He holds an ancient grudge

⌞M4A, Early 1900s⌝

⋆。‧+°♱༺𓆩❦︎𓆪༻♱༉‧+ ̊.

Rowan always had a love for the sunshine. He enjoyed the feel of it beating down his neck as he fished, as he read, as he drew. It was the one constant in his life, as familiar to him as the warm hand of a longtime lover.

Rowan believed they suited each other quite well, he and the Sun. He enjoyed all his favorite outdoor hobbies with her, after all. Without the Sun, he felt cold and terribly alone. But the Sun couldn’t stay forever. And when she was gone, that’s when the shadows came out to attack.

Dark, moonlit nights are the usual setting for a tragic story, aren’t they? Under any other circumstance, Rowan would hate for the story that turned his life right on its head to be so stereotypical, but this story is anything but ordinary. Rowan had been walking home after a long night spent at his newest friend, Charlotte’s, house. His lips were sore and his cheeks were red with the rush of blood.

He shouldn’t have been walking home so late—countless newspapers had told him so, but the lingering presence of Charlotte was enough to keep him safe. Besides, there was no such thing as vampires. It was only the devil trying to trick Rowan into doubting God’s protection.

He came home a changed man that night—if you could say he even came home a man at all. When his father caught sight of him—eyes glazed, moaning in pain, and stumbling like an idiot—he yelled and beat him for being such a drunken idiot. Rowan, however, hardly felt the blows. In fact, with each one, he only got hungrier.

He remembers his father making a big fuss as Rowan fed. It should have stirred up some sort of guilt in him, but it only made him more certain that men like him were better off dead than alive. And with that knowledge in mind, Rowan knew that this was God’s will all along. The Lord had gifted this power to Rowan, had made him into a prophet, so Rowan could clear the scum from the earth.

Rowan rushed back to McCollough Manor with blood dripping from his lips and a giddy smile on his face. He gave the usual signal for Charlotte to come out, six rhythmic taps to her window. When Charlotte poked her head out, she gave the expected scream and fled back into her room.

Rowan, ever undeterred, scrambled to reassure her all was well, climbing with newfound agility through the window and into her room. He took each of her holy hands in his blood-stained ones and pressed a tender kiss to her lips. The action smeared blood across her lips like a glossy red lipstick, and her perfect body gave another shudder.

Rowan took his time explaining to her his transformation, how the whole thing was the will of The Lord, how he would cleanse the world of the evil that plagued it and bring forth a new era, but she would hear none of it. She only wept, and asked him, frightfully, to leave and never come back. She seemed to have expected Rowan to rage at this, and while he considered it, the thought of letting harm come to her hurt him far too much to even consider. So he left, and never came back. But even as he went, he was sure she would come to her senses, and they would be immortal and all-powerful together.

Years passed, and Charlotte remained secluded in her manor. She got married to some man her father picked out, and gave birth to a litter of whining terrors. She did not speak to her husband. She did not speak to her children. She only spent her days looking out the window, at something nobody else could quite make out.

When she died, her absence was noticed throughout town, though she rarely showed her face there. Rowan felt it most of all, a gaping hole in his chest where his Sun should have been. He knew, with the most certainty a person could have, that he would not let her be replaced, by anyone.