chapter vignette

I have labored under the curse for so many years I’ve gotten used to only seeing the sun through the eyes of a camera’s lens. It weighed upon my mind heavily that my wife missed me dearly during the day, yet I could do nothing about it. I’ve learned well how to light my haven just so, so that it looks like the daylight in the middle of the night.

I remember clearly the day that my wife told me that she was leaving on a voyage to the underworld. Beyond what she had taught me, I was rather unfortunately blind to this werewolf business, yet it still confused me. Was the underworld not the purvey of those that call themselves Sin-Eaters? Nevertheless, I knew I could not keep her from going, much as I would miss her. They say that the curse warps you into a solitary predator, but I always felt that to be true only for those already predisposed to violence and sin. Certainly, the longing I felt in my heart when I would awaken from daysleep to find her gone must be evidence of that.

It was a long time before I saw her again. A month, two months, maybe more. The hole in my heart left by her stretched the time long and made it difficult to tell. But when I saw her, she carried with her a grace that I had never seen. There was confidence in her eyes even after the abuse she had suffered. It was wonderful to see, but I wondered what exactly she could have seen down there that would have given her such poise, such sheer radiance. I thought of her as truly sublime, but this demeanor was new to me.

When she laid eyes on me, she reached out and touched my face without so much as a bloody word. A feeling of warmth spread throughout me as if I had stepped outside into the heat of summer. It was a welcome feeling, the sense of regaining something you’ve lost. She asked me to step outside with her, despite the clock creeping ever closer to sunrise. But even as she insisted, I noticed that I felt no pull to supernatural daysleep. Even still, I was afraid. Surely my wife wouldn’t try to kill me that way, but I knew that the sun was something to be feared under the effects of Caine’s curse.

She led me outside, smiling almost as bright as the impending sunrise, and sat me on a chair on our back porch as the first rays began to break over the eastern horizon. As the sun crept higher into the sky, I felt no burning. When I looked at her, at her supple dark skin and the tattoo at her neck that usually taunted some dreadful piece of me, I felt no primal hunger. I saw only her bright eyes and her ecstatic smile. When I asked her what she had done to me, she replied that she had been granted a ‘gift’. She then informed me that I was free to spend the daylight with her, doing whatever we may have wished to.

As we went about the day, I did notice the mental taxation using that ‘gift’ seemed to take on her. She seemed less sharp than usual, more distant and tired. When the effects finally wore off, I knew it wouldn’t be in my good conscience to ask for it again. That would have to come when she felt up to it.

But I never forgot the feeling.

Her summer’s touch gave me some tiny thing to cling to. She informed me that not every Kindred could taste the sun – only those who had kept reins on their Beast and not fallen into debauchery. I carried that with me from night to night, using the fresh memory of sunlight to stave away those primal urges.

One night, however, I was required to attend Elysium, which I merely used as an excuse to see my twin. Even the years of undeath could not separate us, not for long. But on the way there, I noticed a woman beneath a streetlight, watching me. She carried about her an odd halo effect, as if the streetlight wasn’t the only thing that cast a light off of her. She watched me as I walked, and smiled. And when I asked if there was anything she needed, she told me only that she was pleased to see a virtuous man. She patted my shoulder, she told me to continue on my way to see Shana, and when I blinked, she vanished.

I felt very odd for the entire rest of the night. Feelings within me stirred that should never have occurred again. I began to feel strange compulsions to breathe. It felt as if my gut was twisting, turning, rearranging, as I had felt the night of my Embrace. However, unlike the Embrace, these strange feelings were not agonizing. They were painless, and merely distracting. The Harpy Report that week ended up not being as fleshed out as it could have been due to my distraction, but who could blame me?

Then came the night I chose to visit Shana in her haven. A curious hunger had roused inside of me, one that could not be sated by the taste of blood alone. This strange hunger gave me notice of breathing that had become habitual.  I tried my damnedest not to let the distraction show when I arrived at her door, only to note when I arrived that she seemed distracted as well. I asked her what was the matter, and she spoke of queer feelings within her that had started up after meeting a strange blonde woman on the street. We exchanged experiences with the mystery woman and traded our various strange feelings, though neither of us came to any conclusion as to what was going on.

The night settled into its usual normalcy, for us. I tucked into a book, while she milled about with her hobby of the week. We didn’t much have to speak with each other to fulfill our need to be at each others’ side, it was enough just to be in her presence, for me.

Of course, we often lost track of time together, as well.

When next I happened to look up at the clock, I was stunned. It was well past sunrise, and here we were, still awake! I remembered my brush with the daytime world from weeks ago, and was the first to step into the yard. Surely enough, the sun did not burn. I beckoned my sister outside, and the both of us sat in the light for the first time in many, many years.

We live again. We breathe again. We see the day again

The curse is broken.