Out of the Blue and Into the Black

I don't know how I'm s'pose to feel my body's cold my guts are twisted steel.
And I feel like I'm some kind of Frankenstein waiting for a shock to bring me back to life,
but I don't want to spend my time waiting for lightning to strike.

When the earth begins to glow we feel a strong twinge. For some of us it is mental: our vision begins to fade, we hallucinate slightly, or we get headaches. Others have a more physical response: We feel pain in our extremities, hands tremble, or our joints lock up. The point is that we all feel it somehow when the sun is about to crest and birth its light into the sky. We tend to hurry to a place of refuge from its light. Most of us feel the pull of slumber still. It's tenebrous coils wrap themselves around us and pull us to sleep. Some of us are capable of resisting it's pull, but it is like existing in a waking dream.

We all know what it is to sleep as a vampire. Some of us have even experienced the 'sleep' of torpor. Our days are dark and when our eyes close we feel the beast swirling inside us and we dream. Sometimes our dreams are just black empty voids. Sometimes they are nightmares that shake us. Sometimes, and these can be rare for those of us who are not young, we dream of the past.

She was very fair. Her skin the color of a white winter mink. Her hair was natural curled in locks as black as a raven with one lock tied with usnje kabel in perje. Eyes like polished stones with striations of all earthly hues. She was fond of dressing for utility, her blouses and skirts were not what the people would call pretty. However, she always wore a variety of metal bracelets on both arms. She lit up a room whenever she walked through the entryway. She was a goddess among us. She walked through camp and livened the mood. The rest of us would engage and laugh and cease our work or games.

I had a dream of Lydia.

I have not been able to recall her face since before I came to this country. I mean I have seen glimpses of her face in mortals plenty of times, but it is always a twisted reflection. It isn't the same. Today, in my dream, I saw her. It was like a scene from my past. I remembered our camp. I remembered her and the rest of the gav. The specifics of the dream are not important. What is important is that she was important to me before she died before I died. Again, I have been reminded of something lost.

She taught me so much. I learned how to pick locks from her. I learned how to weave tales and lies from her. She was one of the gav's most skilled grifters. She was the heart that inspired us. Her smile warmed our hearts. When she died instead of just us, her family, having to purify themselves the entire gav chose to undergo the preciscevanje ritualii odstraniti naso necistoco. It was unlike anything that had happened before. Njen konec jej pritozevali vsii.

She was the best of us. May no one disturb her bones.

-L