Derium was different, I could sense it. When he promised things before, you could tell he was lying. His whole presence was better, I didn’t get that feeling of evilness when he was around.
There wasn’t much left of night but I could feel vampire activity all around us, they wouldn’t ever get close enough to be seen, by me anyways, they’d scurry off. It was like they were coming to see a show, but knew better than to get too close.
There was a little dew forming just before the sun started to rise. Derium wiped it off the tall grass and rubbed it between his fingers and smiled, “Oh how I have missed this. I feel the sleep coming upon me, I must go now brothers, I will actually enjoy this sleep. I will catch up to you tonight after awakening and feeding. No need to tell me where you’re headed, we are linked again, I will find you.”
With that, he disappeared into the remaining, night sky. I looked and Yura was fast asleep, as was Mylicous. It was literally right before the sun came up that they had fallen asleep. I shrugged and watched as the sun came up. It wasn’t a majestic sunrise, unlike many cases before, it was kind of boring. There were no mountains for it to creep over, the mountains were behind us. It was just open field ahead of us. I reminded me of seeing the sunrise in Judea and Jerusalem, except it was grass instead of sand.
I got up and walked around, the black sludge that lined the mountain side had all but disappeared. I could see why Derium liked the mountains, and I was only seeing a part of them. I picked a bunch of wild flowers for Yura and some tall grass and stray wheat for the horses. I kept quiet, I didn’t want to wake up Mylicous or Yura, I enjoyed their company, but I also enjoyed time to myself.
A breeze blew, and many different, floral scents filled my nose. The breeze made a weird, almost moaning like sound when it reached the mountain side. It whirled up the mountain side, stirring up dust. I could see the cave and thought how so many years ago, I had leapt down that mountain side with Derium’s head and there I was, looking at the cave he was sleeping comfortably in.
I walked around a few more hours, remembering back and thinking how interesting empty the land was and how it was possibly because of Deruim. I had walked far from the group when my foot hit something hard on the ground. I looked down and used my foot to move the grass and dirt off the object and noticed a black, round like object. I bent down and used my hands to dig it out, feeling the cool earth under my fingertips. I pulled the object out and looked at it. It looked like a bowl carved out of stone. I found it interesting, I wondered how long it had been there. I smiled, Noemi would have loved finding it. I put it back and covered it back up with the dirt.
I headed back to the group, of course they were still sleeping and remained that way until later in the afternoon. I spent most that time, picking up small rocks and heads of flowers to throw at them while they slept, but the never woke. Not sleeping was truly a curse more than a gift, at first.
They finally woke up, Yura stretched and smiled at me and I slightly smiled back. Mylicous got up, stretched and released some flatulence, that smelted as if it had come out of Death’s ass itself. Yura and I looked at Mylicous who just shrugged. He was unaware that some of the flower heads I had been throwing, were stuck in his beard. Yura looked at me and smiled.
“My stomach aches for food,” Mylicous said, “should we hunt before travel?” he looked more towards Yura than myself, but I spoke up.
“I haven’t seen much around here besides those rabbits you got last night, might have to travel a little before we can eat,” I said, really just wanting to move and not linger anymore.
Mylicous just nodded, some of the flower heads of purple and yellow, fell out of his beard. He noticed, then shook the rest out and have me a cross look. We wasted no time after that getting on our horses and started heading back the way we came. Yura strode up next to me and nudged me with her foot. I looked over at her, “I’m glad you’re coming back.”
“Well, I’m still going to try to talk you into leaving, I know where I want to be, and I’d like it if you came with me.”
“We will see,” she said, and we rode in silence for a while, just enjoying the scenery, even though it was kind of bland.
The rest of the trip went like before, we traveled, we ate, we ran into vampires. This time though, Derium was with us and he warned them to stop their attacks. There were a few who followed his words and few he had to drain to get his point across. It was at this point, I had the first ever thought of forming The Order, except I didn’t have that moniker. I started thinking, there needed to be a group of people to keep an eye on Mylicious’s and Derium’s offspring, but the thought got lost over time.
Derium stayed with us until the it was time for
