780 A Night Familiar
It was like we just waltz right into a gloomier, grislier reality entirely separate from the one we just left. Even the air felt different. Fresh and invigorating on the outside, yet cold and musty on the in.
Unnervingly fascinating what a simple change of lightning can do to a place. The last time I found strolling between stale walls of concrete and crunching bits of debris at my feet, daylight was still bouncing from every gap and crevice, you could see from one end of the hall to the next, and nothing felt like it was trying to trip your balance all the way to a broken nose.
Take away the sun, get rid of any sense of spatial awareness, hearing nothing but your own breathing and footsteps echoing in a void of pitch-black, and now you start worrying about any ghouls and monsters that may or may not be lurking around the next corner.
I say that, yet then again, I was leading a vampire by the hand—and vampires beat ghouls every time. It’s like rock-paper-scissors, I think. So really, what do I have to worry about?
Adalia acted and moved as if on a set path, like there was a marker on a map, and she was the autopilot calibrating speed and routes to get to the destination in the most efficient way possible. Just a rigid, forward pace and nothing more. No detours, nor any chances for brief reminiscences.
Which, yeah… sounds about right. Live an entire lifetime, no doubt there’s a memory or two you’re keener to bury than to dwell upon. And if what I’ve heard so far about her rings true, no doubt she probably has more than just one or two.
“A little too quiet here,” I said in an attempt to make light in the sea of darkness. “Got anything you wanna talk about?”
“Talk…” Her voice rippled everywhere in a reverberating whisper. “...about…?”
“Anything,” I said again. “Like, um, when’s the last time you’ve visited this place?”
.....
“The Blight…” She answered. “When I… went to find… sister…”
“Oh, yeah,” I said stiffly, keeping the regret out of my voice for inadvertently dredging up even more harrowing memories. “Pretty long ago now, that.”
“This is not… a very… nice place…”
“No arguments there.”
“You’re… really not… troubled…?”
“Nope.”
“Why…?”
“What’s there to be afraid of?” I asked her. “You? Here, being here, you want me to be afraid of you?”
“No…” a whip of air blew as I felt her beside vigorously shaking her head. “I don’t want… you… to… but…”
“But nothing, Adalia, seriously,” I interjected. “It’s just any other building, any other place… and with you, then it’s just that little more special, a little more better.”
If I had managed to assuage her grievances even just a smidgen, not even having the bare surface of the sun as a fellow neighbor right next door would have helped shed light on her always empty expression. At the very least, she stopped bringing it up.
Gotta be a good sign, right?
“Where… are you bringing… us…?”
“All the way to the top,” I answered, one foot already perched up the first step of the stairwell. “Where the view’s the greatest.”
For the second, the third, and subsequently, through the fourth and fifth floor landings, Adalia simply just followed along in my pace. Nothing throughout the distance we covered had elicit any sort of reaction from her.
Not the caved-in rooms, neither the gaping holes disjoining corridors, nor even the charred pieces of rubble scattered sparse and wide all over the place by stray gusts of wind did much to break her silence.
Then clambering up to the sixth and final, that’s when the mischievous darkness nearly got me— my shoes got caught by a long stretch of wire turning into a deadly tripwire that would have definitely send me going beet red in the face both from utter embarrassment and a broken bloody nose had Adalia not caught me in time and rein me back in place with all the strenuous effort of picking up a single stray piece of feather.
“They didn’t pack?” I exclaimed, heaving hard and swallowing my heart back into my chest. “Production in a halt, but they left everything here anyway?”
“Pro…duction…?”
Adalia tilted her head, throwing her gaze at the long winding cable that stretched further across the rest of the hallway for answers, only to stumble upon more puzzling questions in the form of random props propped against the walls, tripods left disembodied with spotlights on the ground by their feet. Someone even left their camera here gathering dust in all the mess. How professional.
“There’s a movie being shot here,” I explained, shuffling forward and kicking more clumps of wires off to the side. “I think I might have mentioned it to you before, have I?”
“As… teria…” She followed after me, nimbly navigating through all the small bits and pieces without struggle. “Amanda… made you join… her…”
“That’s the one,” I nodded. “Long story short, we’re filming here now. Except, we stopped for the time being… and it seems no one bothered to give whoever’s supposed to clean up here the memo.”
“Why… did you… stop…?”
“Because perfection seems to be the standard around here,” I said, almost hearing again the foul echoes of Mr. Director raving about the place like a madman. “We’re supposed to have an Elidna here, I think that’s what they’re called. Again, long story short, now we don’t anymore… and that kinda put a halt on things until we manage to find ourselves another one.”
“An… Elidna…” Adalia drawled out, seemingly taken by a slight sense of intrigue. “The ancestor… to the Nymers… the Aerons… and…”
“Vampires, yeah,” I glanced back at her. “And based on the only one I’ve ever seen, it seems it’s you guys that bears the strongest resemblance to one.”
“Yes…” She affirmed. “We… are… the closest… descendants… sometimes… even mistaken…”
“Mistaken? Aren’t they extinct though?”
“Fear… does not… forget…” She simply said and left it at that.
“Anyway, yeah, we’re looking high and low for the perfect one,” I said, steering back on topic, then seeing the almost anticipating stare on her face, quickly clarified. “Don’t worry, though. I’m definitely not gonna sign you up, as perfect as you are. Rather this whole thing crash and burn than subject you to any more discomfort.”
“The Elidna… are known to be… very arrogant… and vain… in their… time…” Adalia slowly said. “It might be… difficult… to find someone… to play them…”
Arrogant and vain, huh? Now doesn’t that just sound so overbearingly familiar? I wonder, when was the last time I interacted with someone that perfectly met each and every criteria? Certainly couldn’t have been very long that’s for sure.
But no, double no, triple even if you dare think I’m gonna waltz right up to that hell-imbued vixen and somehow get her to play the part. I’m already dealing with one deranged person on set, I’m gonna end up in therapy if I had to deal with two.
I’m sure someone else somewhere else will find someone else to play the part, and whoever that person is, mark my words here and now, I’ll be the first to welcome that future Elidna in with open, embracing arms.
“We’ll manage,” I assured her, stopping short in front of a doorless doorway that opened up to an all too familiar place. I waited for Adalia to reach my side, leading her by the hand again before promptly declaring, “And here we finally are.”
The place was another colossal mess. Like someone couldn’t make up their mind whether to pack up or set up and wound up with this messy meshed amalgamation of both. There were cameras swerved to all kinds of angles, and backdrops and foregrounds only partly disassembled. Hell, the director’s chair was too left sitting out in the open.
Yet despite the disarray of a disastrous production, the rest of the room was fortunately left intact exactly as I last remember it.
The high-rise ceiling branded in burns long faded, the craggy gashes engraved deeply across the walls, and set at the furthest end, occupying the broadest space, the endless rows of fractured glass panels continued to glisten and shimmer the bright hues of the nightly cityscape.
Flakes of snow filtered in through the gaps, amassing a blanket of white across the hard stone, like a makeshift pillow, soft enough, comfy enough… for one to sit and relish the view if they so wished.
Like I wished.
“C’mon,” I ushered us in, striding past the set props, stepping and stopping atop the light canvas of snow. I pulled my phone out, and briefly, my face basked in its glow before I pocketed it again. “Thirty more minutes until the show begins. Better get comfortable.”
Adalia wordlessly replicated my every move as I sat down on the ground, a waiting, anticipating audience to a show, a moment that was nigh imminent… and I wasn’t talking about just the fireworks either.
Again, those piercing eyes of hers, so close to my side, rousing and swirling with teeming sentiments sharply contrasting the barrenness of her blank expression.
“We are… here…” She whispered, every word like a shout in the stillness. “You…still have not… told me…”
“Was actually debating on which to pick, actually,” I muttered. “If you wanna know what the man gave me first, or if why I’d pick this place, or perhaps—”
“Your… wish…” Adalia’s eyes gave a firm blink. Her adorable version of urging. “Tell me… your wish…”
“Yeah, that one,” I smiled at her. “Just to preface, you don’t care what it might be, right? No matter what, you’ll grant it for me.”
“I only want… to love you…” her left hand found its way into my right again, the tip of her claws, so soft, so loving to the touch. “Please… let me love… you…”
I hesitated for a second, hearing her, thinking of her—how surly and withdrawn I saw her briefly become, walking through broken crumbled fragments of a not-so-distant bitter past five floors down.
Was I really gonna do this? Make her walk through an even longer, gloomier hall?
I thought of Ash then, and of how much I loved her even more knowing of who she was even more than I would have if I had stayed willingly ignorant. And then I thought of Adalia again, and those words she spoke long ago ringing true and profound.
If you love her… then you will love all of her.
Suddenly all my hesitation drifted away like falling droplets of snow, and I spoke.
“I want to know about who you are, Adalia…” I looked at her, meeting the swirl of gray in her eyes that I’ve come to love and adore so much yet never really saw whole. “... about who you were.”
The source of this c𝐨ntent is fre𝒆w(e)bn(o)vel