Substance

Her earliest memories formed during the Roman occupation. Certainly she herself was much, much older. Created from primal drives more ancient than humankind, she lived her ageless life in a fog of obscurity and concealment. Furtive whispers were the only acknowledgement of her presence; anxious believers muttering fervent prayers and obtaining blessed charms to ward off her vapourous attentions. She was of the ethereal, the unsubstantial spawn of buried longings and carefully shrouded desires.

And she fed to slake her hunger.

From one as lowly as a common foot soldier to the Legate himself, she fed. In the cloud-veiled blackness of night she would come, her unformed self wending its way through gaps in tent or blanket. Her warmth like a whisper of warmth once remembered, she traced the sharp angles and sculpted contours of the man below her. Slow, deliberate entanglement of her amorphous self with the mind and body of her prey; a joining ending only in the spastic rush of the body’s ultimate achievement of desire.

Time had taught her cunning. Long association with the victims demonstrated the value of discretion. As the centurions gave way to the superstitious barbarians in their pathetic hovels, her attention gradually turned away from local residents to wayfarers. If she were too aggressive with the occupants of her tiny village, she would frighten them away under the auspices of one of the endless numbers of uneducated priests, men of extreme adherence to the virtues of their calling. Stalking travellers was the wisest choice. Selected with care, a rich, well-fed noble provided immeasurably greater nourishment for her dark and unseemly hungers.

Thus it was that she became the chattel of Alfred Earl of Warwick.

It began as all feedings began. Through the chinks of the rude shelter used by travellers, she poured herself into the presence of her chosen prey. She had passed by the horses of the traveller and his retainers with great care; so often the beasts, sensitive to worlds beyond man’s reckoning, would snort with alarm at her presence and awaken her quarry. But these remained quiet, calmly dozing together in the quiet of the night. The horses were magnificent animals, clearly well fed and cared for.

He was the wealthiest traveller she had seen in some time. Plague and pestilence had made difficult roads yet more treacherous with thieves and cutthroats, starvelings and other shadowy terrors. Occasional crop failures caused starvation and still more disease. A weak man was no man for her; like all predators, difficult times for prey meant difficult times for the hunter.

Behind her, the moon had spread its pale fingers through the walls and rough-hewn door to scatter over the sleeping man and his possessions. As she gathered her dissipated self, her eyes began to perceive the subtle colours of the midnight-washed room. The stone hearth, blackened and grey from years of use, stood cold against one wall. Brown saddlebags lay close by the head of the bedstead. The man’s form was wrapped against the cold under a deep green cloak, finely woven and richly embroidered. She gasped with pleasure at the subtle play of moonlight on the silver and gold threads edging his garment. Her gasp was no more than the slightest intake of breath, not enough to gutter a candle’s flame, yet the man beneath her floating form seemed to stir and sough.

Soundlessly, she stole towards his face. A handsome, strong face topped by thick curly hair. In repose, the face was almost child-like, yet she had no doubt that his awakened mien would carry nothing of the child. This man was clearly as well fed and as strong as his horse. He was a man of station, a man accustomed to command and the expectance of obedience. She listened to the rhythm of his slumber, the deep, slow breaths drawing him closer to her time. Finally, she reached out and allowed herself to be taken in with his breath, creeping ever closer to his dreams.

As her caresses moulded his dreams to her purpose, he rolled gently, pushing aside his cloak and revealing a finely-formed nude body. In his dream she shaped herself near enough to something between what she was and what he needed her to be, enough to be of interest. In his dreams, he visioned of a woman of exquisite beauty. Elfin-featured with skin so white as to be nearly transparent, he began to respond to this beautiful phantasm of his imagination.

Twining their bodies together, they nuzzled and kissed together as they danced through his dreamscape. First close, then distant, they drew together and apart in a teasing dance as ancient as she herself; and the ancient response to that dance, the quickening interest of the aroused male.

Now she could detect his scent on his skin. Arousal produced heat and sweat and smells that could not be hidden even from her muted ethereal senses. His arousal deepened, and the dance drew closer. Now she could feel the blood coursing through his body. His member engorging, turgid. The pulse of his humours coming to its ultimate expression.

She smiled with anticipation. Stroking the wiry fur of his chest, she breathed warmly against his loins. His hips straining forward, she concentrated her form above his belly, opened her mouth, and drew him in.

With her own sough of pleasure, she drew in the first dewdrops of his essence. Her form fair quivered with the promise of truly satisfying her hunger this night. With delicate movements of tongue and mouth, she caressed him and made him ready for milking. Slowly, gently, firmly, frantically. She brought him to a hardness rarely achieved among men, and so too she brought him to a depth of emission rarely achieved among men. She gulped down his warm, sticky nectar. Pumping hard into her mouth, he had more to give than anyone she had eaten of in years.

Still spurting into her throat, his eyes snapped open and he plunged his head downwards to her neck. Before she could comprehend or even believe his sudden wakefulness, he had bitten deeply into her neck. He tasted the blood of the chimera, salty and white. He bore down harder and harder on her neck, sucking the essence of her existence down his own greedy throat.

She was incapable of sensing pain, yet the harder he bit the more she hurt.

With a cry as of tearing fabric, she fell heavily to the bed. Now the man grasped her shoulders tightly with his hands. Pulling her bodily upwards, he threw her beneath him and kissed her hard. This was no dreamscape! She could taste him, she could smell him hear him. Everything now was sharp, vivid, flaying her as though her senses were raw to the world. Now ... now, as he released her mouth from his, she cried out in pain. The moonlight, always her friend and companion, tore at her eyes and her skin. The burning! Her body was burning under the ice-hot light of the moon!

Quickly, the man flung his cloak over her. The searing moonlight was replaced by the harsh rasp of wool against her skin. The pain ... the pain! She whimpered under its relentless onslaught.

Reaching into his saddlebag, the man retrieved an earthen jar. Whispering strange couplets and muttering under his breath, he revealed her body piece by piece, all the while methodically anointing her newfound skin with a soothing salve from the jar. He ignored not one patch of flesh with his ministrations. Her face, her ears, her neck, back, and chest, even the skin between her toes and fingers. Her thighs and buttocks, her softly-fuzzed mound. Every bit of her was soothed by his firm touch, the pain slowly receding and leaving only a footprint of itself in her memory.

He finished his work.

Returning to face her, he grasped her head firmly between his hands, and drew himself down. Kissing her deeply and harshly. Forcing his tongue deep into her throat. He pulled away with a gentle nip to her lower lip, and looked intently into her eyes.

"You are now mine, Mara," the Earl whispered fiercely.

She could only look at him in wonder and fear. Who had the power to pull her from her world to his? Who could give the fleshless a life of flesh? A life of sensation, of pain? Who had such power?

Moot questions. As weak and helpless as a newborn babe, Mara had to be lifted to her feet, then carried as a child in his arms. While her skin remained raw and new, she would need to remain hidden from the deadly light of day. Riding pillion, she would shelter under his cloak on the long ride north. Frequent feedings from the Earl would season her skin against the light and bring full substance to her form, to the day when she could join his household as a woman full.

He had dressed himself quickly, taking time only to whistle a sharp tone to his retainers sleeping nearby. Before dawn brought leaden skies, the party would leave the tiny village, taking with them for whom he had come.