When I dream, I dream of her.

Tossing and turning, trying to forget, yet it remained.

Sometimes I’ll dream, and sometimes it’ll just be a flicker in a sea of memories. Just a flicker.

Sometimes.

Then sometimes, in those dreaded times, it’ll be more than just a flicker.

I used to enjoy sleeping. Loved it, even.

Now though? Sad to say, my dear sleep… but I really think we should start seeing other people.

You’re a nightmare to deal with. Literally.

I see fangs. I hear screams. I feel pain. In my restless dreams. All of them, just a full-on assault on the senses, pulsating throughout my body. It’s enough to make anybody wake up in a cold sweat. Dreams of a malevolent being’s claws sinking down to your chest.

But, strangely enough, I didn’t dread the vampire. Instead, I dreaded the emerald-green eyes that lurked behind the vampire.

And those same emerald-green eyes were ever recurring. I hated that I dreamed of her that way.

I hated that I dreamt of her now.

The latest construct my mind had crafted consisted of Ash, a sword, and me dying.

Two plus two equals four. I’ll leave the answer to how I ended up dying unsaid. Doesn’t take an Einstein to solve that math equation.

Yet no matter the formula or method of the dreams, the results would always come out the same way every time.

Me, waking up with a start, wet in the face, gasping for breaths I did not need. Afterward, I would survey the bedroom, the darkness dimly lit by the 7-in-the-morning sun.

Sometimes, nothing. Other times…

“GOD!”

I’ll scream, I’ll reel back and, sometimes I’ll even end up bashing my skull against the wooden headboard. In this case, I hit my head so hard the bed vibrated from the impact.

Then, as I sat there, aching and moaning in the midst of a rude awakening, a voice would sound. Quiet, reserved… and almost trance-like.

"No… God…"

What an ominous statement.

Through sight blurred with tears, I’d stare at the unblinking set of misty eyes staring at me from the end of my bed. As my heartbeat settled itself back from the verge of an explosion, I’d take a deep breath and begin the day just as I have many times before.

“Adalia,” I said. “Fourth time this week. I wake up and you’re staring at me. Fourth. Don’t make a fifth, please.”

“I’m… sorry…” She hung her head. “But I… worry that I... will…”

“Frenzy,” I finished for her. “I know, I know.”

“Apologies...”

“It’s fine, all good...” I sighed and began rolling back my sleeve, stretching out towards her a smooth patch of bare skin, ripe for a feasting. “Go crazy. Not literally, I meant… you know what I mean.”

Slowly, she crept her way towards me, her gaze never once breaking away from mine, always that blank far-away gaze that seemed to see more than it should.

I’d feel her faint breathing trickling across the surface of my skin before the shimmering white of her fangs would sink into my flesh once more.

This is how my mornings tend to start out nowadays. It was almost routine by then. Well, you know that they say - A startle a day keeps the heart attacks away. Or at least that’s what Ria keeps telling me. I’m not really inclined on believing her though.

Also when she would feast, it was at surface level. Really, it felt more like a nibble than an actual bite. Compared to the first time, back in that building, her bites now hurt as much as a mosquito’s.

The process doesn’t last all that long either. Ten seconds later, right on the dot, and her fangs will be out of my arm with not a single bite mark visible aside from a little red glow where her fangs had pierced.

“Thank you...” she whispered, stepping to the other end of the room, her movement now flushed with vigor.

Did she walk away? Leave? No. She’ll just be standing there. Gawking. Waiting for me to do something.

Why are vampires so weird?

“Why do you just stand there?” I finally asked after days of repeating the same routine over and over again.

“Waiting,” she replied.

“For?”

“To see… if you die...”

That snapped me right awake. “What - wait, you’re telling that that love bite could have killed me?! You’ve been chewing on me for a week and a half now, you’re saying any one of those times could have been the last?!”

“Sometimes… when I eat… people die...” she explained with all the enthusiasm of a coffee lover sipping on tea. “That’s why… I wait...”

Had a flashback to my first resurrection, and I think I can somewhat understand what she's trying to say.

“You’re saying you’ll save me?”

Adalia nodded her head, her glance slightly angling to the firmly closed door to the side, whispering, “Ash will save you…”

I followed her gaze, my eyebrows furrowing. “She’s by the door?”

Another nod.

“Wha - again?”

“Always...”

Off went the blankets that bundled me snug, thud went the floorboards as my feet pressed against it. Went to draw open the curtains - stopped - figured Adalia wouldn’t really appreciate me flashbanging her with the sun - and instead decided to just make a beeline to the bedroom door.

As I twisted the doorknob, I figured there wasn’t a better time for the usual morning greeting.

“Morning, Adalia,” I said.

I heard her reply from behind, as the door swung open with a creak.

“Good morning… Son of Terestra...”

Don’t know why I was still surprised. Don’t know why it wasn’t on the list of things I should come to expect.

Nevertheless, I was surprised. Still, I didn’t expect.

Arms wrapped around her knees, huddling in the narrow corridor that led to my bedroom door, Ash was fast asleep with her head slumped against the wall. Her blade lying by her side.

Guard duty. Ninth day in a row.

Lost count of how many times I told her it wasn’t necessary anymore yet still she does so anyway.

Didn’t count the times when I would catch her sleeping on the job, however, but if I had to make a guess… fifth, sixth, maybe?

Evidently, she wasn’t very good at guard duty despite her constant insistence on it.

But leave it to her to pick up on the most unexpected of things. Took one step, one step that could have won the record for world’s tiniest creak, and still, her ears came perking upward.

Then faster than you could say, ‘Hey, you, you’re finally awake.’, She’d be already up on her feet, the sword clutched firmly in her grasp, scouring the vicinity with eyes ever vigilant.

Ever seen a pajama-wearing, sword-wielding, hair-in-a-tangled-mess-ing Elf before? No? Well, you’re welcome.

“Morning,” I said, greeting her with the warmest smile I could then muster.

She spun around, saw me, saw my smile, then immediately looked the other way.

In a voice less than a whisper, she muttered, “Good… good morning, Master.”

I felt my smile slowly slip away. “You… slept well?”

“Yes, I have,” I heard her draw in a big breath. “What of yourself?”

Sword. Ash. Death. Only a flicker.

“Yes,” I answered. “Good sleep.”

“I see…” Another intake of breath. “Splendid news.”

She didn’t sound too splendid, though.

“I noticed you’re still guarding over my door,” I took a step forward. “Didn’t we already agree it wasn’t necessary anymore?”

She took a step backward. “Indeed.”

“So, why…?” One step forward.

Two steps back. “It’s necessary...”

Not one, not two - but many hurried steps now. Ones that brought her further away from reach. To the other end of the corridor, striding into a doorway slamming shut, Ash went and disappeared from sight.

Well, that went well…

Yet I suppose, just like everything else, it was all routine by now. Including Ash’s reaction. Life simply just goes on.

Yeah, like hell it does.

Ever since the incident, I had time to process, time to reflect. In this big empty labyrinth of a house, there were plenty of places to start pacing about, and pace about I did.

I remembered saying in a job interview once that there really wasn’t anything special about me at all. Needless to say, I didn’t get the job. It was a good job too. Maybe I should go back and try my luck again.

Who knows? Now if that ‘anything special’ question pops back up again, I could just scoff away and proclaim with confidence, “Yeah, I’m actually the lovechild of literally God. Hire me, please, or I’ll smite you.”

My mind ached and pound at such a revelation. It was just a simple six-word statement. Yet I just couldn’t really… well, I just didn’t want to accept that things were the way they were.

Leonardo and Terestra were my parents.

‘No!’, my mind would roar back at me. ‘It’s Michael and Lilith. Your average run-of-the-mill husband and wife.’

Tossed in a text to both Mom and Dad, and even my sister for good measure and all I got to show for it was a message from the big man himself who is the least talkative of the bunch.

>

It’s been a couple of days since then and nothing. Ring-ring went the phone but no one would pick up. It’s like I’m deliberately being kept in the dark for some reason.

So until Dad arrives, I’ll just have to make do for now. The same daily routine as always.

Shower, change, ready the meals at the downstairs dining table where chairs were drawn out for three, place the plates, take a seat, only to find out once again that there, including me, seated only two out of three.

I recalled asking Adalia once if vampires would feast on anything else besides blood. She said no back then. So imagine my surprise one Saturday night, when I saw her sitting at the dining table staring away at an empty plate.

“I would… like to try,” she said.

Ever since then she’ll diligently partake in all mealtimes. Breakfast, sometimes lunch, and always dinner.

So there we were, just us two, munching on scrambled eggs and ham. I wasn’t a very good cook, but I try… I really do.

“I liked... the pancakes…” Adalia suddenly muttered.

Apparently, I didn’t try hard enough.

“I don’t know how to make pancakes, Adalia.”

“I liked… Ria’s… pancakes…”

“I’m not Ria, Adalia.”

“Cereal?”

“Cereal is…” I glanced at the vacant seat across from me. “Not for you.”

Adalia never bothered to inquire who. She knew. That’s why the rest of the meal was munched upon without another word from either of us.

You might wonder how on earth I could just sit there eating eggs and ham and drinking orange juice with the literal manifestation of my nightmares by my side and not feel the slightest shred of uneasiness or fear. Did I even have any problems with this arrangement? Well, from the outside looking in, it didn’t seem like I did.

But I did. I definitely did.

Adalia definitely knew it too.

Though through first glances, she may come across as someone living life as if she was miles away from the present. Truth was, she was as keen as they come.

When she’d speak, when she’d eat, there would always be that bit of fang poking out of her lips and I’d shudder. Anytime she’d laid her hands flat in front of me, anytime she held something in them - those jagged edges, I could never tear away.

It’s no wonder why she always had her hands curled into fists, why she never bites and always nibbled.

Consideration. She had plenty of it.

Part of me felt bad for it. Having her conceal the things that made her who she was at my expense. Still, there was that other part that couldn’t help but feel grateful for it.

What a selfish prick that part was… really...

Even then, despite everything, when it came down to it, irrationality was still… very much irrational. She still terrified me to the bone.

I just try not to show it, and she tries not to show that she knows I don’t show. But I know she doesn’t show, and she knows that I know that she doesn’t show.

That’s why I always finished first. That’s why the knife and fork in her hand would always tighten ever so slightly as I strode past her on my way to the kitchen sink.

“Thanks for… the food…” she’d always mutter past sealed lips.

“You’re welcome,” I’d always answer without a second glance her way.

Routine. Always Routine.

It was already ten in the morning and still no sign of Ash descending down those steps. Tried to take my mind off it by cleaning for a bit, which, as it tends to do nowadays, just served to only exacerbate matters.

See, I would try to clean. I was actually not that bad at it. In fact, I’d say I even prided myself on my standard of cleanliness. It’s just that nowadays, I don’t even have the opportunity to do so anymore.

By the time a new dawn arises, you’d be hard-pressed to find a speck of dust anywhere in the house. All the usual suspects would already be accounted for by the time I had my turn with them.

Tabletops cleared, shelves dusted, windows wiped, floors swept, garbage thrown. Really, all I did today was wash the plates. I’m diligent like that.

On the first day it happened, it took only thirty seconds of pondering to realize who dun did it.

The Elf-Knight from another world always aimed to please. That fact remains true even to this day. I just wish she would go about in a less convoluted manner. A simple smile, a bow, that was really all it would take to please me.

I just wish she knew that...

“Going… up?” Adalia’s voice softly sounded.

Soft not because she was as meek as a mouse, soft because she was speaking from a distance, and why shouldn’t she be?

It was bedtime time now. After all, my morning was her midnight and my breakfast was her dinner.

So I turned, midway up the staircase, glancing over at the scene of comfort. Adalia laid pretty snug on the couch there, she also had this habit of bundling her blankets up so that it looked like she was in a cocoon of fabric.

Adorable? Perhaps…

“Yeah,” I said, nudging forward the tray I had in my hands. “Someone still hasn’t eaten yet.”

Adalia slowly nodded her head in understanding, and I thought that was that, but when I turned around to continued my ascent, she spoke again.

“Ash is… not very fond of me…” she said.

Didn’t even bother stopping this time, I just kept trudging on.

“You know why,” I answered back.

“Yes…”

“Goodnight, Adalia.”

“Good… night… son… of…”

Fast asleep just as the second floor was reached. At this point, it was almost like clockwork.

Punctual, methodical, dutiful. Just like my next course of actions were.

A silver tray with the usual favorites, placed gently beside a closed door. Three soft knocks then my voice as normal as it could be.

“Food’s by the door, Ash” I gave a sigh. “Try and eat this time…”

Usually, I’d get no reply. Didn’t know why I was expecting anything different this time. Just this once, though… it’d be nice to hear something, anything.

Nothing.

I walked away.

Saw this coming, knew what lied ahead in front of me, the rock on the bridge or whatever the hell Ria called it… it was all within expectations. Still, just because you expect it to happen doesn’t mean it’ll make it any easier to sort out.

But I still see light at the end of the tunnel, the rainbow after the rain. I’m confident Ash and I would get through this.

It was only a matter of time.

And time was something I had plenty to spare.

I wasn’t just going to go twiddle my thumbs doing nothing. Not anymore.

Do you know how much mid-range second-hand laptops go for online? They’re surprisingly cheap, actually.

And do you know how fast it takes to have one delivered to your doorstep? Once again, they don’t take that long.

At the end of the hallway, I swung open my bedroom door, pressed a click, heard a click, and locked it. Didn’t waste much time booting up the laptop to the desktop screen, wasted even less clicking open the icon I had tucked away in the corner.

Soon, a familiar orchestral melody came blaring at me from the laptop speakers, next was the soft yellow glow emitting from the display, a title card that glimmered three golden words.

>

The usual morning routine.

It was time to learn more about dear old Mommy and Daddy.