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Post by Teja on Sept 14, 2015 16:12:03 GMT -5
"I don't understand why you're telling me this," said Teja, frustrated, rubbing her forehead, rattling her hand at her side after. "Are you trying to tell me to stay away from him for my own good, trying to tell me I can have him because you don't want him, trying to say-"
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Sarah
- In the Duggins -
Posts: 95
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Post by Sarah on Sept 14, 2015 16:13:41 GMT -5
"...I don't know," Sarah admitted. She went back to smoking, then offered her a cigarette as a bit of a truce. Teja hesitated, but accepted one. They sat in the shade, both a little chilly, but only one of them drawing her sweater around herself and buttoning it up to ward it off, smoking.
"I thought I had something to say, but I don't seem to have said much of anything."
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Post by Teja on Sept 14, 2015 16:13:59 GMT -5
"Tell me what to do," she said, looking a little desperate. "Is that what you wanted to do? I'll listen. Tell me not to speak to him, or-"
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Sarah
- In the Duggins -
Posts: 95
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Post by Sarah on Sept 14, 2015 16:14:13 GMT -5
Sarah looked down.
"I can't."
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Post by Teja on Sept 14, 2015 16:14:47 GMT -5
"What do you mean, you can't?"
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Sarah
- In the Duggins -
Posts: 95
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Post by Sarah on Sept 14, 2015 16:17:30 GMT -5
"I think.... I thought it was another situation like me, and I don't like it when those happen. I tried to be better than you so he'd lose interest. It's always been so easy. He likes pretty girls, so I'm prettier. He likes innocent girls so I show him how worthless innocence really is. And when I don't succeed, and he can't resist, I drive off what's left of her after. I'm not proud of that. I'm not proud of - many things."
She finished her cigarette, then stubbed it out on the grass.
"I don't know what it is with you. I thought... If it were simple lust, as it usually is, I can satisfy that. But since we arrived in this country it's been as though I am hardly even here. And his plans for being here..."
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Post by Teja on Sept 14, 2015 16:18:05 GMT -5
This was a topic in which she was as interested as the other, and it posed less of a threat to her.
"Yes? What are his plans?"
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Sarah
- In the Duggins -
Posts: 95
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Post by Sarah on Sept 14, 2015 16:19:55 GMT -5
"I don't know, but he's focused on this new era, this modern world. He wants to be a part of it. He's stressed that we are a part of civilization, that we're not the monsters lurking in the shadows anymore. I'm not sure Johannes will ever not be a monster," she said sharply. "Maybe he can change, and I can't see it, because I remember... I remember what he was like, when he turned me. He feels contempt for that, I think. 'Creatures of the old world,' he says, and I know he means himself then too."
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Post by Teja on Sept 14, 2015 16:20:45 GMT -5
Teja finished her own cigarette in short order, but she was no less confused that she had been when the vampire mistress had taken her arm and pulled her down the street.
"Tell me to run, tell me something," she pleaded. "Will I turn out like you?"
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Sarah
- In the Duggins -
Posts: 95
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Post by Sarah on Sept 14, 2015 16:22:04 GMT -5
Sarah laughed under her breath, picking up her parasol and standing. She patted the girl's head on her way up.
"Oh, I doubt it. I'm one in a thousand, you know. Johannes has never had a consort before me," she said, and fixed the girl with a sharp look. "And I don't think he'll ever have one again. It's not modern, you know. Nobody does that anymore."
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Post by Teja on Sept 14, 2015 16:22:30 GMT -5
"You think he'll discard me. Herbert said he didn't think so, but-"
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Sarah
- In the Duggins -
Posts: 95
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Post by Sarah on Sept 14, 2015 16:24:15 GMT -5
Sarah looked at him a long, hard while. She wished she could tell the girl to run. But....
"No," she said finally. "I think those days are over for him. If consorts and concubines are part of a collective shameful past, then - so are balls and enticing pretty girls to them just so he can eat every couple of years."
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Post by Teja on Sept 14, 2015 16:24:36 GMT -5
"Fine! What does the modern vampire want with me?"
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Sarah
- In the Duggins -
Posts: 95
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Post by Sarah on Sept 14, 2015 16:28:18 GMT -5
Sarah took a few steps backward, lifting her parasol for when she stepped out into the sun, continuing to walk backward on the sidewalk. Unnervingly, she didn't look anywhere near tripping, but didn't stray from the path either, all without looking.
"...a bride, I think," Sarah said after a hesitation.
And there it was, wasn't it. Somehow, she was not certain that even Johannes in love was anything less than dangerous to a young girl. And yet when it came down to it, if he posed to her a different threat than he had posed to Sarah or any of the girls she had made the life and death of a walking misery, what right did Sarah have to scare her off from that? If Johannes could turn over a new page, why should she hold him guilty for the sins of his past? If she were to be condemned by the same token... Perish the thought. Johannes didn't deserve any happiness, not in Sarah's book. But in this girl's?
She stopped walking.
"Perhaps I am envious," she admitted. Then she turned around.
"Goodbye!"
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Post by Teja on Sept 14, 2015 16:31:32 GMT -5
"Wait a damn minute!"
Sarah didn't wait a single damn minute at all. Teja looked around guiltily, as though some Catholic was going to march after her for swearing in the cemetery (ironic; she hadn't been afraid to be smoking with a vampire like two cool girls who'd ditched class). No one else was there. In fact, in the city setting, this was so unnerving that she felt like she was perhaps one of the last people in the world. She looked back at the vampire as though to run after her, and found she had somehow disappeared entirely. She whirled around and about; she was all on her own.
There was no one within view at all.
"A bride," she repeated. Then she found herself blushing insipidly, and buried her face in her hands.
She still had to go reject Johannes, and Sarah had not necessarily made that any easier.
It was still yet another half hour or so before she made it back to the Krolock stoop, biting her bottom lip, then ringing the doorbell.
There. Now she couldn't take it back.
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