bridgescribble | what sounds better? revenge or popcorn?

"If you believe in an overarching guide to life, I suppose."

Claudia did not. She was not like her lapsed Catholic fathers, she had no faith in anything she had not yet seen. But Eddie was still so freshly dead. He might yet cling to mortal fallacies.

"Yeah, suppose so." That was all he had to say on the matter, apparently, tilting his head in a little shrug before curling forward over his drawing again, sketchbook balanced against a drawn-up knee, apparently comfortable enough in the pretzel of a position he'd contorted himself into.

His brow was creased in some kind of concentration or focus, or some combination of the two, eyes and hand both in near constant movement even though the rest of him was almost completely still.

The scritching of his pencil was more conducive to proper reading than his talking, and Claudia sank back into her book. He, as far as she could figure, had already been slightly mad before becoming a vampire; but not enough to make him completely unhinged as a vampire. He retained enough sanity to maintain a low profile, at least... Though she wondered if that would have been the case if she had not stepped in.

He was not, overall, a bad companion, but she herself certainly was, prone to irritation and vitriol. Louis had stayed with her so long for love, not because her company was pleasant, and this she knew.

But Eddie was useful, and his appearing older, almost grown by this society's standards - already an adult in the world she had once lived in - saved her questions and scrutiny when they went out in public. It was nice to have further freedoms, limited less by her appearance.

Even if he could be very annoying.

Chances were good that if he'd been left to his own devices, he wouldn't have survived the first day, and if by some miracle he had, it wouldn't have been much more than that. Because he was annoying, had been when he was still alive and while some of those grab-for-attention instincts had faded, none of them had fallen off completely.

So far, though, survival instincts had won out over the need to be noticed, for the most part.

To his credit, he was quiet for almost a half hour while he finished his drawing, and he uncurled slowly once it was finished, brow creasing a little as he inspected the page before offering the sketchbook over, "I know I've been saying 'bats' but it was these."

The creature was definitely bat-like with membranous wings and a pointed face, but that was where the similarities ended, because the 'wings' were more like a flying squirrel's wings, broad and square, and connected along multiple limbs down its sides, and that pointed face was opened into three prongs, all with shark-like rows of teeth, more than that there was a coiling, whip-like tail with multiple strands, at least twice as long as the rest of the creature's body.

Claudia's sigh, as she put away her book, was not entirely kind. But she folded up her book, and took the paper to examine the sketch. It was not badly done: he lacked practise but he had a fair eye. With a vampire's ability to mimic, he might yet be an artist of note.

"I have seen those, but never close," she told him, after a moment. "I am more familiar with the ground-dwelling creatures." The ones that ran on all fours, or even bipedal, once they gained enough food.

He nodded, "Yeah, the demo-dogs will hunt in packs, but they still have to communicate with each other, these bastards swarm, like a hive-mind. If you've ever seen ants strip something clean it's like that, just..." His brow furrowed, trying to figure out how to explain what he meant, especially given as how he'd experienced it and hadn't just watched it, and the only thing he could finally come up with was: "Worse."

He shook his head then, "You whack enough of the dogs and the rest will retreat." Or so he'd had explained to him, once, "But not these guys. They'll keep coming."

"They are all of a hive-mind," Claudia answered, absently, before returning the paper to him. "It is like a fungus. A sprawling network of roots, deeper and more widespread than mortals guess at. These that fly, and the...dogs. And those which walk. But they are stupid, as animals are stupid. They can be deceived, and they do not hunt the dead."

She sat still and without fidgeting, an unnatural state for anyone who looked as young as she. "But they did not devour your flesh, nor use your body to feed new fungus. How peculiar."

"Yeah, some of them act more like a hivemind than others, though. I dunno, maybe it's higher brain functions knowing when the risk isn't worth the reward."

He gave a short bark of a laugh at the statement that they hadn't eaten him, hitching the side of his shirt up. The scarring was still there, spanning his side, from ribs down, though it wasn't as deep as it had been at first, "They definitely ate some of it." A shrug, "And I don't know that what I am now isn't just another piece of the hivemind." That was something he'd thought about more often than he probably should have, and part of why he was terrified that he might find himself back in that red-lit otherworld again by accident.

"Some, but not all, and there is no larvae in your lungs." Claudia tipped her head a bit. because that she could definitely be certain of. "Perhaps, perhaps... I have always wondered how much vampiric blood is needed for a transformation...."

And yet no-one had an answer for her, no-one could tell her...or was willing to tell her. She could transform no-one but those small as she, and that she did not do, because what use would it be? Why condemn anyone else who could not help her to this hell that was her eternal existence? Eddie, now. He was useful.

"I think you would be robbed of reason, did you belong to that fungus," she concluded, firmly, and passed the paper back to him.

"You'd think that, yeah." He replied with a nod, "But I figure it depends on what Vecna wants, and I haven't actually been back since, might be I'll turn into some kind of zombie if I end up back there again, hive-mind like the rest of them."

He slid the page into the back of the sketchpad, already working on something else on a new page, "I don't know if I'd prefer that to the alternative, or if any of it's actually what would happen, I might be wrong about all of it." He didn't think he was, at least not fully, but he also didn't want to risk finding out, either.

what sounds better? revenge or popcorn?

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