( Author's Note: Picks up where Green Grass Beneath a Blade leaves off. )

As we burn, pretending to fight it
Everyone learns faster on fire
Things took a turn, lost all desire
You live and you burn
You live and...
Like hell we are anxiously waiting
Like hell burning silently strong
Somehow we fell down by the wayside
And somehow this hell is home
Right now, this hell is my home
- Alkaline Trio

Red Dragon Inn

Laughter. Skado's laughter from the chair where he sat. Skado was laughing? Alma had just left them for home, and her words were fresh in Victoria's mind.

I am for home, love, and my eyes will be like moons upon the door hoping to see the knob turn in your hands...

Viki was slow to slip from that stool, but slip she did, and her delicate feet were on the move once more. Her eyes were fierce, as it suddenly dawned on her that she'd never heard the sandman laugh before. Never. Not once. Chuckle, sure. By chuckle, she meant, a brief huff of air, as was his tendency. Not laugh. This was a strange, dry sound.

Her small feet skidded 'round another girl who had been quietly playing with paper animals. Viki could clearly see the images in her mind, the little animal reality the girl had created, and if she got sidetracked, oh, and how easy that was, she wouldn't be able to make this journey.

Viki stopped short at the hearth with small fists clenched at her sides as if she were bound to hit something, anything, but the seer was not one for violence. Instead, the words that poured from her were sharp enough. She'd learned how to arm them by listening to his own short speeches when he was disturbed by her questioning.

"One word from you.. One word." She stammered, trying to pick her words carefully as she crossed her arms. "You tell me it is not impossible, but you.. you.." She tossed her hands into air. "One word from you, and I will not touch her again, or anyone, for that matter. But you do not give me words.." Then, she felt the pull of that distant reality, of the paper animals on the floor, and suddenly felt herself small and among them.

His dark eyes had been watching her the whole time. Finally, when he knew she had finished, he spoke.

"That is because your choices are you own to make, for they make you a being and a mind unto yourself. It is not disapproval of your dear mistress's effect that repels me... it is that she owns your movements. "

Viki felt weak, and thought it best to settle upon the floor, quite near the warmth of the blazing fire. She picked up a lonely lion and let it sit in her palm. Looking away from him now, she spoke directly to the paper animal, her new captive audience. "He gives me paper things but does not speak and he thinks I make poor choices when choices I wish to make are not meant to be received."

Her eyes were brimming with tears, but she looked past the lion and into the flickering flames of the hearth. "The furnace owns the movement of a flame, 'for it ensnares it, overwhelms it, and it has no where else to go."

His rough laugh sounded off again. "But who is David?"

Yes. We've been meaning to ask you about that too.

Viki blinked and set the lion down. It was best he'd join his pride before she flung him into the fire. She wasn't one for fits, but she was related to Tara.

"A man whose movements are owned by another. One I have not seen in weeks." By another, she meant Talomar of course, but in truth, she held no malice towards the man. She did not agree with or entirely understand their business transactions, and in truth she hadn't seen David for weeks. That was his fault, and that was her fault, and perhaps he heard rumors of her affair with Alma.

C'est la vie.

Viki wasn't meant to be in a monogamous relationship anyway. She'd tell herself it was her nature, later on, when the lingering guilt caught up to her. Then perhaps her flickering consciousness would pull her into a whole new plane, and she wouldn't have to deal with any of these problems.

And Amthy was dead. She couldn't go home and face Tara with the secret knowledge of her true murderer. She couldn't go home and face David if he was even still there at all. She just couldn't go home at all.

She turned her head, absently, to look at Skado, though she knew it probably made no difference to meet his gaze.

"One word from you.." Her voice was softer, as if she had just surrendered, and no longer did her blood boil as they ran their chosen courses. "I meant to say, one word to offer, and not to direct."

His reaction was much like the calm before a violent storm. His silence seemed to stretch for a small lifetime, and although he showed nothing in his face or his eyes, perhaps something raged within.

"I am not a maker of choice... but the choice is there, if you wish it."

It was though something had struck her then, though it was not painful. In an instant, she was on her feet, though the movement was quite fluid, and it took a moment to realize how she had done it, as it seemed almost.. unnatural. Then, she made an elegant stride, but she was quiet still. Her eyes said enough. Little tears still clung to their very corners, perhaps evidence of her affection? She rounded the chair where he perched until her knees met the armed cushion, and she hovered just above him.

"I wish it."

"I am not so full of summer flattery as your tweed woman... and I do have mate." He was still as she killed the distance between them.

"I do not care about you're having of a mate, unless she cares otherwise." The girl let her small shoulders roll into a shrug. No. She was not out to make any enemies, though one might argue otherwise if they had all really known what she was up to these last few months, alliances forged and plans made and such.

"And I do not care for flattery. I think I know you well enough now to realize sheer indication such as this is worth more than the loveliest of sonnets.." She'd play the poet. Her smile grew, as if she were quite pleased with herself, pleased with this arrangement, if it could've been called such.

She added: "I wish it more than the world." Did she wish the world? She did, at times. Which world? Ah, that was key.

There was a low huff of air from the sandman, what she had labeled as a chuckle, but this was his true laugh, and she'd come to know that eventually. She was already beginning.

"Packmate would care little." His head was tilted to its side as he stared at her, perhaps pondering her many words, as she had a tendency to give such long and winding speeches.

"Good," said the lovely thing in an equally lovely tone. There were things that would remain unsaid, for now, possibly because she had no explanation. She wasn't a creature of logic by far. She felt the pull to this one, and a desire to know, and that knowledge would be filled by flesh and the overpowering emotion that she kept bottled tight, for his sake. Her eyes peered down at him, playful now, catching the glimmer of reflection in his eyes. His silence was fine. She was used to his stoicism.

"I have wanted to tell you forever and ever.." Again, with that strange frame of reference. Forever and ever. It felt so long when one longed so much.

She saw his ears twitch before his laughter resurfaced, and then he said: "And we have brought ourselves into secrets..."

"But I am a creature of secrets. Do you wish to keep these and this between us?"

Yes. You keep them well and they will damn you for it.

Alone in this world because we're not like them
We see the things that they cannot see
We've tasted things of which they'll never know
No matter day or night, forever lost in dreams
- Tiger Army

The Unhome

He took her north, and west. They passed through what looked like the borders of WestEnd, though most dilapidated buildings do tend to look alike. The town did not matter.

They walked further. Structures died and made room for trees, and all other manners of flora and fauna. He moved for a thicket, and she followed, and her eyes did not break from him, despite the growing darkness.

"So this is the desert," she said with a half smile, knowing perhaps it wasn't the desert at all.

The stars were in their full glory out there, over the thicket, over the pair, over all. She thought she saw their tiny reflections in each of his black eyes. As they crossed through the thicket, her hand did slip on occasion and trap a branch of bush or a stray flower. It was a curious habit, the idea of taking things with her, to become apart and a part of the scenery all at once.

At last they reached it, the unhome. It lay in a small clearing where once a whole building might've stood, but the small stone room was all that remained. Her eyes fell upon it with a fierce and growing curiosity, but she stuck to his side, an attempt to control her eagerness to know him, as she was still quite aware of his private ways. So she stopped, just beyond the door, half peering in and out, to question.

"What was this building that lay all around like a dead thing, a body with no soul, I mean people to fill it."

His clove smoke filled the air as he paused to speak. "Perhaps it was a home... perhaps it was some keep or store or inn. I do not come here to know its histories... I know only what it is to myself, now."

"Oh." It was answer enough for the Seer, even though she was intrigued by such histories, as she caught little things forgotten by the passage of time. These things clouded her thoughts and sometimes overwhelmed, but this was not such a time. Instead, it was his presence that seemed to overwhelm her, and she smiled softly through the clove smoke and passed the threshold and readily entered his sanctuary.

When is a door not a door?

There was no door. The small interior was lit by dim candlelight. She could see a small pallet to one end, a table and shelf at another, and many canvases strewn about, and paint, and of course, a sketchbook. Whitewashed walls held the structure together. At once, the canvases screamed for her attention, and she looked but did not touch.

"You are artist." She meant it as a question but it came out like a statement, and she twirled around on slippered feet with curious eyes.

He moved in after her. "I would not name myself such. There are pictures... I make them. Artists live for them."

"Domikai." The name was said simply because she liked saying it, and it was a new word, given like a gift. "What is it you live for?" Her hand found his wrist in the candlelight, but her eyes did not waver from the paintings. She would examine them as she liked. It was a reprieve, for him at least, as that gaze of hers could be rather penetrating at times. The touch to his wrist was nothing more than a need to touch him now. No sense of urgency was apparent on her pretty face, but still, something in her cried for closeness, even in the home filled with his scent.

"I would not say either, that I live.. I wait. I am a Waiting thing, a watchman."

"You watch life."

Her eyes were still for the canvases. She took in the changing scenes as one might take in a breathtaking view of a new city or some natural phenomenon in the landscape. She was like a tourist amidst his colored worlds.

Odd. They smell of trees and caves and deserts but not paint.

The smells did not go unnoticed, and though it half-baffled her, she understood too, perhaps. He was of the shadow and his paint was of the world - that was something she would've said if she chose to speak.

Yes.

There was a flicker of a smile again, and she turned her attention to him now, the strange friend-turned-lover, and all in the course of an evening. She sighed, and there were voices in that sigh, and perhaps he heard them - all the things she wanted to say.

"Perhaps you should speak all those tones lingering there..."

Ah but he hears.

He leaned in, resting his forehead upon the top of her own head, as they had done earlier at the Inn. It was only a brief touch of foreheads, and then he moved from her for the table, settling down into the chair beside it. She would've kissed him then, had he not slipped from her.

There, at his new location, he began to remove the leather wrappings around his palms. His now open shirt hung loose around his shoulders. There was something about the way in which he moved and spoke and even shifted in his seat. It was all strangely silvan.

Suddenly, the girl felt that the air stood heavy on her shoulders - no, no, her chest - and slowly she moved to his side to join him, her careful eyes drifting over the loosening leather.

"I can't put them all rightly together.." She squinted in the dim light. Even though she was a night creature like himself, she still had to adjust. The wounds beneath his clothing, the ones she had noticed earlier, were a great curiosity, if not worry to her. They marred his chest, these marks, and they were clearer with his shirt open, but they were still largely covered by bandages. She frowned.

"I do wish you would be more careful and kill the other so he would not injure you so..." She of course was making reference to his brother, Irrykin, though perhaps it was a mistake, as she saw much, and confused almost all.

She continued. "I want to touch you but I am afraid to hurt you.." She closed in, and her lips brushed across his earlobe as she spoke these quiet things.

His near-laughter hung on the last of her words. "These are smaller, pointless things... and pass my time and my ways. That Other is not for killing." He twitched at the touch of his ear. "No fear... I do not hurt so easily."

She took it all in with serious eyes and such concentration, as if invisible tendrils had snaked from her mind, stolen his words, and then catalogued them. "You mean I might be closer to you?" The hem of her dress fluttered past his thigh as she circled him slowly. It was not at all predatory, this awkward dance, and it was marked by the insecurity in her eyes as she stared at the many scrapes and scars of a rather mysterious lifetime.

"Se." Sandman-speak. Slowly, his hands moved to the wrappings on his chest, and he began to cast them aside. The wounds were fresh, but stitched, and there was no blood.

"But we think you know what it is to have careful hands. Careful hands may touch as they wish." Was that humor in his voice?

"I will take care.." She almost sounded like a child then, dripping with promise and the stubbornness of "I will do this thing" or that. She leaned in, her small palms coming to cup his face in her hands once more. She did not find his lupine features odd or alien at all. They were beautiful, especially now in the soft light, where she might find traces of lines on the face, lines which would spin the stories of his life. It was for this knowledge and her secret - or rather not so secret - love of him did her lips carefully glide across his and into a sudden kiss. Fabric still fluttered gently across the tops of his knees as she shifted between them, half hanging in the air of space between their bodies, meeting only at the mouth and face.

He gave himself to her quietly, and brought one of his hands over one of her own. The other wandered in the air quite near to her, as if drifting across her aura, yet did not touch her.

She was still so unsure of herself, yet this uncertainty seemed to diminish with his encouragement, the fact that he did not break away. Her skin was alive beneath the fabric of her clothes - all warm and calling to him. He too, was warm, too warm perhaps. She felt him searching with his mind's eye, diving into her history perhaps. Maybe he would find her anger there, beneath the surface of skin. It was in her blood, yet there was much to be found there. Answers were easily found in blood.

She broke the kiss slowly, her lips gliding over his before drifting, though her mouth lingered above his as she tried to speak. "I..." Her eyes were in such a state - half closed, opening but not quite, as she plucked the words from a heavy stream of nonsense and emotion. After all, didn't emotion make nonsense of many conversations? Whether it be sadness, anger, jealousy, or "...love..."

His reaction was sudden, though his movements were small, complete with widening eyes and perked ears. "A careful word, that... Forgive me, if I do not find it so.. quickly, easily..." But as he spoke, his free hand, the circling hand, curled against the small of her back.

In that brief interval of time, she was glad she hadn't finished it. Well, it could've been many things.. "I love chocolate," "I love dancing.." But no, such things would not be said to throw cover over that word, as he knew what she meant, and she found it in him, somewhere, in his back eyes and that tangle of words he spoke. She only nodded softly and offered him a small smile. In the interim, she felt and saw many things. His reaction to her declaration was more than she'd ever gotten from him, and with that reaction came a deluge of Sight.

Somewhere in the unhome, was a candle, and she felt it both here and in the past. She saw a boy, and a candle, and a psychic trial of sorts.

"Blow it out." She spoke with a hovering mouth, lips but a crack of air away, so close that perhaps they did touch as they moved. She slid against him slowly, even though his curling hand did not necessarily draw her in, and was now perhaps in his lap, with legs dangling over one side of him, and hands resting loosely on both his shoulders.

Blow it out from this distance, she meant, and of course, he knew.

For this proximity, for this closeness, a soft rumbling sound was heard, a sound coming from within the sandman. He embraced her as she slipped against him, but remained still and quiet for a while. She lingered there, happy perhaps, even if he refused to respond to her small demand. Then, he kissed her.

Her slender arms wrapped around his neck, and she pressed to him, with her mouth on his, her lips and her tongue careful of such lupine teeth, careful but not afraid. She was still oh-so-delicate, as if she could wound him, but she was a delicate thing indeed, and such a way was easy for her. It is always easy to be the thing that one is. The hands of her curling arms were into his hair, lightly running fingertips over his scalp, and added a small touch of ear every now and then.

He uttered a soft growl, but this did not frighten her, as she knew well enough that his sounds were often violent. He broke the kiss slowly, and he looked at her with half-closed, yet curious, dark eyes.

"And what would you mean to do, when the light is no longer watching?"

It was perhaps right of him to ask. She could've simply plucked from him a memory and desired to see such a thing done. But no, he was not her entertainment. She had too much respect for him.

She spoke quietly. "What I would like if you would have me." Swirls of aquamarine now caught the light. Her eyes were the Mediterranean of the day, such a stark contrast to his own dark gazes. "But only if you would have me.." She was not a shy thing, and not usually one of caution, but with him she was. Her fingers danced along the edge of his ear and her head settled softly upon his right shoulder.

"You seem a fraik creature... but you wear such want."

And then, as if by some invisible force, some manufactured wind which blew nothing save its target, the flame of the candle flickered, then died.

The candle was out.

Can you tell me where I am
You won't you say something
I need to get my bearings
I'm lost
And the shadows keep on changing
And I'm haunted
By the lives that I have loved
And actions I have hated
I'm haunted
By the lives that wove the web
Inside my haunted head
- Poe

She was quiet. Sleep crept closer and had stolen her voice. She pressed close to him, basking in his unnatural warmth. Her eyelids were heavy: bricks, stone. He was holding her hand as her body molded to his on the mattress. As she relaxed her small shoulders, she curled her feet about his right leg, as if this were a sort of play, before she abandoned it altogether for silence and near-sleep.

He watched with half-open eyes. Her Sight caught snatches of his urges, things he tried to hide, a ferocious primal bloodlust, but she did not react.

How strange it was. Sandmen were supposedly the bringers of sleep. Perhaps he had indeed brought sleep, since there beside him lay a girl seer, strange blood of different races coursing through her veins, an unnatural gene pool spliced into loveliness and tragic delirium, now entirely worn from both the anticipation and the lovemaking itself. Her eyes closed slowly, and her features relaxed, and her mind drifted into dream. She did not stir, save for the words she spoke in this strange state of unwaking, as if they had forced themselves from the dreamworld. Yes. Force. They would invade her form and use her as a vessel. This was the Sight, not the Seer. The Seer was of the astral plane, her body limp and breathing as sleepers do.

"...tides of crimson flesh and blood on stringed birds with pierced wings and candles that do not blow out..."

He heard these things, but did not wake her, and did not withdraw. And then she had no more words, as the Sight soon died, as if it could not breathe without a waking Seer, without an attachment to this plane. She sighed softly, a slumbering thing, a pretty picture beside him. She smelled of sex and sweat and summer, and the oddities that shaped her, her secret things.

Slowly, he slipped out of her coiling embrace.

...

Time had passed. How much? This was an unknown thing, but it was always so. Time had its way of escaping her grasp. Sometimes days would go by, and her hair would be tangled, and her clothes in disarray, and someone would have to say something or unceremoniously toss her in a stream. It was easier when she had people looking after her. But now, time, that was the question. And she opened her eyes with this question on her lips, and a small hand fell from her naked side to the space on the mattress where his body used to be. He had moved from her in that passage of moments. A great and terrible dread suddenly washed over her, and it rolled down her spine and caused a light fluttering of her heart. This was an anxious tendency, not a palpitation.

"Domikai."

Her eyes were on the ceiling as she rolled to the other side. The bedding was still warm. Not much time had passed after all.

He was seated in the chair in the corner of the small room. A large bird, the color of sand, was perched in an alcove of a crumbling wall. Both creatures stared as the name was spoken.

Something was... off.

She did not catch his strange state of mind right away, as she was still somewhat wrapped in sleep, dripping with dream-things, perhaps. She sat up with a small smile as she found him at last. Her hair spilled down along her chest as if to hide her unclothed form. Her face, framed by curls, turned up to look at him, to watch him watch, until this brief attention was diverted to the bird. Why was it always birds with these two?

Domikai and Irrykin.

She blinked, and peered at it curiously, as it appeared to be alive, and not a ghost bird made of clove smoke. Slowly, she rose, and looked back to him with questions.

"Who is he?" She gestured to the bird of course.

"She is saying small things of curiosity..." His answer did not match her question, and he appeared to be in some sort of trance, with his black eyes fixed upon her. His movements, too, were trancelike, and he unwrapped several white bandages around his torso in slow circular waves.

"Oh. She. Forgive me.." She said again to the strange bird who perched across the room, and as black eyes watched, so did blue-green, but this time on the bird.

"Small things of curiosity. Am I not a curiosity to you and you to me?"

She crept closer to the bird, her small steps light upon the floor, and she approached with caution, so as not to startle it. Who knew its nature besides the sandman who seemed so lost in his unwrappings? Ahh! She stopped midway to look back at him over her small shoulder, her brows knitting in thought, as if finally it dawned on her the new oddities of his mental state. She blinked at him, but said nothing.

His mind is a picture-book. Open it and become just as lost as he is.

Then again she turned her attention back to the bird, as if she didn't know what to take in first. Here was this creature, the likes of which she hadn't seen, none of this color anyway. She peered at it with increasing interest and leaned in, as if to whisper into its bird ears, but perhaps cautious too, and not too far in, as she didn't know the creature's temperament. Would it try to take her nose from her face? Her nose twitched with the thought, and she grinned recklessly.

"Hello there pretty thing of strange colored feathers. Have you come to watch us watch each other now in the trappings of after-love? I have his taste on my lips still, of body and mind, and his mind tastes like swirling things, like sweetness and metal, like blood perhaps."

There was a sway in her stance, as if she were being pulled by strange images with invisible arms and voices, calling, beckoning, this way, no, this way, and you will see much.

You have opened it.

The bird hopped a space nearer to the girl and fluffed her feathers.

Her lilting voice, ever-so-girlish, was at it again. "Yes I would touch you," she whispered. Then, little fingers came to rest upon the tops of those soft feathers, stroking in a gentle way, and she looked much like a child would in the exploration of a new thing, curious and careful, though somewhat still afraid.

Then, a new thought.

"Domikai. Can I please stay here?" She felt herself a small thing then, under his black watch, small but beloved, maybe, as her fingertips trailed the back of this bird in brief discovery. "I do not want to go out into the world just yet. There are secret things that must be kept so.." She didn't know how he would respond, but she would make him understand, and weave these words like a stitching to his broken train of thought.

"Where things go to die," he said softly, and his eyes strayed to the threshold, the space between their sanctuary and the wilderness of the world.

He knows about the porch. He knows about Amthy. He sees when you See.

"Yes. And she died and I cannot say anymore."

At some point, the bird had caught her finger in its open beak, but did not bite. Her eyes widened, but she did not withdraw in a frenzy. She was only very still, and calm, and this reaction proved to be correct, as the creature only sought to taste her, perhaps, and then let her go.

Animals taste. This is intimacy.

The girl continued to pet the curiosity, but her thoughts now rested with the sandman, and the dead girl, and how she could not speak such things.

"Only keep me here.. There are too many faces who would stare and wonder why it is I know what it is I know. To know is a terrible, terrible thing, that which comes with seeing. But you know this.." That last bit was almost singsong, though she hadn't meant it to be. The realities, his and hers, were colliding, and affecting her speech.

"But the door keeps nothing." He said to her.

The bird hopped away from her touch and settled upon the table, casually tearing its talons into the many discarded bandages the sandman had placed there.

"What is a door when..."

She was losing it. What was the rest of that riddle? She watched as the bird hopped off, slightly distracted by the soft sounds of wings and talons. She looked as though she wanted to move closer, but suddenly, her steps took her in a completely different direction. She extended her hands in front of her, feeling through the air as if she were blind or in some terrible darkness.

"When is a door.." She lost the riddle. Her hands shot through the threshold, as if the answers were there, on the outside.

"When a door keeps nothing, it is not a door, so I may not be kept, but rather seep through such porous portals." She placed either hand at opposite ends of the opening and stood there for what seemed like quite a while, silent and still, facing the wind, whispering to it as it tussled her hair.

You are lost.

"You are kept by choosing instead. The will is the door." He moved from his chair with unblinking eyes and stepped into her shadow. The bird, however, ducked back into its alcove, a trail of white bandages hanging from its beak.

She was still undressed but not completely aware of it, and she closed her eyes as he drew closer. The air still carried his scent, though it was all over her as well. She loosened her grip upon the frame of the undoor and leaned back, slowly placing her spine against his chest, setting her shoulders just beneath his, letting her head fall to one side. Her hands retracted and slipped carefully around his waist.

"It says take care. The trees are watching, I think. I think others are watching, or waiting, waiting and listening, but I can't see their faces.."

Her eyes flickered up to the place just under his chin, so that she could see any shifts of his expression, but that was never likely. She felt his desert skin, with scars attached, and the steady beat of his heart.

"They are watching and speaking and there are always things waiting. Time would wait but It cannot hold still long enough...and misses itself." He shifted his eyes from her chin to the world beyond their shelter, closed them, and settled his clawed hands on the curve of her stomach. He was wolf and he was man and he was shadow - some curious blend of all three.

"I sometimes miss time. I come and go and in my ignorance it leaves me quite surprised when everything changes.." Her eyes drifted too, to the wilderness and beyond, and perhaps they were both watching the same thing, or nothing at all. She found herself almost sinking into him, and it was a comfort, as her thoughts too, were scattered and strange.

"Everything changes and changes everything.." she whispered.

"Motion is the fashion of change, but though sand moves it remains sand, and all the many grains remain themselves..." He sighed with closed eyes and tapped his fingers upon her skin, as if he were counting time, as he was always counting time. Then, his tapping became a light trail of touch, and painted patterns against her flesh.

"Sand used to be rock." She thought she would make a debate of this, but by mentioning rock, her mind moved into other places and planes. Rocks. She lingered there briefly, but what was time? A shifting of sands. Her eyes snapped then to her stomach, to the pictures he made with his fingertips, and like the movements of the coin he produced from his pocket, she became mesmerized by this, and slightly tickled. Girlish laughter broke their softer conversation, however cryptic and odd it was to begin with, and she found him in the dark once more, looking upward, upward, at his face.

"Will you paint me Domikai? Like the big tree.." She felt herself slip. "Like so many trees.."

"Even the Trees whisper among themselves..." He tensed. "I am no Artist... if I See you, I will paint... for I make pictures, not Art... " His words were tangled and lined with emotion, anger perhaps, but it was brief.

"But you see me.." This change in him did not go unnoticed, but once the tension broke and the warmth returned, she turned her head up toward his neck, so that her words would crawl along his throat like his claw still graced the small plane of her stomach.

"Pictures of half-things.." As she whispered, she placed a small kiss, there, against the side of his neck. Then, she returned her gaze to the outside world, and so strange it was. Knowledge and intimacies, intimate knowledge. It changed her, however slowly. But sand was still sand, and girls were still girls, who saw remarkable things in shifting light, and shadow, and thought.

"Half things here... they are Whole elsewhere..." His voice was an almost growl when he spoke. His eyes opened, and he flattened his hands upon the girl's midriff. The wind whipped outside, brushing over grass and rustling trees and carrying many small things.

"I have often wondered of Elsewhere." Her voice was doing the singsong thing again, as if the force of the wind was enough to pull her from this reality, when in fact it was his own wavering sense of things that pulled her with him.

Lost.

"Red all over. Scarlet. Crimson. Like Paint but not," she whispered. And as his eyes opened, hers did close, and her small mouth curled into a rather maniacal smile.

"Red-red-red-red.." she repeated. She picked up a bare foot and held it in the air of the not-doorway, shaking it into the grass as if it were covered with something, as if she were trying to shake it free of water, or something else.

Blood. You see?

"Red is still Paint, for one must never waste the color..." His words carried images of violence. The scent of iron hung in the air. His eyes closed again, he rested his chin upon her head, and his claws on her stomach curled slightly, threatening to pierce the surface.

"I do not Paint. I never Paint. Never-ever..."

That last bit might've been a continuous flow of "ever's," but the words were swallowed with a small gasp and a stiffening of her back. Her eyes flew open, as if she were for the first time aware of him standing there, really aware of him, and his nature. All this, all of it, circled her head, but she did nothing, nothing but lean back into the warmth of him, and waited for him to tear her to pieces, perhaps.

He could. And you do not have the instruments to know this intimacy.

"But you will not." Her voice was small, yet did not waver.

Vision spilled over memory and joined their minds. All her old lovers were there, surrounding them, with their dead teeth, watching with laughing eyes and waiting, licking their lips.

And so much blood, little victim.

"Domikai, always..." Not a move or a breath thereafter. There was just a stillness against him, with her eyes on the trees as they swayed with a passing brush of wind.

"No, we would not..." Tear you to pieces. "Why do their eyes smile coldly?" His claws retracted until only his palms remained upon her stomach. He lingered there behind her, with slow breaths, seeing what she saw.

"It is how I am seen.." Or she perceives herself, one might think.

Her little hands came too to rest upon her stomach, tracing the tops of his hands, though she was ever-mindful of the claws.

"All the better to pluck out the eyes anyway.." Was that even true? The colder they were, the easier? Not that she had meant for him to go about plucking out their eyes, no. It was something she had caught from him, as he too, caught bits and pieces of her in his mind. Conveniently, her eyes, at this point, were now closed, but her Sight lingered. There were still shapes in the darkness, and perhaps if the sandman looked closely enough, he might see a blond girl standing in a clearing, a familiar forest perhaps, one of these parts. Blond, like Alma, but not like Alma at all. Blond, and beloved, and very dead.

Kat LeFay.

He did see. "Your thoughts are still grieving." This was only a distraction, because he still waged some minor war within. There was a hunger, a bloodlust, and as he spoke, these thoughts were rising, shining things.

"Years and years. I keep her there, in the core." She sighed and opened her eyes, half-expecting to see her fallen friend in front of her, in the flesh, in the frame of the non-door, but nothing was there, nothing but air and shifting grass and trees and howling wilderness.

"She had her eyes though... Eyes. I see..."

Do you see how he removes them?

She squinted in this reality, with her fingertips still playing on the tops of his hands, though they withdrew with the threat of violence. Violent thoughts, foreign thoughts.. They were persuasive, yes, and her body stiffened with the shock of it.

You cannot possibly seek to satisfy him, this need. You are a mouse.

She was having a harder time to ignore these whispers as their minds tangled, but he still did not hear these things. "The other is not like you, is he? Though he smiles and makes me birds." Violence made her think of Irrykin, The Other.

"We are both gray. We both hate. I regret." He withdrew his touch and his closeness, and perhaps his movements whispered a small apology for his violent thoughts.

She caught that. She turned to him, with a spin on small heels and swirling hair.

"You are better than him." She looked at him with such clarity, and sadness, perhaps, with her skin still calling for him, and shaking with terrible withdrawal. She stepped forward, closing in again, and curled her arms around his waist, pulling herself against him with a quiet desperation.

"Always-always-always-always." Her face was in his chest and it rose and fell with each quiet breath. She was breathing too, breathing him in so that she would remember.

She felt his hand on her spine. "Remember that," he said, and that simple phrase implied much.

Remember that when you see his true nature.

She placed her chin against his chest and peered up at him, so that her eyes would meet his black gaze, black and glittering, revealing little, not that he needed to reveal anything at all.

"I will Domikai. I promise." Placing another small kiss to his chest, she slipped from his embrace and headed back to the bedding. Gingerly, she let herself drop, and let her eyes wander to the great Tree upon the wall.

"Tell me a story. Tell me about the trees. "

He had moved back to the chair. "I paint them for I see them... " That was all he said.

She stretched herself to mimic the tree perhaps, but she found herself lacking in the number of her limbs. So, she rolled, with her stomach upon the mattress, her elbows digging into the sheets, and her hands quickly rising to support her chin and hold her head as she watched it. Perhaps it saw her too, the unfinished picture on the wall. She lifted her legs behind her and crossed her ankles. Then, she gave herself to her habit: an idle swinging of bare flesh through the air of the unhome.

See the trees. The twisted leafless things. You saw them when you went to be with the blond. You saw them in the WestEnd.

"You paint all over.. why?" Why the WestEnd, she would and wouldn't ask. His hunting grounds? The girl bit her lower lip and continued to stare. Perhaps her eyes would burn a hole through the wall pretty soon.

"Because I wait, because I need.... because they feel like Time and Desert."

"What are you waiting for?"

And she stared and stared and stared, and the pupils of her eyes were nearly as large as the color of her irises. This let the darkness in. And quite suddenly, the singsong voice was replaced by something quite strange, and perhaps foreboding. It was not unlike the voice that she used when she commissioned Jodiah Ayreg to kill Lord Travanix.

"Time and Desert will not cut your strings."

Then, her head dropped from her hands and she fell flat upon the small mattress, face first of course, laying still, and quiet, but breathing.

"My Story," said the sandman, perhaps in shock.

When she fell, so did everything else. It was like something spoke through her, and an electric, almost spiritual residue hung in the air. But there are many vengeful spirits about, and this was not the first time such a thing had happened. ..to war with me, Jodiah Ayreg. And when it left her, she dropped, exhausted, with her swinging legs curled about themselves diagonally on the pallet, and her hands linked to one another just beneath her small head. She did not twitch nor cry nor moan, but breath. She was breathing, and that was all.

"Neither will Words." His reply was harsh, and he moved nearer to her, sitting just beyond her reach on the pallet near the wall.

There was movement from the girl at last. It was slow, a snail's pace perhaps, and sleepy. No, scratch that, as she was entirely exhausted, so drained that it was a hardship to even lift her head to look at him.

"Domikai, you are here.." His presence made her happy, but it was a short-lived joy, as if she were suddenly too tired to feel anything at all. She pressed her cheek to the bedding so that her eyes could watch him in those shadows, watch him linger near the wall. And then, they closed, and something of a smile flickered into view, and that was all. She knew nothing of puppet strings, and was quite oblivious to all that had happened.

"I am a watchman. I am always here." He said, forever watching.

"Always.." She repeated, and the comfort of this proximity was enough to allow herself to drift, finally, with no thoughts of cliffs or dead friends or vengeful lovers. Nothing. She looked quite small, though her body was extended across the bedding, and perhaps vulnerable, with nothing to cover her but curling chestnut tresses spiraling down her back. Natural beauty, tragic mind. Give much, gain little, trivial, fleeting things. The air finally settled, and the electric charge was nothing more than a small warmth lingering there above her. The wind would take it, for sure, as it carried all things, and secrets of life, secret lives, and scattered them to the very edges of this reality, and perhaps farther. And then, finally, finally, the Seer was asleep.

As you awaken every star
That has been sleeping
In the constellation of my soul
How could I go back to live amongst the dead
Those who imprisoned beauty
- As I Lay Dying

Red Dragon Inn

There was a scream, a loud, high pitch, deafening thing. It came from the Inn, possibly upstairs, in one of the rooms. She was slow to move along the uneven path to the porch. It was late, but not too late, for the night creatures. The scream startled her, perhaps, and she stopped short at the first step and peered over her shoulder.

Blue-green eyes met black ones in the shadow.

?It wasn?t me.? He said from the dark.

?Me and my shadow.. walking down the avenue.? She sang to him from the foot of the stairs, a child?s song, one she had learned from who knows where. One never knew with her.

?Ahh, nau,? she started. ?I do not imagine you screaming, Domi.. Skado. That was a girl?s scream. I could show you how. I have screamed on occasion.?

The song was forgotten just as quickly as it remembered.

?Shall we go investigate?? She asked, her eyes wide with intrigue. That was never a good sign.

?There are many different styles, such screams?? He moved past her in his familiar quiet way, but rested his hand upon her shoulder. Follow.. Then, after ascending the stairs, he held the door for her.

Her smile was genuine, and her movements dripping with grace. ?Like little colors, swirling, swirling...? Her singsong voice seemed tireless. And the shoulder, the small shoulder, if it had its own persona, would?ve beamed from the attention of the hand, but instead, she did. And so the shining little thing did walk, brushing past him in a stride that bordered on the sensual, making her way inside.

?It?s been some change, but we?re still outsiders?? He said to her, softly.

?Outside, inside, outside.? Her curious response went hand-in-hand with wandering eyes and a wavering attention span. There was a familiar floral fragrance to the air. It did not take long for her to spot Alma.

?A paint of fake flowers.? He said, as if reading her thoughts. Perhaps he was. Much had passed between the two. Perhaps their minds were no longer their own.

He moved to the bar.

The girl, however, seemed overwhelmed by the presence of the Gloved Lady. Viki reached for the sandman, as if to steady herself in the space between light and shadow, and as time ticked by ? as time does tick, or fly, as it is a fickle thing ? she found him, but no longer beside her. She placed one hand on the doorframe then, because it offered some support, however small.

?He is not abandoning us,? she remarked to the threshold before she pushed away to close the distance between herself and her lover.

Meanwhile, Domikai was waiting at the patron?s side of the bar with a glass of water ready. His ears flicked back at her words, but he said nothing.

Her slippered feet made the softest of sounds as she shuffled along, and she stopped short at the vacant stool beside him.

?You see? He is here.? She said, with a flicker of a smile, impish at best, as she hoisted herself into the seat.

?Such is the method of watchmen,? he replied, with his claws tapping the water glass.

There was a man behind the bar, searching the shelves, perhaps for a rare selection. His name was Erich Von Locke and she had met him the night before. She had tried several attempts to steal his secrets, but he wouldn?t have it. And now, curiously enough, she couldn?t remember his name at all.

But, with all thoughts of strangers aside, Viki turned her attention to her lover once more.

?Skado, what do you do all day? Tell me everything.? She placed an elbow at the edge of the counter and curled her fingers into a fist, a fist for which to support the side of her head. With a swing of her legs and a shift in her seat, she peered up at him, hungry for stories.

Alma, whose attention until now had been focused on an unfamiliar young woman, now threatened to disturb their peace.

?No fever, my little grass girl, or has the creature proved more antibiotic than I thought??

She speaks to you and she calls to you and she makes you want her still. Like in the city of dreams, you will always see her face.

Viki just froze - every muscle and sinew and cell and tissue.

?Perhaps there is warmth overwhelming, in the core of other places?? Viki replied. The words which trailed off into air were neither emotional nor hard. They were flat. But it was an odd thing, as she hadn?t moved for quite some time.

?I am as patient as a telemarketer, love, as resistible as a glacier. Take your time?? She said over her shoulder.

The sandman seemed to ignore Alma?s interference altogether and was kind enough to answer the girl?s first inquiry: What do you do all day?

?I rested but did not sleep, and took small canvases to a shop. Stone gargoyles keep it.?

Perhaps it was noticeable that Victoria did not look to Alma with the same sadness and longing that she had looked to the sandman with before they were lovers. Her eyes, that odd off-blue, turned away from the gloved one with the honey combed voice and the dancing eyes to the sandman?s water glass. It was now at his lips, and how convenient.

?You never sleep.? She observed as she curled a finger into her hair. ?I should like to see a gargoyle. I hear they come alive if one draws too close, with malicious intentions.?

?Some, some? These are simple and stone and happy things that keep a shop. One was displeased being male, she found a sculptor to carve an alternative structure,? he replied.

?Sometimes I am displeased being female. I think we are too small.? Viki lifted her arms and held them outstretched in front of her. It was a demonstration, a display of slender limbs. ?I should like to be a gargoyle. If only for a night. Then perhaps I could fly, for a time.? As she lowered her arms, her right hand went for the water glass, and she took it to her mouth, pleased to share the contents.

Erich?s eyes had fallen upon her for a time, causing a small shiver to race down her spine. She threw a glance to him, briefly, and a tiny memory pushed its way to the front of her brain, but she could still not remember his name.

?Short flight, night flying,? the sandman remarked with a strange smile.

?The room is not so cold,? he added when she shivered.

?Nau..? Viki was quite aware his observant eyes saw everything, almost as much as hers did. So, the latter pair of said eyes then flickered up to meet with his, spilling all sorts of strange secrets from the night prior, the night she met Erich.

?A strange? I saw too much perhaps.? She said.

?You were here and saw what we did not..? He acknowledged.

?I was bored,? without him. ?But for now on I will make pictures, like you do,? and not wander off on your own, which you know is impossible. She placed the water glass on the counter. ?Though I used to sing songs.?

?Sing?? There was a touch of curiosity to his otherwise neutral voice.

?Yes.? She leaned in, propping her chin up with both small hands, resting her elbows on the counter once again. ?In this tongue and another, though it is much harder for me to remember all the words.? She shifted position, one hand now holding her chin, the other reaching for a strangely shaped ear of hers. She continued. ?I do not remember everything, for I was young when I knew the language.?

?Another tongue,? he repeated, perhaps amused, and as always, thinking much and saying little.

?Xas.? Her fingertips were dancing idly along her earlobe. She used these words, these small foreign words, at times in her common speech. It wouldn?t have been long until he picked them up. Perhaps he already knew the language. Perhaps that was where his amusement came from.

?I will sing for you, if you wish it.? She whispered.

His black eyes settled upon her with quiet examination. Then, he spoke, and the words came easily. ?Xal ol zhah alur belbau ulu l?naut delmah.?

Her eyes brightened. Now she had someone else to speak with, in the old tongue, besides Ayreg, and relations with that one were somewhat strained at the moment.

?Usstan orn sundu gaer t?yin, ka ol orn?la qualla dos.? She said happily.

?Xas.? He drained his glass and set it upon the counter. A hollow note chimed the water?s demise.

She smiled. It was as if perhaps the lady?s presence, for the first time, was unfelt ? as yes, she did feel her, ever since the bloodletting.

Try to ignore it all you like.

?Udos nym?uer folbol calling dos.? His words were a blending of two languages. After he spoke them, he overturned the water glass. It would bear the brunt of his anger, but his words were calm things, and no anger welled from his voice.

He knows she?s forced this continued seduction.

?Usstan nym?uer nau uss drill dos.? It was a quiet reply, met with a frown.

?Ulhen xun naut doera dos??

He knows the vampire has charmed you.

?Usstan xun naut ssinssrin ulu nym?uer jaluss drill dos.? She pressed her fingertips against the overturned glass and made small circles in the lingering condensation. She would draw him pictures in the glass, of small, lingering, nothings.

Is this, her charisma, such a small thing? Wait. It will grow.

?Inlul elg?cahlen?? He nearly reached for her, but instead focused his dark eyes to the things she described upon the glass.

?Ke.? Her delicate fingers crawled from the glass to meet his, to complete the half-offering, though her eyes were so suddenly sad, as if she had perhaps disappointed him in some large way.

?Doer. Sundu.? His claws curled around her hand, touching briefly, before he slipped from her and started for the door.

Her faint smile brightened her small face, and she following her drifting sandman, lacing her fingers about his hand once more, taking small steps for the door.

?I will sing for you. Only you.? She whispered quietly.

The night welcomed them with open arms, and eyes, twinkling stars in the sky. She stepped out, perhaps eager to leave, and reached for him as they made their way unhome.

Translations
Xas.
Yes.

Xal ol zhah alur belbau ulu l?naut delmah.
Maybe it is better to give to the unhome.

Usstan orn sundu gaer t?yin, ka ol orn?la qualla dos.
I will sing it there then, if it will please you.

Udos nym?uer folbol calling dos.
We hear something calling you.

Usstan nym?uer nau uss drill dos.
I hear no one but you.

Ulhen xun naut doera dos?
Lies do not become you...

Usstan xun naut ssinssrin ulu nym?uer jaluss drill dos.
I do not desire to hear anyone but you.

Inlul elg?cahlen?
Small poisons...

Ke.
Indeed.

Doer. Sundu.
Come. Sing.

There's a hard rain falling
Flooding your attic it's clear
I can't put out the fire that resides in you my dear
There's something I should tell you for we may not have much time
I've never seen scars like yours...
- Alkaline Trio

The day was threatening to break. Eastern skies seemed so much lighter than their western counterparts. Midnight blue gave birth to shades of azure and hues of light purple. He had caught her in the thicket, but kept out of sight. Domikai was a watchman above all else.

The girl, the seer, sprang from the wild and the wet with every sort of wildflower wrapped in her hair and a new curiosity wound about each finger: bits of twigs - makeshift claws.

Imitation is, as they say, the highest form of flattery, but this was not her intention.

In her endless pursuit to know her lover, she had attempted to crawl into his skin. Though her dress was still her own, she was flushed with fever after tromping through the woods - an effort to raise her body temperature to something near his own. The "claws" were the pinnacle of her performance, though some of the twigs had jagged edges and cut into the sides of her fingers under the ties of string.

Perhaps Domikai looked on with amusement. She hadn't noticed him. Her act, her attempt to know and see all that was sandman, clouded her vision, both physical and other. She had become fully engrossed in his world. She had even begun to move like him, shifting her head in birdlike mannerisms, stepping in perfect silence around the outline of her own shadow...

It just so happened that her shadow spilled into his own.

After a time, they had settled onto the earth, the girl's spine along the sandman's chest. He had asked her many questions, mostly about the mock-claws, and her intentions. Her responses half hinted at her own shortcomings. Viki knew his bloodlust by now and secretly craved to join him.

But Domikai had an idea, and perhaps he had planned for this all along.

"We keep many small claws besides our... own. It would take time to give you sharpnesses to wear, but we believe time willing to give..." He tangled his hands with her own and began to remove the twigs from her fingers in delicate, gentle steps.

"And I could use them like yours?" Her voice was small, and flat, as if it hid things between the pauses of words.

"Do not hide your meanings and questions in such small words." His breath warmed the outline of her ear.

"I won't if you won't." She said, still quietly. It wasn't much of an accusation so much as a promise. She flipped her hands over, easing them out from his claws and leather-wrapped palms to study the small wounds she had brought on herself. There were traces of red, pinpricks of wooden twigs, and thorns too, perhaps. She was tangled in the brush for quite some time. The breath, though, the breath was a distraction, and it took her from the study of these small scratches to the study of him. Satisfied that she knew something that wasn't quite so hidden, she pressed her wrists together, a mock captive, and held them up, injured fingers splayed out before air and dark eyes.

"It is strange to imagine violence beyond one..." He paused, his eyes drawn to her display of bleeding fingers, and he trailed a single claw between spaces of blood and perfect skin, and then withdrew. "And you would have your own, paint..." His weight drifted away from her back.

"Only my own?" She caught snippets of things as he shifted from behind, so she leaned forward and slowly came to turn. Bare knees were dug into the soft earth, and the fabric of her hem protested the proximity to the unclean ground. She ignored this and sat on her heels, placing palms in her lap.

"I do naut think I would like only my own.." She tilted her head in careful examination of him, but the faint smile was a giveaway and her eyes too, of want.

"We want after red in many ways... but at times, want for the offering of our own." His words were careful and quiet and his eyes were for the Unhome which lay in front of them.

Her eyes skipped from him to follow the trail of his own, to the nothing door, through to the sanctuary inside which to her always seemed to smell of desert things from his paintings, and too, of their evidential tangling.

Her smile faltered, and the unpainted mouth was like a line as thoughts weighed and weaved and finally she spoke. "Would you make me this offering with my new claws and little blades?" Her eyes turned from non-door to sandman, wide and waiting. "I can almost hear the singing of these things.."

Then, she crawled, a slinking thing once more, and curled limbs over shoulders and legs over waist. "Offer these things..." She was hesitant, perhaps guarded by some knowledge of his ways regarding touch, but she leaned in, and her mouth found the length of his throat quite easily, and she pressed it there, but the threat of those flat teeth were nothing much at all.

She felt him rumble and crane his neck, but she took no action.

"You prolong your distance from your teeth and violence.."

Her lips hovered over the life pulse, but he was right. She did not sink her small teeth into the offered throat.

"I do naut mean to.." Habitual tendencies to shy from such things were her nature, in accordance with the past. She had a love for violence, but was that limited to only the self? Now, she had to rethink this philosophy.

He uncoiled from her, but lead her to the structure he called Unhome. She followed quietly, slipping past the non-door to familiar settings and scents within.

Then she turned, feet in little half circles as she stared at him in the near-dark of dawn. "That is, perhaps, I do naut want to.." She drew closer now, like a predator, if she could be such without looking rather ridiculous. Fingers caught claws and eyes caught eyes and soon, perhaps, more..

He withdrew to a shelf on the wall. There was a bundle on this shelf, and when he lifted it, Viki caught the clattering of metal things within. Soon, the contents, many small and sharp knives, were spread out along the small table of the Unhome. He just as soon set three thin blades atop the spread, stepped back, and turned to her.

"Teeth," he said softly.

The shine of these well cared for instruments drew her close, and she stepped to the table with hovering hands, and a look to him, of "Might I touch?" She knew how the sandman felt about touch.

He nodded in affirmation. She nodded back, a thing that said she knew how to take care, and she was careful, with fingers brushing across the small handles of knives, looping around one and then another. She would pick them up and hold them in the little light, watching as what was there was reflected on the surface of the blade. When she had found the one she liked best, one that was perhaps shinier and more elegantly shaped and sharper (or so she thought, they could've been the same but this one said more than the rest), she approached him again, bare feet brushing across the earth floor with hardly a sound, and eyes that were for both knife and lover. She stood in front of him, with one hand curling over his hip, and the other one, the knife-wielding, settling in the air between them, cutting through aura perhaps. She needed a feel for it.

He only seemed to watch, and wait, but he was not altogether expressionless. She could taste his anticipation as easily as one might taste food or drink.

Without a word, she pressed close. It was the warmth that drew her next. These little fascinations, small seductions.. She could just as easily melt against him then, if it weren't for the knife. The singing razor-sharpness, it tore reality in two..

With her head to a shoulder and her mouth once more threatening, closing in on that throat, the newly clawed hand was placed on his back, with the blade turned to its side, so that metal met skin, but did not cut - not yet. And with that, with the warmth and the wanting all whirled together, she kissed his throat, with lips and tongue and flat teeth at last, but they would only leave the smallest of lines, crimson patterns signaling where she caught skin, as the hand and the knife drifted, down and down and down to the small of a back, which was fur-lined and scarred of course, and perhaps she would add to these markings.. notyetnotyet.

His arms circled around her and he sounded a rumble to the small pain, though the seer swore she heard a screaming from the depths of him. Perhaps the air held these haunting suggestions of submission, and too, the growing desire to take that which was hers. These nothing-sounds and goading exhilarated the senses and would force her hand. All too soon, the blade curled to its proper side and slid across flesh and yes - she would spill his blood in small ways. It was a teasing play at first - she was not yet starving, though her mouth was full of his throat.

The other hand, the one that had settled upon a hip did wander south, first along the side of a thigh, and then drew within, pressed between her body and his too-warmth. The weapon wielding hand traveled as it wished, leaving small abrasions here and there, just enough to taint the air iron, as her mouth broke from the side of his neck and traveled up the length to his chin. There, she snatched it in one swift move. The tops of teeth closed around it in imitation as he had done to her many times before. Meanwhile, the blade was guided carefully: a slice, a shift to its side, to further spread blood over the surface of skin.

She heard him draw a sharp breath, but he did not recoil. He seemed drugged, and distant, in the way only anticipation brought. Then, he drew her closer...

Her eyes were half-closed things, a blend of blue and green in shadow still, and watched him in part, though she did not need to see him to know the feeling that grew within. The cut of the blade, the way it pricked and pressed and slid across the scarred mapping of his back excited her, but much of this stopped when he drew her in, crushed and close with a mouth still closed over his chin and a trapped hand between their bodies

A thought came then. Perhaps she should've had two claws, two knives. But this odd handicap aside, she released her hold on him slowly, with teeth retracting and lips closing over the very bottom of a chin, kissing up, and finding his mouth, and her eyes were closed again as the knife whined for attention and begged for the spilling of the lover's blood.. moremoremore.. Or maybe it wasn't the knife at all.

It's you.

The thing he called paint was the true lure, and somehow, someway, she was able to slip her trapped hand from between body and body, and when it was free, it circled around to join its sister. Unarmed fingertips of aforementioned hand roamed the length of his back, brushing across those small damages, gathering this thing called paint, until pale flesh was dipped red and she broke from the kiss to force her fingers into her mouth.

She looked up at him, wide-eyed and there, suddenly, clear with intentions as she sucked the tips of her fingers and tasted the life which flowed within.

Vampire!

Lashes swept over aqua eyes as she withdrew those fingers, iron-marked and tasting metal. The blood, true, said many things, things it cradled and hid and once more she was somewhat aware of the Second, though not entirely:

This is not something we give, offer but rarely and once upon strange violences, and there is only one other that has done such for any others have been erased...

The knife fell once more to its perfect position, the way it was made to be used - edge up and glaring...

She would make good use of these sharp extensions in times to come.