Fireflies

“The blood moon is approaching,” Vincent said to Lucid who was reading a book. Lucid looked up to his king who was staring out the window and up to the night sky. “With the way the Moon Children have been acting lately we can not have anything go wrong.”
“He doesn’t know anything of the mating rituals of our kind,” Lucid said his voice showed off he was rather pissed off about keeping his Prince, future ruler in the dark. He had a bad feeling one day it would bite him in the ass. “He hasn’t even started picking a mate.”
“The women here… they are all so weak anymore. I’ve been around them more and more trying to find someone suitable for my son. Yet I knew they would all die in mating.” Lucid closed his book and put it on the table as he stood and walked closer to his King. “All of them so weak, some kind of disease came in a week ago, a lot of them got sick. I had the Blood Brigade get rid of a few; I can’t have it infecting Daylight Guardians… anyways the women are weakened.”
“But you don’t sound so disappointed.”
“I have a plan.”
“I have a bad feeling.”
~
Alana helped dry me off, I was shy about the entire thing but with my stomach healing it was hard to bend over, besides Alana said if I did it I would rip out the stitches and we’d have to start the healing all over again. So I shoved aside my pride and kept my eyes everywhere but the woman drying me with a light green towel.
After being dried by Alana she helped me into a dress of hers. Since she had taken the time to also shave my hairy legs my long legs actually looked feminine and felt smooth. The dress was a plain white dress that she helped slip over my head. I was surprised that it fit since she was so tiny, but I was very in shape so it didn’t look bad on me at all. “My, my aren’t you a pretty lass,” she said with a large grin. “Lets go all out.”
She sat me in a chair with out waiting for my response. I had a feeling she didn’t want the answer no, “why are you doing this?” I asked with humour ringing in my voice as she powdered down my face.
“Because the first time you are presented to the castle as a human woman you should look appropriate… that and you have a shiner.” I felt my eye it did feel… well bruised. She moved quickly but accurately humming a soft tune that made my heart ache. She begun messing with my hair but ended up leaving it down and just curling the ends into soft ringlets.
She handed me a mirror and went back to the closet, “no ansemble is finished with out shoes!” She shuffled through while I admired her work. I looked… like a girl. Not just a girl, a woman… a very pretty woman. “You know something Evanangelique, your name… is too long” she laughed, “but you look a lot like my sister.” She looked over her shoulder at me, “except your eyes.” She went back to rummaging in her hunt for shoes.
“Really?” I questioned, Alana didn’t look anything like me so I guess she and her sibling didn’t look alike, “do I know her at all?”
She looked over her shoulder at me, “I recon not, she had to have died before you were even conceived.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Psh, it happens, when your family is human and you live forever, those who you knew eventually all perish. Depressing, but she still saw me even as the monster I am, she still invited me to her home when she was fifty-six. Rather a long life for a woman.” She came out holding ballerina shoes, white ones, with thick laces. I felt like I had seen them before but as my mind grasped the memory was gone. “Aren’t these lovely?”
~
“Don’t kill her.”
“Why not?”
“Look at her.”
The two men studied the young woman with fierce green eyes, her blonde hair waved in the wind, her dress was torn, and matted from dirt since she had tried to run away. “She is kind of pretty in that ‘angry bitch’ kind of way.”
The other man smiled down at her, “she is a little bit of an angry bitch. Perhaps the Prince could put her in her place.”
“Your going to pay for this,” the woman said with an accent that neither man could place. “You will both die horrible, painful deaths.”
“Shut up,” O’Connell said, “she’s good enough to be a treat, drag her along.”
~
“Is the coffin finished?” Viktor asked Horace. Horace was a human that could build the most beautiful of things, his works decorated the castle, from the tables and chairs in the grand ballroom, frames of paintings, beds, and dressers. This time Viktor had asked him to perform a different task.
“Yes it is my Prince,” Horace responded bowing his head with respect.
“Have her body in it and waiting for us with the others at the end of the east wing hall.”
“As you wish,” Horace bowed once more and left.
“She wakes up to attend the funeral of her first love.”
“First love?”
Griever frowned, “for humans I hear the infants first love is their mothers, who hold them in the night to stop them from crying, who feed, provide, and take care of them.”
“I see,” Viktor said, but he didn’t. He didn’t have a mother, she had died so long ago. His father told him she died of a Moon Child attack, it made Viktor hate those wolves even more.
“Do you really think we should do this today.”
“The body is going into decomposition, we can’t have it laying around.”
Griever shrugged, he couldn’t argue that point so he let it be. They were waiting for Alana and Evanangelique to emerge from the bathroom, but had yet to do so. They were both standing awkwardly in Alana’s room that was over the top decorated with trinkets and shiny objects, it was highly likely that her favourite colour was green because the room was littered with it.
“Kind of wonder what it will be like now,” Viktor said, “he is a she.”
“It is strange,” Griever agreed, he thought both Viktor and he were in shock one day they would be angry about being deceived. Well maybe. Right now they were too happy about her just being alive. Male or female, Evan was the best friend of the Prince.
“What is taking them so long?” Viktor asked, he was always impatient, something Griever found humorous, after all when you live forever, you may want to take the time to learn some patience.
~
“You look absolutely stunning!” Alana said with a smile, “oh Riana…wops,” Alana looked embarrassed, “sorry Evanangelique.”
“Riana your sister’s name?”
Alana nodded her eyes looked distant as if remembering something from long ago as she nodded slowly, she suddenly broke from her trance. “Here,” she said before walking away and opening a tiny box, inside an emerald hung from a gold chain, she placed it around my neck, “I want you to have this.”
“I couldn’t possibly!”
“I need to learn to let go. A Night Child has a long life, if we hold on to everything and it weighs us down to insanity. So I ask of you Evanangelique Cross, take this token from my life, remember me, and that this once belonged to a beautiful girl named Riana who was kind and warm-hearted.”
I smiled at her and touched the cold stone, “I will, I promise. Thank you so much.”
Alana now seemed completely pleased, “alright,” she took me to the door and motioned for me to stay with a smirk she exited and shut the door behind her, I could hear her though, “Prince Viktor, Twilight Guardian Griever, I am pleased to introduce the fabulous Evanangelique Cross.” With that she opened the door.
“Holy shit!” Viktor said gawking at me, Griever looked pretty surprised himself. “I can’t believe I thought you were a guy. How the hell did you pull off looking like a guy?”
I blushed and looked down at myself, the white dress fit me perfectly, the shoes fit like a charm, the laces ran up my now smooth legs. My legs still had stitches in points where the wolves had bitten into my flesh and ripped muscle, scraped bone. Whatever the healers had done though made me feel weightless, like I hadn’t been injured in the first place.
“What can I say, you are so damn into yourself it wasn’t difficult,” I said with a smirk, and my voice lowered to my ‘mans’ voice.
“That is fucking creepy. Don’t ever do that again.” Viktor said looking slightly disturbed. Griever and Alana both laughed, whether the comment or Viktor’s reaction to it I wasn’t sure. It felt good to be with them, it was like we all fit together, like there hadn’t been a time where we hadn’t been together, this was how it should be.
“Evanangelique?” Griever said tentatively, he and Viktor shared a glance and a shadow came over the room. “We think it is time to say goodbye to your mother… are…are you ready?”
Suddenly the shadow engulfed me, but I stood tall like I was to march to battle, in all actuality I would rather have been going into battle than this. Anything would be better than this, since my words failed me I simply nodded.
I assumed Xavier wasn’t around because the night had fallen, and he had no ties with my mother, I was happy he wasn’t here. I didn’t know him, but still, I didn’t like him. We walked to the end of the east wing and there was a casket on the shoulders of six Night Children formally dressed. This wasn’t how things were done in their world. Viktor and Griever had done this for me. I seen it, and knew only Horace could have made such a wonder, carvings all over it, beautiful ones etched into the cherry wood. I took a breath but it came in sobs Viktor pulled me into his chest, and it was like it had always been that way. Whether I was Evan or Evanangelique, he had always been the one I shared everything with, who had comforted me, and I him. It didn’t change because I was a girl.
“Where are we going to do this sir?” There were two Night Children with shovels.
“I know the place,” I said now that my sobs had stopped for a moment. Viktor, Griever, and Alana followed me, the men with the casket behind them, as I lead them through the secret exit and out into the woods.
“The meadow?” Viktor asked before we had even arrived, I nodded, fireflies lit the way. I recalled a story that my mother had told me, how the fireflies lit the way for a little lost girl only to find out that everything she knew had been destroyed, but there were fireflies everywhere, it was what all the villagers had become when they died. Little lights to say goodbye to the girl who had lost everything. It seemed rather fitting.
As we came through Viktor stopped and bent down, “who the heck has been digging here?”
“I have,” I responded walking further into the meadow.
“Burying corpses?”
“The ones from your room,” I said turning to face him. “I wasn’t going to throw another human female into a mass grave. The Blood Brigade took them from their homes, killed their families. You-you took their last breaths. I was not going to have them also have the indecency of having their corpses disposed in such a discussing manner.”
“I’m sorry?”
“No you aren’t.”
“Well…”
“You don’t understand Viktor! You are immortal. I’m not! I could have been one of those girls Viktor! If the Blood Brigade had taken me later, I could have been locked in that dungeon! I could have been dragged up the stairs. I could have been just a ‘treat’ for you!” I cried out, “you will never understand how frail life is because to you it isn’t. Humans could loose their lives at any moment,” I lost it, became a sobbing wreck my weak legs failed me and Viktor caught me in his arms, I was too exhausted to fight. Instead I wept in his arms as the other men dug the hole that would hold my mother.
They buried her. I didn’t hold back, I wept, Viktor joked that I was getting snot on his shirt, I punched him which caused me more damage than him, but I smiled a little. Viktor, Griever, Alana and I walked back to the castle together, the dawn was coming, it would be a new day. A new life. I was scared and excited for what was to come.
We decided to relax in Viktor’s room, only he had a red haired vixen in his room in the most stunning, sultry dress I’d ever seen in my life. “Lady Arista, what a surprise,” Viktor said actually sounding surprised.
“How about you and I have a little chat,” she said her voice sounded like a Night Child’s when it was getting ready to attack it’s prey, something people couldn’t disobey.
“Sure,” Viktor dolled out the word as if he couldn’t help it.
“Viktor,” I said sternly grabbing his jacket, I wasn’t jealous. Really.
Okay a little.
“You can’t be with out your guardians.”
“I don’t have a choice,” he whispered, “all of you out.”
And to our prince, we had no choice but to obey.