1. A Spring Decoration. Still Image | Written

[hismasterpiece]

[The journal clicks on at the far end of twilight, and the blurring image gradually resolves into a sharply-focused view of a dead fawn strewn with white and purple crocuses. White tea candles halo the little head, which is thrown back. Its tiny thin legs look as though they are leaping across the red-tinged snow.

Anyone who is paranoid about vampires in general -- or who is looking REALLY closely -- might see two tiny, clean puncture holes in the fawn's neck.

The following text soon appears beneath the image:]


I have made a spring picture. Everything melts and runs, and the ground is thirsty for secrets. And empty of them.

[So writes a vampire who is homesick for tombs and crypts and graveyards. This place is so barren of them. It won't do. Won't do at all. Still, she is pleased to have made this beautiful art out of a much-needed meal. Angelus would be pleased, too.]

Comments

[hismasterpiece]

Mummy loved flowers; Mummy hated the devil.

[magentarific]

What does the devil have to do with the name "Night Queen"? Nights are pretty. Way better than mornings. [ She has to wake up in the mornings, after all. ]

[hismasterpiece]

Not with the name, dolly; the devil's to do with me, and I with him, and mummy always despised it.

[magentarific]

Is the devil that much worse than God? I'm not exactly big on religion since I've had a different experience with it.

[hismasterpiece]

[Dru has been and still is, in her way, very big on religion. She is interested in this line of talk.]

Do you not engage in devotions each morning and night and sabbath day?

[magentarific]

No. I'd been waging a war against God from the afterlife, until I came here. Plus, I'm a Buddhist so after this if I end up disappearing my soul will get reincarnated.

[ Probably. She has no proof of this, but it's a lot less depressing than after this afterlife, everyone ceases to exist. ]

[hismasterpiece]

Reincarnation? Perhaps into something that soars! Would you like that? Soaring through the air?

[magentarific]

I don't care what I get reincarnated into, really. I've been fighting it.

[hismasterpiece]

I should like to be a wasp, and live in a house all made of paper. It would rustle rustle in the trees at night....

[magentarific]

Don't wasps die when they sting something?

[hismasterpiece]

Then others flood in. Others and others and others. Family. One. They are one, in their paper home.

[magentarific]

[ Yeah that stopped making sense to Yuri at some point.

Not that that ever stopped her from talking to people before. This woman is still more cohesive than TK. ]

What if a bear hits it?

[hismasterpiece]

............Hmmmm? [She has become so distracted by the image of the swarm that the question takes Dru off guard.]

[magentarific]

If a bear hits the wasp nest.

[ Yeah she just threw a bear into your story. DWI. ]

[hismasterpiece]

[There is silence; maybe just a slight growl. Inside her head, the wasps are swarming more and more loudly.]

[magentarific]

He thought one of the wasps was a bee and followed it, so he was going to steal the honey but there wasn't anything there and ended up just knocking them off for no reason.

..You know, I kind of hate this bear. Maybe we should go with a different story.

[hismasterpiece]

I want the story about the seven little men who hold the young girl captive! And they make her slave away in their mines of rubies and emeralds.

[magentarific]

Snow White extra story?

[hismasterpiece]

Snow white...? No! The tale of the demons! The seven demons who dragged her off to their cottage in the underworld! And only baked ham to eat, three meals a day!

[magentarific]

Haven't heard that one.