This post has the following content warnings:
View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
Sadde's running.
Not for any particular reason, just because it's faster. He's been meaning to go to one of the capitals for a bit and now, he supposes, is as good a time as any.
And eventually he's not running anymore, because he's close enough to civilisation that someone might spot him. Not that he wouldn't be able to notice them by scent before they saw him, but still. And as he makes his way to the Norway capital at this more leisurely pace, he notices the tiny, shiny key. He walks towards it and picks it up and immediately notices just how magic it is. He can tell by the way the key feels like things, and different things depending on where it is.
He verifies that what the key feels like is consistent in absolute location by waving it around a bit and seeing that the same place always feels the same. "Huh," he murmurs to himself.
He straightens up and thinks. The first obvious thing to try is seeing whether it opens any doors—a universal skeleton key sounds like the kind of thing a magical key could be—but the second obvious thing can be tested right there and then. He pushes the key into thin air with some purpose, as if he wanted to unlock an invisible door, and then turns it, et voilà, the faintest of door-shaped outlines appears before him.
He locks the door, and it disappears. Unlocks it again, and there it is. So he pulls it open and sees—
"Should have thought of that before you opened one in my pool. Let's go make sure that one's not Lovecrafting the place up."
Sadde zips over there with vampire speed. "No Lovecraftian horrors that I can see," she calls, then opens the door. "Huge fall, though."
"Okay. Well. As long as we're waiting for results on that, do you have design opinions on a set of wings or want to look at a catalog or what?"
She closes the door then zips back to where Cam is. "Will people be prejudiced against me if I go with feathers?"
"Eh, if they're black it will probably be pretty restrained but maybe."
"I'll take a look at a catalog, then. ...can we snuggle while I do it?"
So they go plop on the couch and Cam makes her the latest edition of a curated wing type catalog and puts his wing around her and fiddles with his computer.
Eventually she settles on a design that has a pair of limbs leaving from between her shoulder blades and separating into four "fingers" that end in blunted claws, with a fifth claw protruding from where the fingers join, and a thin membrane between all of them, basically a completely black version of this.
"Okay. You probably want to de-vampire as much as you can, I don't know how these will attach to a sculptureperson."
"Alright. I think I could pull off making these on my own but it'd probably take some trial and error to get them fully functional. I'm also already pretty non-vampire due to not wanting to squish you, it won't be too hard..." Pause. "Everything but nerves and blood vessels is human, now."
"I can generate blood, yeah, but I'll turn them vampire soon enough, they'll run on venom then."
"Okay, they should be okay for a second or two. I'll make them without nerves in the joints so you can chop 'em off if you want a new kind later, like mine, unless you have objections?"
"If they'll be a part of me I can make the nerves disappear at will. Should I get a tail, too?"
"It's up to you. I like mine, but not everybody gets one, they're not as useful as being able to fly. You can pick one later if you want. Ready?"
"Sadde - Sadde? - what's wrong -?" Cam asks, scrambling to the floor beside her and hovering his hands over her, not sure whether to touch her or not.
She's turned her body human enough that she actually starts crying, and she tries contorting her way towards Cam without actually uncurling. She's not very successful, so she just reaches out for him with her arms, trying to pull him into a hug or, or something. "Didn't—didn't—think," she sobs.
Cam scoops her up into his lap and holds her. "Didn't think of what? What's wrong, can I help, I don't know if normal painkillers would work on you, is that even the problem -"
She whimpers and moans and sobs a bit. "Pain- I don't—turning, the venom's—!" She scrunches her eyes shut and tries to snuggle up, tries to make herself small, make herself disappear in Cam's arms. "Vampire venom—turning is—three days, pain, burns—" He might get an idea of just how much it hurts from the fact that it's enough to turn someone with a whole vampire's worth of brain into a sobbing incoherent mess.