there's only so much I can turn into

[mswoods]

The thirteen-year-old girl is coming back home from school, on foot.

There's a cat following her. It's been following her for a while, but from a distance.

She decides to be friendly. She stops and turns around to look at it. It stops as well. "Mow?"

The girl's face- changes. It's still a human face, mostly, but now there's something different about it. More feline than anything. Whiskers grow, her pupils dilate and her eyes get a bit rounder, her bones move under her skin, their shape changing a bit. "Mew," she says, vocal apparatus having changed a bit, apparently.

The cat blinks and approaches cautiously. "Moow...?"

She doesn't giggle, but she feels like giggling. She's talking to a kitty! Well, kinda talking to a kitty, it's not like she can understand kitty-speech. But still! "Maw!"

Comments

[taste_tester]

"I think the current understanding is that a non-witch vampire is technically not magic, just evolutionarily inexplicable. But I don't know if you can improve on vampire venom as an all-purpose doing-things fluid."

[mrsparkle]

"Are there many biologists or physicists turned vampire? Because I may not be either of those but what I do know of them makes me think there is no way in heck this isn't magic."

[taste_tester]

"Couldn't tell you, not my area."

[mrsparkle]

"Alright, then, let's see..."

Over the following couple of weeks - sleepless weeks! He doesn't have to sleep! He is really glad he became a vampire, so useful - they determine that Sadde's power has not substantially revised its opinion of what counts as biological, though it does make him more immortal than the typical vampire. Addy's guess about enhanced Standard Vampire Attributes also turns out to be true, but that's mostly just because of the different raw material and some magic-based insights on how to tweak it.

The boost to cognition is by far the most significant improvement, but she already knew that.

Sadde also sees people from a distance, and although the heartbeats and veins are horribly tempting, they're not enough to turn him into a raging machine of death.

He's now pondering the pros and cons of turning his sense of smell back on.

"Do you think I should?"

[taste_tester]

With a few weeks under his belt Addy thinks his guess is better than hers about whether that's smart. Although she does advise him not to do his blood generation trick near any humans. Being mid-"hunt" around humans is a bad plan even if "hunting" means "salivating weirdly".

[mrsparkle]

Good point! He thinks he probably wants to try, it can't be that hard if all other vampires do it.

...then again, other vampires don't have as many compunctious as he does about the occasional slip up.

He decides to drink enough to slosh before turning his sense of smell on with a human anywhere nearby.

[taste_tester]

This is an entirely reasonable precaution.

[mrsparkle]

"Anywhere nearby" is about five hundred metres away, covered by trees.

The slosh helps. It's abundantly clear that it does, because the second he can smell again his throat is on fire. He holds himself very still, focusing on the fact that it's a person, and that he has just eaten a lot and he's a horrible person when he has to convince not to kill someone by arguing that he's just eaten and now he's in a funk.

But it's a murderless funk so, um, yay?

[taste_tester]

Sure, why not.

[mrwoods]

He does that a few more times over the next few weeks, getting progressively closer to his targets each time. One time he does in fact go after a human, but the shock of having his first arm ripped off by Addy is enough to snap him out of it. Also, his power grows another arm pretty quickly, so, oops?

Eventually he feels confident enough to shift his skin and eyes into more natural colours and actually talks to a human. It's about as awful as he'd expected it would be, but he's getting used to the awfulness so he doesn't actually kill anyone!

[taste_tester]

"You did not have to grow a new arm. This one would've gone back where it came from just fine if you just licked the stump and held it in place," Addy comments, when she is left holding a redundant arm.

[mrsparkle]

"It was wholly accidental and unconscious," he says, giggling as he pulverizes his extra arm (that's marginally faster and way more fun than just shrinking it back) then reattaches the old one.

[taste_tester]

"Sure it was."

[mrsparkle]

"My magic has a very protective personality."

[taste_tester]

"Yum."

[mssparkle]

Eventually Sadde feels she's ready to come back home.

[taste_tester]

"I will stalk you for the first week or two in case you have a newborn moment, and then I'm going to fuck off," Addy says. "I know you'll miss me terribly."

[mswoods]

She laughs. "I actually will!" And one part of her whispers in her head that Addy will now resume being a mass murderer but there's not much she can do about it yet.

Human-coloured self, activate!

[taste_tester]

Addy goes all human-colored too. It's more convenient, as long as she can.

Stalk, stalk, stalk, stalk the newborn vampire.

[mswoods]

The newborn vampire's friends are delighted that she is alive!

The newborn vampire is delighted that she is not eating her friends!

The newborn vampire's mother is far too smart to believe her lies.

[taste_tester]

Addy reminds the newborn vampire that her options are baldfaced lies or her mother coming over all dead if the Volturi ever find out or actually turning her mother, which Sadde is not nearly old enough to do yet (even older vampires kill some of the people they're trying to turn, Addy needed a few people's worth of practice before she was willing to bite anyone she wanted alive, etc.) and which will not leave said mother with stealth witchcraft either.

[mswoods]

The newborn vampire is aware of this, and reassures Addy that she will not attempt turning Laura anytime soon.

[taste_tester]

Good, good.

So Addy collects Sadde's phone number, leaves her own, and fucks off.

[mssparkle]

Bye Addy!

Months pass. Laura still does not believe Sadde's tale about that month she disappeared a while back, but has long since stopped pressing; her daughter is a grown woman, she can very well disappear for a month if she wants to, at least she warned first, even if she lied through her teeth.

And then there's the car accident.

Laura's in the hospital. She's in a coma, her spine is broken, and the doctors are not optimistic. Sadde stays with her day and night, a fact that is helped by her not needing to sleep or even to hunt - just turn off smell and drink a lot of blood. She couldn't care about the smell of other humans anyway, her mind is filled enough with Laura that even the thirst cannot compete.

Laura takes a turn for the worse. The doctor tells Sadde to prepare. Sadde prepares. The following day, Laura has mysteriously disappeared from her room, and so has Sadde, who is not reachable by phone or email.

Sadde cannot cry. But there's one thing she can do, and she thinks she's strong enough.

She isn't. She tries to stop, she wanted to save her but she couldn't, she couldn't, she wasn't strong enough, she can't can't can't her mother is dead and Sadde killed her-

Sadde disappears.

Whenever she meets someone, she shifts. No two people see her looking the same way. She can't deal with people. She doesn't turn her sense of smell again. She can't. She's dangerous, a murderer. It was all for nothing.

She travels, but only remote areas. She visits wildernesses and uninhabited locations, and she doesn't eat anyone, but she doesn't give herself the chance anyway.

One day, she's contacted, magically. She's told that the Volturi are no more, and that the new administration frowns upon eating people. She's told that there will be occasional eye checks, and that the eyes of "vegetarian" vampires look like so.

Her eyes now look like so.

She breathes again.