A Conversation 'Twixt Goblins

"Grimstick,these are wargs." 

"Yes! The traditional mounts of our people! ...Is that a problem, Bonethorn?" 

"You want me to ride into battle on the back of a warg?" 

"Keep your voice down, boy! Why is that a problem? Goblins have been riding wargs for a thousand years! It's a great honor!" 

"It just seems kind of dangerous." 

"Dangerous? 'Course they're dangerous! That's why we ride 'em! Strike fear into the hearts of humans and elves!" 

"I mean, dangerous to us." 

"Nonsense, boy! Gryphons is dangerous. 

You fall off one of those, and splat -- yer dead. Y'fall off a warg, you just get laughed at. Wargs is how goblins fight the Bigs. Well, wargs and ambushes." 

"I just feel like maybe I should be riding something that won't eat me if I get wounded in battle." 

"Like what?" 

"Like a pony, maybe?" 

"You know what happens if you show up to battle on the back of a pony when everybody else is ridin' wargs?" 

"...Wargs eat me?" 

"There you go." 

"...Okay, fair point. Put me on a warg." 

"I knew you'd come round. Too smart fer yer own good, but yer still a goblin at heart."

New Nightmares

Lot of weird dreams over recent weeks. Notable among them:

1. A thing like a deformed baby roughly the size of a squirrel, but with adult-sized hands on short wrists growing out of its sides. It was trying to pull me into a very small (like, 5") hole in the wall, and if I hadn't pulled harder it would have... absorbed and consumed me. 

2. A completely separate dream. I liked the part where I was camping with my friend. I enjoyed the part where we were LARPing with a bunch of other campers. I was less pleased with the weird rival family throwing rocks at my head. The tarot-ish reading that passed for the post-funeral reading of the will was weird. Having a random toddler get caught between the inner and outer doors of the elevator and fall down the shaft was horrible. 

There was a lot of "trying to find my sword again" in there, which I think is usually a sign of my brain trying to gear up to Get Things Done.  

Most recently, I had a -- slightly broken-up -- sort of Addams Family wedding scenario, except that the various parties involved were actually trying to kill each other. There was a river, which varied in width in various areas, where people would swim -- but there were also eels in there, carnivorous and about fourteen feet long, maybe eight inches across. The one I threw off was only eight feet long, but hit had been cut short. There was a point where I was walking on the pipes just under the water, and then back to the main areas where I needed to be; and then a lot of dastardly dealings, including the intrusion of the Shadow Tooth, which turned out to be a projection controlled by a yoga instructor whose controller I took away. 

It was all very weird, and I loved the strangeness of the settings.  

MV: Near Dawn

He'd meant to find a book, he really had. The television and its late-night movies were almost distraction enough. Watching the clock told him the time, but the knowledge didn't seem to mean anything. Andy settled back, wondering vaguely what might happen if he just stayed on the couch... or walked out into the dawn. 

"Hey there." 

Andy blinked and reluctantly looked up; a woman with curly dark hair was standing over him. "Do I know you?" he asked. 

She shook her head, a faint smile curling her lips. "Not at all," she said. "I'm Lorraine. I'll bring you a volunteer tomorrow, but for tonight, I'm standing in." She knelt down beside the couch. "Feed."

Andy kept his hands still. "It's fine. I don't want to."

Rodney came around the end of the couch and sighed. "You may not want to, but you need to. Word is you're good at doing it gently, but you have to have something. So do I."

Andy shook his head. "Let it be. It's not worth it."

Rodney drew in a sharp breath, but Lorraine held up a hand. "Would you believe me if I told you that I think it is?" She raised her head, studied him for a long moment, then reached out and lifted his chin. "Your keepers have been tasked with a lot of dumb assholes who've been turned to the dark over the years. Carol says you aren't one of them. She likes you, and Loida does too. Do you have any idea how rare that is?"

Andy shook his head. "I'm just trying to frustrate the bastard who made me," he said quietly. 

"Then do it by staying alive," Lorraine told him. "Feed."

He hesitated, then reached out and laid his hand on her head. The contact was immediate, and it was all he could do to force it down to a minimum. He snatched his hand back, clutched it to his chest. Definitely a monster...

Lorraine rose, with touches of gray in her dark hair and new lines on her face, but she smiled down at him. "Well done," she said. "I'll be back, and you'll see you haven't done me any permanent harm." She glanced at Rodney. "We'll get someone for you, too."

Andy waited until she'd gone, then turned a glance towards Rodney. He was feeling a little better, and apparently his curiosity had come back. "You don't drink, like, packaged blood?"

"Not if I can help it," Rodney said quietly, taking a long look around before sitting down beside him. "It's not just that it's less helpful and the taste is off, it's that it's actually a pretty valuable resource in mundane medicine. If I drink from a human, they're maybe a little woozy but they'll be fine in a day or two. If I raid a blood bank, maybe somebody dies from a motorcycle accident when they could have been saved." He looked around again. "If Steve or Veronica says anything, though, it's because it tastes disgusting."

MV: Rest and Recuperation

He would have slept again if he could have. The feather was still warm in his hands; it was the only spot of comfort in this whole bleak existence. The movie had changed, the good guys victorious, and now Andy was watching something where a group of soldiers was being stalked by some sort of alien hunter. Not Predator, though; this looked to be some sort of late-night rip-off. 

Rodney sighed and stood up. "My shift," he explained, when Andy glanced at him. "Hopefully the wolves will wear each other out and sleep. You're in the ground-floor bedroom, so make sure you keep the curtains closed. Once the sun comes up, your maker won't be able to move around -- not easily, anyway. The shadowbringer can move around, but won't have any but the most basic powers. The wolf will be the greater danger, but since we have two wolves here..." The vampire shrugged. "You're as safe as we can make you."

Andy looked up at him, then forced himself to speak. "Thank you."

Rodney sighed. "Vampire's not a bad bit. It was a shock, and I could have done without dying -- but that's the price of recruitment, and my maker was determined to bring in younger Kin with new perspectives. The fact that I turned out to be a traditionalist has frustrated her for half a century now."

Andy nodded, though he had the feeling that he was being humored -- or that Rodney was trying to comfort him. Either way, he just wasn't up for it. "Wight's a shock," he said quietly. "How common are we?"

Rodney hesitated, then said: "Surprisingly. Wights can't pass for shit, but they -- you --  get along surprisingly well. A few work for the Authority, a lot go into the reservations, and the rest... well... I doubt the wolves mentioned it, but there's a whole-ass criminal underworld and a lot of wights decide they're happy to take jobs as enforcers or necromancers there."

Fucking hell, no, Andy decided. "I wanted a normal life," he said, calmly.

Rodney shook his head. "You're still holding a phoenix feather, so I won't swear to anything -- but I don't think you get that. It's not impossible -- remote work is absolutely a thing, and some wights legit pull it off --  but you need particular sets of skills. Accounting, or IT, or just night shift for a security company." He grinned cynically at that last.

Andy nodded and turned his attention back to the television. It was a bit after midnight, and maybe not long until dawn; he'd lost track of the time.

MV: The Mirror Is Not Kind

Andy studied his new self in the mirror and concluded that Veronica was right: he was never going to pass for human. His hair, once a full, dark brown, had turned white at the roots. How is it still growing out if I'm dead? he wondered, but then decided that he had other, weirder things to worry about. His skin was gray and thin, the play of muscles underneath clearly visible...

I'm a monster. There wasn't any way to hide it, either. Even a ski mask and goggles wouldn't disguise the pale blue of his lips or the equally pale corpse-gray of his skin. Veronica had said that his hair wouldn't hold dye, but that was almost beside the point. His skin would give him away far before his hair did. Tattoos, or a fuck-ton of makeup, and even then... He'd never much participated in theater, except for that one time the teacher had specifically asked him to do a particular stunt involving rope-work, but he'd had friends who had. He knew that doing makeup well wasn't easy.

Surface appearance aside, he didn't look bad. His musculature had always been solid; becoming a wight hadn't changed that. He'd never been much for team sports, but anything he could do alone -- track and field, gymnastics, wrestling, fencing, climbing -- he'd happily taken part in.  Even a year of karate, right before his mother had decided that he should focus on something less violent, like guitar or (the following year) piano.

His mood, already dark, fell further. No, there was no coming back from this. Let his family think him dead, let him wish he could come to Amy's funeral to grieve and perhaps apologize... it was better to come to terms with it now. I have claws, he reminded himself, and I can see in the dark. Balanced against everything else, that didn't seem like much.

He came out of the bathroom, crossed to the living room, and sat down on the far end of the sofa from Rodney, who was watching some old buddy cop flick from the 1980s, with a mismatched pair of policemen forced to work together. Andy watched one of the cops throw himself off a rooftop after handcuffing himself to a would-be suicide, and thought, Yeah, I know exactly how you feel.

"That bad?" asked Rodney, quietly. Steve and Veronica were moving around in the house behind them, airing things out and setting things up.

When Andy didn't answer, Rodney settled back into the couch and turned his attention to the movie again.

MV: Lifestyle Adjustments for the Living Dead

Steve sighed, then turned to look at Andy. "Don't let Rodney fool you. He plays it off with his 'werewolf good, vampire better' bit, but he's fully devoted to the team and we're lucky to have him -- even if he can only safely come out at night. He can also turn into a wolf, which is not a skill all dracs bother to develop."

Veronica nodded. "He can be a bit of an ass at times, but he comes through when it counts."

Andy sighed. "Don't mind me. I'm probably just cranky from the whole 'having my life completely derailed' thing."

Steve huffed an almost-laugh. "Yeah, well, no reason you shouldn't be."

"Do we have books?" asked Andy. "Or an Internet connection?"

"Books yes, Internet no," Veronica told him. "It's too much of a security risk. We swap out phones every time we go out on this kind of assignment, too."

Well, that figures, Andy thought. "All right. I'm going to go find something to read."

Steve nodded. "If you're curious, find the bathroom and take a look at yourself in the mirror. I don't know what happened in your dream, but you look just about as good as wights ever get."

"Oh?" asked Andy. He tilted his head for a long moment, then went to go find out.

Rodney accosted him as soon as he got inside. "Hey, kid. Sorry I pissed you off." He actually sounded sorry, which was something of a miracle as far as Andy was concerned. Most grownups weren't very good at apologizing. "I like annoying my co-workers, but they're used to it. Didn't mean to catch you too."

Andy stopped, studied him, then nodded and offered his hand. "Fresh start?" he asked. "I don't think I'm doing my best either." 

Rodney snorted. "You've been a wight for what? Three days?"

"Maybe?" 

Rodney nodded. "Rough time. Remind me later, and I'll tell you how I was when I was first turned." He glanced back at the door to the garage. "Meanwhile, I'm going to go settle back before my co-workers realize I'm trying to be a decent person." He reached out, shook Andy's hand, and then quickly retreated to something that looked like a living room.

"Bathroom?" asked Andy. 

"First door on the left." Rodney called back. 

Andy drew a deep breath which didn't help at all -- being undead definitely had its drawbacks -- and went to go look at himself in the mirror.

MV: Fire Omens

Steve froze, staring at at the feather in his hands. "Where did you get that?" he asked, carefully. 

Andy yawned. "Not sure. I was asleep. Dreamed about a giant, burning bird, though. Is it yours?'

Steve shook his head slowly. "Nope. I think it's yours. It's... Veronica? Would you come take a look at this before I say something completely idiotic?"

She came around the van, and looked at Andy and the stray flame-colored feather. "Is that a fucking phoenix feather?" she asked. 

"I think so," said Steve. "Thank God. I was afraid it was just me."

"The fuck am I doing with a phoenix feather?" asked Andy. He figured it had probably fallen out of somewhere and his sleeping mind had turned that into the dream with the bird, but Steve was talking like it had actually fallen out of his dream. 

"...I don't know," Steve admitted, "but let's get you something to keep it in. I can't begin to imagine how you got the attention of something like that -- that shit's for shamans and witches and the like -- but it might be..." He fell silent.

Finally, Veronica filled in. "It might be very important," she said. "The kind of thing your maker might be hunting you for, if they knew you could acquire it."

"How would they know that?" asked Andy, suddenly panicked. It was one thing to have a powerful wight looking for him; it was something else again if his maker could somehow tell the future.  

"Know what?" asked a third voice, and Andy launched himself out of the van with twisting movement that landed him right between Steve and Veronica.  

"Jesus, Rodney," said Veronica. "Good way to get yourself shot." 

The new arrival was a tall man, broad-shouldered but otherwise slender, wearing black jeans, engineer boots, and a motorcycle jacket. He held a silver motorcycle helmet in his left hand, and his hair was bleached blond. At first glance, he could have passed for human.

"How'd you get up here so fast?" asked Steve, putting his pistol back in its holster. 

The vampire shrugged. "With an expensive motorcycle and a reckless disregard for speed limits. And there's nothing funnier than sneaking up on werewolves when they're not paying attention."

"You've clearly never watched British comedy." Andy spoke without thinking, then realized he was standing there with his claws out and put them away. 

"Ah," said Rodney, turning his attention to Andy. "You must be our newborn wight."

"Must I?" asked Andy. 

Rodney's eyes widened suddenly. "Is that a phoenix feather?" he asked. "Oh, my. Enterprising, defiant, and favored by the Great Spirits. I like you already."

"Yeah, well, just wait 'til you get a chance to know me," Andy told him. He didn't trust Rodney's words, and while he might eventually come to respect the vampire he was feeling a little raw about anybody messing with the people who'd been taking care of him since he'd woken up dead -- even if they were all supposed to be on the same side. 

"Do I even need to tell you how much I prefer What We Do In The Shadows?" Rodney asked. 

Andy rolled his eyes. "Of course you do." He's not a vampire, he's a fucking cliché. "I'm sure we'll get along famously."

Rodney evidently could read between the lines. He sighed, and said, "Well, then. I'll retire into the house and wait for my shift to start. I suppose it's too much to hope that my help might be properly appreciated."