4 Hate and Obsession

It was a crisp, early morning in Lenore. The kingdom was wrapped in a gentle fog, almost as if a deity had spread a blanket over the populace to keep everyone lulled into a nice, peaceful sleep. Sadly, the men who stood guard on the walls and at the gates of the capital city had no such luxury. Many of them clutched their pikes using them to prop up their tired bodies, hoping they didn't pass out. Sleeping on the job was the quickest way to get the garrison captain to jump down their throats, after all; a fate even the bravest among them wished to avoid.

Just then, Bennigan Markus, a young man who had joined the guard a mere month ago, was jabbed hard in his rib cage, making him yelp and stumble into the wall in front of him.

"Fall asleep there, lad?"

"C-Cronus!"

"Yes, tis I," the older man said with a smirk as he offered a mug of black coffee, "You better thank your lucky stars it's me, too! Go ahead and let Pettisaw catch you dozing off like that! Turn you over her knee, she will!"

"Yes. The captain's a scary one," Bennigan said as he took a gulp of the hot brew, gratefully.

"Aye. But, she has to be. There's scarier things than her in this world, lad. Much scarier just beyond our gates, in fact. If she doesn't keep up a fierce face, where will her troops get the bravery to fight all the things lesser men run away from?"

Just then, a silhouette appeared in the fog ahead of them. It wobbled and warbled like some kind of cursed denizen of Hell. Cronus lifted his pike, dropping into a combat stance, the younger man following suit.

"Speaking of scarier things. Prepare yourself, lad."

The warbling sound got closer, as well as the entity approaching them through the fog. The younger man grit his teeth. Bennigan bolting was a strong possibility. This was the first threat he had ever come face to face with, after all. Even with a veteran soldier with him as support, it would test his courage to the limits.

"Steady, boy."

"I-I'm okay. I'm ready to defend the kingdom with my life!"

"That's the spirit. Now, we'll charge the beast together. Three, two.. FOR LENORE!"

Both men screamed as they charged the creature, only for the being to gasp and side step their efforts, causing them to tumble onto the ground, compliments of the wet grass that had proven to be oh so slippery.

"Woah! I don't know what's got you so high strung, Cronus, ya old goat, but is that any way to welcome a returning hero?!"

"Wait a minute. I know that voice. Mira?! Is that you?!"

The figure finally emerged from the fog. It was a woman of short stature with bottles and trinkets tied all over her in such a way that barely any of what rested underneath could be seen. Crimson lips tugged into a smile, as the owner of them brushed aside long, strawberry locks of hair that gently framed a set of chubby cheeks. Honeyed-eyes sparkled.

"Of course, it's me! I sent a letter to the garrison captain, announcing that I was coming back home today! Didn't you all get the memo? Besides that, who else would it be?!"

"I don't know, with all that racket you were makin', me and the lad thought that a drunken banshee was teetering its way up to our gates!"

"What, don't like my singing?"

The elf sighed and rolled her eyes as the younger guard snorted with amusement.

"Banshee, no. Drunken? Yes. Half of the product I'm lugging back from the wilds is some of the dwarf kingdom's finest ale. But, it was getting heavy, so I decided to lighten the load."

"By drinkin' your merchandise? I thought their were rules about not guzzling down your product!"

"Yeah, but what Vilo doesn't know, won't hurt em. Now, open the gates! I got to lug this crap home! Got no time for this!"

"Well, you heard her, lad! Go tell the gates-men to open 'er up! Mira's home!"

The chains rattled and the gears clicked as the wooden doors slid aside, letting the elf waddle her way into the capital city, jugs of alcohol sloshing as she went. It was a long walk before she finally deposited the goods in the basement of the house she shared with her brother, just a stone's throw from the marketplace. After a refreshing bath, she peeked into her brother's bedroom only to see a tangled mop of purple hair sticking out from under his cotton stuffed quilt.

"Lazy bum," she muttered with a fond smile and a shake of her head, "Guess it's time to go check on someone a little more industrious."

But, when she got to Simon's residence, she saw a curious sign on the door.

"Closed in the mornings until further notice?! That's not like him, at all. Is Simon sick or something? I'd better go check on him."

With that, Mira crept around back, where she carefully opened the window to the rubbish room her friend had piled high with scraps of fabric he was probably never going to use. She shimmied inside, before closing it again and heading upstairs to the man's living quarters.

"Simon? Simon?! Where in Hell's bells is that man?!"

He wasn't in bed, he wasn't loosing his guts down the commode and he wasn't leaning over, desperately clutching a cup of mint tea, trying to soothe what ailed him. So, then, where was he?! Where was her friend?! Had he been carried off with goblins or something?!

Mira was not one to panic. But, she was five seconds from calling in that favor the captain of the garrison owed her to assemble a search party for the missing tailor. But, that's when the sound of a razor sharp pair of scissors slicing carefully through fabric caught the attention of her keen, pointed ears. Wait. He had been downstairs in his shop that whole time?!

Mira could have kicked something in her frustration. Why hadn't she checked there, before?! But, then again, for a workaholic like Simon Hart to close up the Ode to Maria for anything, but a life threatening circumstance was unprecedented. So, how could she have been expected to know? More importantly, what had brought out this change in him? The elf supposed she was about to find out.

Tiptoeing down the stairs, she rounded the corner, before pressing her face against one of the observation windows. Simon hadn't even noticed her presence, of course. Instead, he only had eyes for the beautiful cloth he had rolled out on his table. It's color was that of mist, a hue that flirted so often between the lines of white and blue, that it was hard to find the right words to describe it. And the way it shimmered like the tears of an angel was so beautiful that it was almost too much to bare! Such splendor that would become even more grand in the tailor's masterful hands!

"Specter's Revenge silk, huh?"

Simon gasped, before whipping around, startled. He held his scissors now they they were a weapon.

"Easy! My goddess! Why is everyone so rattled today?!"

"M-Mira. It's just you. Thank goodness."

She pushed a chair under the tailor, urging him to sit down.

"Take a load off, ole' chum and tell your buddy what's got you so on edge! Also, tell me how much my idiot brother charged you for all this silk, so that I can give you a discount. Bet the mark up was outrageous."

It took an hour, but once Simon told her everything that had happened in her absence, Mira finally got some clarity. Vampires in the capital? No wonder everyone was acting like no where was safe. Those black circles around her friend's eyes also made a lot of sense; the stress of being forced to make a suit worthy of vampire royalty was really getting to him.

"Why, those.. those freaks!"

"Mira! What if someone heard you?!"

"I'm a one thousand year old elf, sweet cheeks! Do you really think I give a damn?! Why, I'll go tell those pompous, entitled, dead heads myself that they have some nerve forcing you to give them anything! Anything, but the middle finger, that is!"

Just then, Simon reached out a hand and captured her by the wrist, when Mira was starting to walk out of his workshop with every intention of doing just that. When she turned to face him, the man wouldn't look her in the eye. But, even without him facing her head on, she would have had to be blind to not see his countenance swirling with conflicting emotions; worry, fear and a little something else that there was no proper name for. Just like the color of that fabric resting just behind him.

"Talk to me, honey, " she said, as he hugged him gently to her, "I can't help you, if I don't know what's wrong. Is this about 'the incident'?"

"Yes. I mean, no. I mean.. I fear them. I fear them and I hate them, because of what.. what happened to my mother and sister that night, but.. at the same time.."

Images flashed before his eyes of his encounter. That moonlit skin, those gems for eyes, all of that snowy, white hair that looked to the tailor as if it had been spun on the looms of the gods. And those.. those measurements! Those perfect measurements! A body fit for deity!

And that's what was surely driving this obsession. An infatuation with the body of a man that he should despise! What was wrong with him?! Was he really that depraved?! That twisted?! That sick?!

Mira pet Simon's brown locks, tussling them and shushing him in an effort to comfort him, as the tailor began silently crying into her chest.

"Something's wrong with me, Mira! I've done something horrible! If my mother and sister are looking down at me from Heaven, they've surely recoiled in disgust! They must hate me by now!"

"Simon, they've done no such thing! They could never hate you! So, why are you doing this to yourself?"

Simon quieted, thinking carefully over what brought him to this lowly state.

"...Because, I've become bewitched by one of those monsters. I'm making this outfit for him, not because I'm trying to get rid of him, though that's how it started. I'm doing it, because I realized that the rest of my lifetime could go by and I would never find another canvas so perfect for my work."

Simon leaned back, out of her embrace. He didn't deserve her comfort. He didn't deserve any from anyone.

"He's a vampire.. But, he's the most beautiful man I've ever seen. And because of that, I'm sick. Because of that, I'm twisted. Because of that, I'm depraved. And I find that I hate myself more right now, than I've EVER hated one of them! And that's wrong; what's wrong with me?"