Status Updates From Tea & Alchemy

when each son comes of age, the thirst comes on?

Yes.

You also told me that it's worse @ the beginning. And after many years it begins to diminish, ceasing altogether when the next heir undergoes the change.

He touched the black feather to his chin, and the motion drew my notice to the fullness of his dark lips. I couldn't see the deadly teeth, and it seemed to me they came and went - like the way food could make your mouth water.

My own thoughts were a dizzy, confused mess. But I thought if I could at least anchor him, w/his decades of stored-up knowledge, we might have a chance.

Do you know what a handfasting is?

It's an old way of marrying, I think.

It is, centuries old. It's called handfasting because the couple's hands are joined w/a ribbon or cord.

I think if there's anything that defines us as humans, it's wanting things that we shouldn't.

Harker & sons who'd come before him had never known their mothers. It seems they couldn't survive birth of a monster.

My gaze found pool on heath, beetle black under heavy sky

Of course the return to her old routine would also mean return to daily temptations of her walking back & forth - w/c would be greater now that I'd given in to the bloodlust.

I wasn't sure what the point of the readings was if they only told you things you'd look back on the next day and say "It all makes sense now."

Maybe eventually you got better at making sense of things before they happened?

I made eggs-on-foam, w/c required whipping whites & spreading them as bed for yolks before baking - recipe I'd learned from Mrs. Moyle.

Do vampires have blood of their own?

We do. But it's dark and sluggish. "Dead" blood, my father called it.

It feels like ... everything. Or like the only thing that matters. I hope you have never gone hungry, but if you have, it's really the only thing I can think of to compare it to. Food to a starving man. Yet it's not at all like eating. It's more like breathing, where breathing is ... an act of worship.

Yet there is nothing reverent about it. It is a violent, selfish, unforgivable act.

After a few moments, I began to feel ... calm.

I think that's meant to happen. A spider injects a venom that paralyzes its prey.

in that moment I felt safe. With him. Even if not entirely safe from him. Which made no sense at all.

Goos-evar?

'Blood-drinker.' But in Cornish.

How well I knew that loneliness, like a ghost that met you each morning & followed you through your day. I couldn't imagine decades of it.

~~~~~~~~~~

When he spoke, his tone was quiet, but I had learned by now that this meant the inside of his head was anything but.

Mist almost completely hid the surface of the pool, as if the water were hot rather than cold.

You'd think after so many years, I'd run out of things to think about.

I'd expect rather the opposite.

Alchemists are naturally curious. And alchemy has no contempt for spirituality.

Harker has "midnight purple" eyes.

Mina had shown me that staring down countless decades w/no companionship was fate worse than death.

And yet I live.

Ancient Romans went to war vs. religion of Britons, w/c was kind of nature worship & that war never really ended. Over centuries, those old ways were all but stamped out.

figure had tree branches fanning out from its head; willowy & tall, but face mostly worn - All I could make out was long jaw studded w/pointed teeth - like dog, or wolf.

"I would guess a nature spirit of some kind."

"Didn't you say this was painting of saint slaying demon?"

"As far as early church was concerned, there wasn't much difference."

St. Gomonda ... is something of a mystery & not heard of outside Cornwall. We know next to nothing about his life. One ancient document - lost now, but described in church records - indicated he was apothecary.