could but then… couldn’t, anymore. But lacked the ability to kill themselves, to end their misery. So just kept on… keeping on. But if, as you say, there’s no one in there, in those rotting bodies, then maybe it’s not the case. Maybe they’ve moved on, but just in a different way,” Elliot said with a frown and a shrug, and a languid lick of the lips. He had something else to think about, now.