He wonders who came up with the myth that vampires didn’t have reflections. They’d lied, evidently. His reflection glares back at him with its sallow cheeks, sunken eyes, skin with its appalling pallor. Dan Heng lies, curled up on his mattress, breathing shallowly.

It’s been too long since he'd had last fed. And Heng was expiring at an alarming pace.

This wouldn’t have been a problem if he’d rationed his blood properly. Or if he’d ordered more. Or if he’d thought ahead. All things you'd probably say to him if you knew the state he was in.

He shakes himself metaphorically. Come back to yourself. Conserve your energy. As if thinking too much would deliver him more quickly into Thanatos’ jaws.

He thinks of you. Oh, how worried you must be for him, trawling all the local hospitals for his name. He’d told you that he was severely unwell and it’d be a while until you could see him again. By the time you found him his secret would likely be out, but then he’d already be dead anyway. He wouldn’t have to feel guilt for your grief that way.

How horrible I’ve gotten. Dan Heng lets his eyes flutter shut. And he still had the gall to hallucinate your voice for his own comfort…

No. He forces his eyes open again. That wasn’t a hallucination. He struggles, summoning strength to his body.

“Get out.” The words tumble weakly from his mouth as you throw his door open, taking in the curtains drawn tight, the water cup gathering dust on the dresser, his ailing figure on the bed.

“Dan Heng.” You rush to his side. He can’t be sure if you hadn’t heard him or if you just didn’t care. Likely the latter. “What’s going on?”

You know what’s going on. The words fail him. In fact, all language fails him as the scent of fresh blood slams into him like a wall. His muscles flood with new strength.

The next moment you’re beneath him. Your mouth is moving urgently, your eyes wide with fear. The words fall on deaf ears. Dan Heng can feel his fangs pressing into his bottom lip.

He sinks his teeth into your throat.

There’s nothing gentle about this, no thoughtfulness about where he bites. Dan Heng bites into your carotid artery, and the rush of sweet blood brings back his senses.

You’re crying out, thrashing in his bruising grip.

“Dan Heng,” you cry. “Please.”

Your fingernails scratch against the roughness of his horns, the pads of your fingers sliding over the slight bumps of keratin that have grown out of his head in sections. Your face is scrunched up in focus, your teeth worrying your bottom lip ever so slightly - Malleus can feel his face warm upon noticing his own close inspection of your features.

“It’s cool,” you mutter to yourself. “Is this what elephant tusks feel like?”

Malleus can’t be sure what elephant tusks feel like, but all he knows is that he’s glad the elephant wasn’t treated to such… bliss. Each stroke feels like you’ve reached into his chest and seized his heart instead, like a gentle hand protecting a fluttering bird.

When you move away and reach back for another round, he can’t stop the sudden rumble of pleasure in his chest. You both pause, and then a grin slowly spreads across your features.

“Does it feeling that good, Malleus?” you ask, tone lilting.

His face definitely flushes this time, but all protests die away when you drag your fingers from the base of his horns all the way to the pointed tip in one fell stroke.

Base… tip… Something stirs in his pants. Malleus shuts his eyes, biting back a building hiss of pleasure before you can notice. Your face… those eyes… surely this is how Eve felt before the apple, right?

“Aw, Mal. Don’t be shy. Should I help you with that?”

Of course you’d noticed. You reach for the bulge in his pants, peeling his hands away and pressing down gently. A moan bubbles up from somewhere primal, and Malleus twitches in your grasp.

You kiss his jaw. “It’s alright. You can touch me.”

She shakes her head fervently, and to your surprise, her bottom lip starts to tremble. "But I don't want to!"

Sometimes children were just mercurial. But Eri rarely was like that; you'd seen her break up squabbles between the children with the empathy and tact of an adult. So it was surprising - to you, at least, who'd raised these children since they were babies - to see her get so upset for no apparent reason. Eri wasn't the kind of child to throw a tantrum.

But first you had to get her to wish.

"C'mon, Eri." You lower yourself to level with her big, watery eyes. Her gaze shifts away, as if guilty. "Blow it out with me, then. You don't want to get into trouble with Alice, do you?"

Eri hesitates. You recognise the flicker of fear in her eye, the same apprehension all of them felt when one of the children spilled food onto the floor or missed a spot while mopping. You still felt that fear too yourself, sometimes.

A moment's pause, and then Eri nods slowly. You close your hand around her smaller one, steadying her trembling fist.

The two of you make your silent prayers and blow out the dandelion.

You do not notice when Eri puffs out her cheeks but doesn't blow.

──────────────────────

The Valley of Gods isn't quite a valley, but rather a small strip of grassy, tough land running along the base of a sheer cliff. When the wind kicks up, it howls like a pack of wolves tearing through your little town, whirling dust into every crevice in every brick and lodging sand in your eyelashes.

The Valley of Gods was all you'd ever known. You were convinced that it's all you ever would.

A small chapel, of sorts, sits in the centre of the town. The buildings and farms and things are arranged in concentric circles around it, radiating out from the squat, ramshackle hut that houses the shrine of the God of Wind.

You'd always thought it a little silly how fervently people avoided the shed. One wouldn't enter the building unless they believed they had committed some sort of terrible sin, and once you entered, you wouldn't leave until several hours later. Sometimes people left with blood seeping through the backs of their shirts. Sometimes people left with nothing but a dazed expression on their faces. Either way, no one left that place without being irrevocably changed.

Frankly, if it were you, you'd simply make the decision to never enter the shrine. You'd once caught a glimpse of a cat o' nine tails hanging on the wall of the shed, stained brown. Regardless of whether you believed in the existence of the God of Wind, just the thought of the faraway, lost expressions of the supposed sinners was encouragement enough.

The other side of the valley is bordered by the forest.

It doesn't really have a name. Not that it needed it - there was only one forest around these parts, and only one forest that people would make reference to with such reverence besides.

The forest was rumoured to be the home of the God of Wind. Now this was a myth you could more confidently get behind. The spores; deadly, tiny things, drifted through the air as if stuck in a syrup. Sunlight found it difficult to penetrate the treetops to the forest floor, but yet the forest hummed an unnatural shade of blue-green.

They weren't alive. They weren't dead. They were just there.

Some say it was the God of Wind who had poisoned the air. You were inclined to believe them.

──────────────────────

Alice had been eyeing you meanly all day.

She was a grizzled, horrible woman, though if you were any other resident in the Valley of Gods, you'd be hard pressed to know that. She paid her taxes to the man who came down from beyond the valley with barely more than a peep, and smiled at people when she went shopping for groceries in the market.

But you knew what she did to the children in the orphanage. Lash marks across the soles of their soft feet, scalps pulled raw and red, crescent-shaped scratches where she'd slapped them. You tried to protect them as much as possible, and since you'd grown she'd been too afraid to push too far lest you fight back. But bitter people would always need an outlet, and sometimes that outlet was you.

Today she was sour rather than explosive. A sour Alice meant cruel words. But words were just that - you could take an onslaught of insults as long as it meant she wouldn't terrorise any of the other children while she was with you.

"I saw what you did for that girl," she sneers at you. Alice was close enough that you could smell her stale breathe - cigarettes, caffiene, rotting teeth, like a gray mist emanating from her mouth. A speck of spittle lands on the counter. "Stupid child. The god of wind won't like that."

Your hands are submerged deep into a pile of dirty dishes, and you use it as an excuse not to grace her with a look. "I'm sure he wouldn't mind if I was just making sure all his prayers got to him safely."

"You fool!" A thwack, upside the head. You keep scrubbing. "One person gets one wish. You know the scriptures. Your heart must be pure. Be pure, you greedy, useless…"

You let her carry on. After all, words were just words, and you think of the prayers you'd murmured so coldly that morning.

Twilight encroaches by the time you finish all of your chores.

The halls are lit with a dull, purplish light, illuminating the dust captured on the cobwebs in the corners of the windows.

There were so many spiders here. As far as you knew, no other property in the valley had such a rampant issue with the eight-legged creatures - but of course, Alice would never call someone in to take a look. It was rare she let outsiders into the orphanage.

Not that you minded the spiders too much. You often felt bad having to clear away their freshly built homes every morning, but at least it gave the children something to do. And before that time came, you'd let the spiders live their lives as they were meant to do.

A breeze whistles down the corridor, tugging at the hem of your clothes. The fresh cobwebs bob in the wind. How greatly the children feared a god they didn't even believe in. The thought of the God of Wind left a sour taste on your tongue.

Did he have to be as unforgiving as the scriptures said he was? If a god was all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful, then why did he behave as if the existence of a handful of humans was going to threaten his existence? Surely his esoteric rules could be bent. Surely they could be broken.

Or perhaps gods didn't need to have a reason. Perhaps cruelty was an inherent part of them. Just like Alice, perhaps he too was an insane, brain-rotted, miserable…

A pattering further down the hall grinds your stewing to a halt.

"Hello?" you call softly. All the children were supposed to be getting ready for bed at this time, but you would recognise the footfalls of a running child anywhere. "Who's there? You should be getting to bed, sweetheart."

A shadow shifts beyond the purple light of the hallway. Watery eyes like molten chocolate, chubby-cheeked, round-faced, with her hair in two pigtails.

Eri stares at you for a heartbeat, eyes wide and wild with fear, and takes off.

──────────────────────

You pause for a heartbeat to grab a kerchief from someone's clothesline and soak it in a bucket that someone had left outside. In that time, Eri's little legs had taken her past the fences and down the hill, half running, half tumbling her way, heading towards the forest with a fervour like all the souls of hell were at her back.

Your heart thunders in your ears and you spill half the water onto the floor with your trembling.

Eri! Eri! I'm so stupid!

Of course Alice had gotten to her when you weren't looking. Of course Alice was the one who had frightened her so badly with all her preaching and prattling. And you'd not had the foresight to comfort her before Alice could get her hands on her.

The streets are deserted at this time, and so no one's around to watch you steal a lantern from the front of someone's home and race after her.

The darkness swallows you immediately. You think of the cricket you'd fed to the rooster that afternoon, struggling wildly between your fingertips while he bore down on it, head twitching this way and that. The rooster ate it in two parts - head first, while the back legs kicked and flailed like a human in a dragon's mouth.

You imagine the cricket must be experiencing much of what you're feeling right now. You can hardly see beyond the light of the lantern - the night sticks to you like tar, and the shadows are as persistent as summertime flies.

Aside, you curse to yourself, noticing too late that the candle stump was burning low in its holder. But it'd have to do.

The only thing to guide your way are broken shrubs and low-hanging branches that Eri had barrelled through. You couldn't even be sure if the path you were following was the right one or if you were tracking the remnants of some other small animal, but you plow on regardless.

Things skitter away just out of reach of your light. Each foot you put down sinks into soft, peaty earth. The spores are crowding around you now, pressing in on your face and dancing just shy of your hair. Up close, they look like little, twisted dandelion seeds, blown free from their heads, teasing and taunting you in your hopeless endeavour.

You don't dare open your mouth to call for Eri. The kerchief is damp over your nose and mouth, but you couldn't be sure how effective it was or how long it'd last.

Maybe we'll both die here.

You shake your head sharply. No. You had to find Eri and get out. She needed you. The other children still needed you. Eventually you'd get too old and Alice would get rid of you, but while you still could, something had to protect.

Something tugs at the hem of your clothes, blows the hair free from your clammy face. The wind is sticky and warm, but you turn in the direction of the breeze-

"Eri!"

The word escapes you before you can catch yourself. Eri lies curled up amongst the roots of a tree, nestled in a small, mossy clearing. A beam of moonlight illuminates the ground weakly, and you pick your way through the undergrowth to reach her side.

"Eri," you hiss, hearing the tremor in your own voice. "Eri!"

Her eyes are shut, breathing deeply. You can't even be sure if she's halfway in death's door, and you don't exactly have the free hands to carry her, unless you left your lantern or your kerchief behind. Neither seemed like a good option.

"She's fine~"

The new voice is light, lilting, youthful, almost, but the way they pronounce their words felt foreign to your ears. You whirl around.

A boy stands there. A shocking sight in itself, but it takes more than a moment for you to drink all of him in. A white sash of sorts covers his chest. A similarly white fabric is wrapped around his waist, covering him down to mid-thigh, secured with a golden, circular brooch. His hair is a deep blue, tied in twin braids that fade to a green at the ends. It's the same green the forest glows with.

A pair of feathered wings furl and unfurl at his back, whiter than the purest dove, unmarred by any of the dust and dirt you now feel acutely aware of trapped under your fingernails and the crevices of your shoes.

He tilts his head at you before you can respond. "I know you. You're the greedy one, aren't you?"

You take a step back, your heart sinking, and he laughs. The sound reminds you of the tinkling of wind chimes. You know him. You know him from the small idol that sits in the shrine, waiting for its next victim, his face turned upwards to the sky. The two braids, the delicate feathers at the tips of the wings, down to the very golden brooch at his hip.

"Your prayers are loud. But I do often enjoy hearing what violence you want me to inflict each day!"

"I- I don't-"

Your eyes dart around the clearing, but of course there's nowhere to run. Where would you even go when the entire forest was his domain - the God of Wind, the malevolent entity that you'd lived in fear of your entire life, the god you prayed fervently to to strike Alice down where she stood?

You blink, and suddenly he's right in front of you, smiling, his eyes glowing the same as his surroundings. "Where are you going? Don't leave just yet. You just got here!"

"I need- I-" You're shaking so badly you can hardly speak. You catch sight of Eri, still curled up peacefully by your feet, and something steels your spine. "I need to take her home. She can't be here. We'll both die."

"Oh." His face crumples with disappointment, as if he'd forgotten about your mortality. The God of Wind backs off. "I told you, she's fine. But I suppose you're right."

He sighs, twirling a braid around his finger, and sighs again. "But I can't just give her back so easily, can I? I mean, you're not supposed to be here… though I suppose it was my fault."

"It was your- what?"

"Hmm hmm." He presses on as if he hadn't heard, and then his face brightens. It was a delightful, innocent, lovely expression. "You can have her back, if you promise to give me something of yours in equal return."

You were beginning to think that that expression promised a host of horrible things.

"What do you want?" You force yourself to ask. Eri stirs, and the coil of panic you'd been suppressing rears its head.

"Oh, nothing much, probably." He smiles again. The moonlight brushes gently over the top of his cupid's bow, illuminates his soft, cherubic cheeks. "I haven't decided yet though. Why don't you go to bed first and I'll come get you in the morning?"

"Wait-"

He grasps your hands, spins you around once, twice, and the ground rushes up to meet you.

"We're going to have so much fun together!" You think he might have said, from a place far away.

──────────────────────

You surface from sleep, gently, slowly, like you're being buoyed on the softest bed of down. You stretch, roll over to the other side of your narrow bed. The sliver of sky you can see from your window is a clean, crisp blue, fluffy white clouds scudding across your vision.

Huh. It'd been a while since the weather looked this good.

You get out of bed, sliding your feet into your worn slippers. It was awfully quiet - had all the children woken themselves up and started on their chores on their own accord? Did no one wake you up early to settle who should wash the windows again or feed the nasty, bad-tempered goat on the farm?

"Eri!"

The voice that calls her name is entirely unfamiliar. It's more mature than any of the children you know, motherly in tone, too young and light to be Alice.

"Come on!" Eri calls back.

You wander outside onto the dirt path that leads to the little worship building. Who the hell was she talking to?

You see the crowd first. Gathered just outside the perimeters of the building, people are standing, rendered silent, slack-jawed, heads tilted upwards.

Then you see her. It.

Strung up by her wrists by vines that look like they belong within the forest and not without, Alice's head is bowed, her limbs limp and dangling. Most of her face is concealed by her mousy, greasy hair, but a single drop of blood beads on the tip of her nose and falls to the dusty earth.

"Alice?" Someone in the crowd is brave enough to call.

You're distracted by a brief scuffle.

"Get back inside!" The unfamiliar voice hisses. Eri yelps protestingly, and her twin pigtails flash at the edge of your vision. "Go back to the others!"

"Eri?" you say out loud. Neither person responds, though they're close enough for you to reach out and touch.

A pebble stirs in the depths of your stomach, growing sharp as you turn back towards the body.

"I'm sorry, what's going on?" You tap someone standing at the back of the crowd. Her name is Millicent, a milkwoman with the broad shoulders of someone used to doing heavy lifting and the thick calves of someone used to walking long distances.

She grunts, glancing over at nothing in particular, and brushes imaginary dust off her sleeve.

Ah.

A small, glowing orb floats past your face as you step back, the same shade the forest glows, the same colour that glitters in the depths of the eyes of the God of Wind.

You follow its path with your gaze. In the shadow of the forest, you see his wings unfurl, his hand reaching out towards you. Come.

Join me.