Forgotten Ink: Page 5

The Domestics

By Perfect Image [Desen]

Among the vampires, the older families had always retained the ability to converse with animals. Certainly, not every one of the ancient bloodlines had such skills – only a select few from the Hellsing family, the Yofiel family, and the Ruman family still could acquire true companions from among the beasts that wandered Labbiel, home to those same blood-sucking parasites.

From among the Ruman family came four that could take creatures as friends: Seere, Demeter, Ceres, and Xaphan. While Demeter and Ceres could both speak to the smaller creatures, Seere excelled in the language of the raptors, large birds of prey whose wingspread often came to ten feet, if not more. Xaphan, for his part, spoke to the bears, stealing honey from the black bears and accepting salmon from the grizzlies.

The Yofiel family, sadly, only had one that could speak. However, this child was revered, speaking with dragons – her favorite being the imperial dragons that frolicked in mighty rivers and spat down rain from the heavens.

And from the Hellsing family, the most: six. Hokuto, mother to the future ruler of all living vampires chattered happily with monkeys. Her brother-in-law stalked beside wolves, Lisk preferring to only interact with her when needed. Then came two pairs of siblings: one set of twins and one set of normal siblings. The natural siblings controlled many different languages, though both still kept within their respective boundaries. Fuuma, the older, spoke with the different stags while Kotori, the younger, sang with the sparrows and blue jays, laughed with the mockingbirds and teased the other tiny birds. The pair of twins, one who would take over the task of commanding the vampires and the other who would do anything to protect him, held perhaps the most ordinary of languages. And yet they were the most interesting to behold.

Kamui began speaking with cats when he was around five hundred years old – approximately five for a normal human child – and no one was surprised that he started so early. Rather, they were shocked that he spoke with the domesticated ones, rather than conversing with those that stalked the flora surrounding the vampires' capital.

However, as time wore on, it seemed that this was best for him. Sulky and almost always unhappy, Kamui was as temperamental and unpredictable as these beasts. And, just like most of them, he opened up only to one person – for him, his brother, Subaru.

Subaru, kind and considering, spoke with hounds. From the tiny terriers to their wolf-like cousins, they adored him, fawned over him. Of course, they loved everyone – no one, except for those close to Subaru, saw how he tried to avoid them.

Though the twins were close, it was Hokuto who noticed it first. A young Subaru came to her, flung himself into her open arms – and he begged her to make them speak again. Behind him trailed three little puppies.

"O-okaa-san," he blubbered, even as they fell about the vampires' feet. "They w-won't talk to m-me. N-no m-m-matter w-what I d-do."

Subaru had always been an eloquent speaker, and his stuttering only showed her how distraught he was. Hokuto made calming shushing noises and rubbed circles into his tiny back.

Her mother, an open person that seemed to have been reflected in Subaru, had once spoken to horses and hounds. But, though Hokuto begged to be taught the language of dogs, the generally sweet woman had refused, looking haggard and far older than she was.

"The hounds," she'd said tersely, "would only bring heartbreak to you in their later years."

And Hokuto, mother to the two tiny princes of the pureblooded vampire society, understood what she meant. Already she could see signs of aging in these pups, leaner and longer legs with more pronounced muzzles. Their paws seemed less large, and their fur clung close to their skulls, no longer a protective cushion for the still-growing bones.

She buried Subaru's face in her shoulder and sent word to the canine master to not allow Subaru access to the little canines anymore. Then she went to pay a visit to their most powerful of seers.

"Interesting," was the first thing the woman whispered, hands gently running over her ivory tarot cards, taken from the jaws of the wyverns that roamed the savanna plains that spread wide beyond the mountains that encased the jungle-encircled capital.

Laid out before her were the different Houses, and from each she had drawn two cards – one for the past and the other for the future. From the two central houses she had drawn out three to discover the cause for the present condition.

By themselves the cards, painted over with ink that would never smudge or fade, could bring no answers. But, combined with the mystic's seeing abilities, they harnessed powers far beyond that of a normal vampire's reckoning.

She lifted up the Angel of Death's card and replaced him face down on the deck of cards waiting patiently nearby since they had been given no purpose in this reading. Then, just as quick, she plucked the Angel of Life and the Angel of Creation from their Houses and placed them on top of Azrael's resting place.

She'd seen, in those three cards, in those three scant touches, that the little dogs were becoming more humane-like, replacing with bestiary with domesticity. And, with the removal of two more cards from their Houses she saw the reason Kamui did not suffer from the same thing: cats were selfish, survivalists, and they chose warmth and comfort not in servitude but in partnership, friendship.

The dogs had found new pack leaders, and with each birth, the dogs were losing more and more of their language. Before long, there would be no talking for them except for the meaningless barks and body signals the vampires had learned to recognize as words. Subaru would no longer have a special trait, would no longer have friends no one else could have.

When Kamui and Subaru turned seventeen hundred years old, the dogs could no longer speak their own language. And, though Subaru tried to hide his loneliness, his exclusion from a group that could do nothing to help him, Kamui saw it all and became terribly ashamed and saddened by his twin's loss.

He tried something, something that had never been attempted before. Well, it had been but no one had succeeded. And Kamui was determined to be the first. He would teach Subaru to speak with the cats, would take every tactic into consideration and – damn it all – if it didn't work he would just tell his feline friends to love Subaru unconditionally whether they liked it or not.

It started with simple words like what the cats called each other (Umbra) and what they called vampires and other beings that could possibly be mistaken for a human being, or was one (Anima); and the dogs were called Enshou or as individuals, Enshoun. It was hard, getting Subaru to pronounce words that rolled off Kamui's tongue so easily.

But, Kamui didn't give up, wouldn't give up. By the end of the first year, Subaru could understand and say a few sentences comfortably without having to pause and select a word from his internal dictionary.

With vampires, learning was a slow process. Aging slower than humans, they had to remember their knowledge for a time that far surpassed most humans. It did no good to learn so many things so quickly and then have thousands of years to forget everything. Most would at least make it to their seven thousandth birthday, and some would age well into ten thousand years of age.

Kamui went at the same pace that their tutors did, slower than them. Because this was another language created by creatures that would never lose their feral side. Guttural sounds were a must for most words that extended beyond a kitten's vocabulary, and often Subaru's throat hurt by the end of the day.

Of course, now he knew why Kamui would growl or hiss subconsciously whenever he was displeased, reflecting his feline friends' behavior. And Subaru was slightly mortified when he discovered that he started to do the same thing.

It wasn't the best thing in the world, to have your mother burst out laughing after you darkly growled in remembrance of a slightly malicious relative.

Subaru did allow himself to chuckle as well, once Kamui snarled his own agreement, though on a far harsher level, pitching it to where Subaru knew that he was well and pissed and not just annoyed like Subaru had been.

It was hard, learning the language of cats. Too many motions could mean too many things, and he understood how Kamui could read him so well, far better than most – with the difficulty of having to decipher so much as a slight change in breathing patterns, it was strange that Kamui couldn't just predict was people were going to say. But, then again, his twin didn't read too much into people.

And, soon, when it was over and done and he knew everything Subaru realized that he could do the same thing, pick up on Kamui's stiffness and sudden tensing of the muscles.

The cats hadn't been domesticated, would never be. Kamui would never be. And, in the years leading up to the twins' eventual running, Subaru noticed that some of the fiercer hounds were beginning to develop a new language of their own.

Subaru realized that this was the natural order of things.

Desen: ::fidgets slightly:: Umm, well. I think this might end up being a two-parter but -- the companion piece would be farther down the road. I, I don't really know what else to say.

Well, we've been...outed. You can see exactly how by checking out our profile page. Might make more sense to you, I suppose. And you can see why I'm not updating.

Yeah, that's all.