“Oh, I would not mind a traveling month. But then I will come back to you.” I turned so I could kiss her wrinkled cheek. But she looked sad, her eyes still watching the sky, lit by the glowing half moon.

“If one in our line Sleeps, another wakes, little one. Someday, you will leave this life and awake in another. When this happens, you will not come back to me. But you will pass on the spirit. You will pass on the stories.”

I squeezed even closer to my grandmother, for I did not want to imagine leaving her forever. “Pass on the stories? I will be a storyteller…like you?”

She chuckled. “Blood will tell the stories, little one. But do not fear. Remember. I have counted each of these freckles of yours. I will know you no matter which form you take, no matter how many lives pass between us.”

I breathed in the smell of comfort and warmth and chill as she rattled off number after number and knew in my heart that when I awoke, I would be something…different.

Episode 74: A Quick Succession Of Many Lives

When I came back to Alexander, I had to hold onto him so I would not fall over. Or at least this is what I thought I had to do, for in truth he held me more securely than I ever believed possible. I shivered when I saw the dark liquid spilling from his lips, running down his chin. That was my blood, naturally. Or perhaps supernaturally. That was me .

I hardly caught my breath before he meant to me again. <<Are you ready now>>?

Ready? Now ? What more could there possibly be? Was I to learn all the secrets of pyredom in one night? But, oh, the moon was only half full, and the night was only half spent.

Alexander kissed my neck once more, and I realized any pain I had once felt was washed away. I only felt a longing for more. Not only more pleasure but more…Alexander.

He trailed his mouth down to the hollow of my throat and then ran his lips over the flesh of my breasts, pulling at the bodice of my dress to reach them. And then, grabbing hold of my side with one hand, he pressed his fangs deep into my chest.

He took me down into the leaves, slick with dew, that lined the forest floor, only I was not myself and the forest floor was a stable. The golden hay pierced my fragile skin, and I wore no clothes at all.

And then I was at the edge of a river, my spine curving against a hot boulder and the current threatening to drag me into it.

I arched my back in the plushest bed, a downy pillow trapped in my clenched fist.

Beneath me, a canoe adrift on an endless ocean, nothing but blue sky and blue sea and a horizon lost to time.