#vampire fareed

In his hand he holds a small confection.  Something called a cupcake.  It has a thin pink paper lining around it, a sweet-smelling frosting of whipped white layers, and brightly colored little pebbles all over it, like little drops of colorful stars.  They’re at a festivity; a party for one of Gregory’s companies.  Gregory says he has these parties yearly, a holiday event every winter.  Santh finds this amusing.  That he throws these celebrations for his mortals and then gives so much of his money to them.  

In their little huddle at this party are several other of their ancient friends as well as the tall and way too serious Seth and his young fledgling, Dr. Fareed.  “But what does it taste like,” Santh asks as they all stare at this confection in Gregory’s hand as if it was a small miracle from the Gods. “It’s sweet,” Fareed tries to explain. “It’s like… Well, I’m trying to imagine foods from your time and what it would compare too. I mean six-thousand years ago, what would compare? Like really sweet honey and dates and bread, spongey, soft, milky…?”

“And what are the little colorful dots like,” Gregory asks, looking seriously at Fareed for his input.

“Oh, come on,” Santh says impatiently.  He grabs the small cake from Gregory’s hand and quickly shoves it into his own mouth, feeling it squish and mash around.  It’s very hard to avoid the vampire gag reflex and swallow it down before it tries to come back up again.  The others are staring at him in horror.  Except Fareed, who appears fascinated.  

“Well,” Gregory asks. “What does it taste like?”

“So bad,” Santh says. The sweet sickly taste of it stuck in his mouth now.  

“Well, you don’t eat the paper part usually,” Fareed observed with amusement.

Seth was silent, watching with his placid, always slightly disinterested but still hanging around anyway, look on his face.  

“It’s just sticky and those little color pebbles are like sand, and –” Santh felt it all come back up and out.  He watched it all land back on the floor at their feet in a colorful squishy, cakey mess with confetti colors and some blood from a recent hunt mixed in.  They all stared down at it together in silence.

Gregory began laughing and laughing.  He slapped Santh hard on the back. “You are so crazy! I love you!”

“It had to be done, for Fareed’s science,” Santh defended.

“Well, I know a vampire can’t eat a cupcake, Gundesanth,” Fareed smiled, shaking his head.