Lydiya Slone gazed out her window at the advancing darkness. How she wished to be part of it, to be enveloped in a sea of black. But her parents would never allow it.
They, like the rest of her town, were afraid of the night. Lydiya didn’t know why, just that it was, and had, to her knowledge, always been, that way.
“Lydiya! Pull down those shades this instant.”
Lydiya jumped up, startled by her mother’s voice. Coral Slone was a stern, demanding woman who disapproved of much that Lydiya did. In her opinion, Lydiya spent too much time daydreaming and not enough time working. She was just a space of food and space.
“Stupid girl, can’t you do anything right?” Coral muttered as she left Lydiya’s room. She stopped when she got to the doorway. “Oh yeah, dinner’s ready whenever you want to set the table.” With that, she was gone.
Lydiya sighed as she got up form her seat. Her mother was always yelling at her for something. Her room was never clean enough and her shades were never closed tight enough. It was the same routine day after day. She took one last look outside and closed the shades.
She couldn’t understand why she had to be cooped up inside all the time. Her spirit longed to roam the wilderness with the wildcats that every once in a while decided to venture into the family’s vegetable garden. They could be outside whenever they wanted, they didn’t have to follow rules, they could be themselves. The wildcats didn’t have to skip school everyday just to be outside before dark.
When she had told that to one of her trusted teachers when she was little, he had replied the same as she expected him to.
“The wildcats are untamed and they are beasts. They should be nothing to you. You should be happy that we have evolved past that point in the evolutionary ladder. We have no need for the outside nowadays.”
“But, we do have need for the outside! We grow our vegetables out there, we feed our animals on plants grown outside the barns, does that not mean that we need the outdoors?”
“We only need the outside for those things, everything else can be found inside our homes.”
“Then why do we fear the outdoors? If we no longer need it, why do we fear it?”
“Outside this school house Lydiya, there are creatures who would like nothing more than to eat you for breakfast. But, do not worry yourself about them. Our sentries keep them out.”
“Then why do we fear the night? Isn’t it the same as the daylight except dark?”
“Go sit down Lydiya. Enough of your questions.”
“But, why then?”
Her questions never got answered; they only got her in trouble. Eventually she had learned to keep them to herself even though everyday seemed to bring up new ones. The town tortured her with the spell of silence that had seemingly been placed upon it about the outside world.
Dinner in her house was done in accordance to the rituals. First, the family would pray to their ancestors and light the candles that would illuminate the room since electricity was rationed each day. The food was served in order of Importance to the community. First, the patriarch (usually the grandfather) and the matriarch (the grandmother) would be served. The current heir and his wife, and then their children, in gender and birth order, would follow them. As the youngest girl of the family, Lydiya was always served last. After dinner was finished being served, it was completed in silence. Not a single word was to be spoken, not a single phrase was to be uttered. That was just the way it was.
After dinner, Lydiya headed back to her room to read a book she had found that day in the market. Once in her room and with her room shut off from her parents prying eyes, she opened the shades to the world outside of her bedroom. It was so warm and inviting even though it was the middle of winter. As she stared at the world, imagining herself running through the field, a soft white blanket of snow started forming on the ground and surfaces. Yes, that was where she wanted to be.
All too soon, the tone for curfew sounded. It was time to turn off the lights and to get ready for bed. She closed her book and got ready for bed, ignoring the tone and her open window. Her room faced away from the town and to the open woods, where nobody and nothing could see her. Nobody, if they were out doing the checks would even be able to see the light of her room from the front of the house, and she already knew that the entire town was too afraid of the woods to get any closer than her room even in the daytime, so she was safe. She only closed her shades right before her mother walked in to make sure she was doing what she was supposed to.
Lying in bed, the day’s new questions filled her head to the point that it was getting ready to explode. It happened every night and she had become skilled at putting them to rest by just turning over and letting the calm darkness take over and posses her body. Tonight was no different, and she did as she did every night, unaware of the person watching her every movement.

Jaiy did not know what kind of the magical hold the girl inside held over him, nor did he really want to know. For the past year he had been consumed by the thought of seeing her, talking to her, feeling her presence. Every night for the past year, once the sun had left his place high in the day sky and was laying down for his nightly sleep, Jaiy had sat in the garden outside her window. The first few times, nerves hadn’t allowed him to leave the room, but as time went on, and as the moon smiled over him, he had worked up the courage to get closer.
The elders had called his infatuation at first just a need for new, human, blood in his system and had allowed him to take his first bite early. Normally, the males of his community didn’t have their pinnacle, or first taste of human blood, until they were 18. Jaiy was still only 17. But, when Jaiy’s “condition” worsened, the elders understood less. Why did Jaiy risk his neck, and existence, nightly just to watch a girl read by a window?
It was soo odd that it had started to bring up conversation within the community. Wherever Jaiy went, whispers followed. At first he couldn’t understand it.
“Why does it seem odd to everyone that I focus on a girl?”
“Jaiy, even though it would seem normal that us vampire’s focus on one subject for a period of time to understand them, it is not normal to have not taken a bite yet.”
Tonight was the night, he had decided it long ago, tonight was the night that he was going to speak to her.