Chapter Text
Within the wooden walls of Oakhurst there near the centre of town stood a two-story house with a turret on one end. The house had many windows through which the red moonlight illuminated the interior. The main floor of the house was composed of two main sections: the walkway connecting the two doors as well as the stairs, and a main open room that housed the kitchen, dining table, and storage.
Up the stairs was a single smaller room, the bedroom. The two occupants of the house slept soundly. Their beds were in opposite corners with the headboards lined on the same wall. Between the beds was two bedside tables and a small bookcase sandwiched between them. A large rug covered most of the wooden floor and at the foot of each bed were large storage chests. The room was small in a cosy way, with everything being only a few steps away.
Tucked in tight under a very clearly handmade blanket slept the taller of the two residents. Even breaths escaped her as she soundly snoozed.
The other resident of the house lay still and silent under their own blanket. Cleo's eyes drifted over to Pearl, before they slowly sat upright in bed. The sound of shifting woollen fabric filled the room, but only for just a moment as she stood and quietly made her bed.
Another glance over to Pearl confirmed that she had not awoken from the noise. Cleo couldn't help the small smile that graced their lips as they took in the peaceful sight. Pearl was laying with her back to them, her ridiculously long chestnut hair covered the pillow beneath her.
Cleo turned away and walked over to the start of the staircase. With her right hand on the smooth wooden handrail, she began down the stairs. As they went, their thoughts wandered.
Tonight was a rare night where both Pearl and Cleo were home and asleep at the same time. In the weeks of being at Oakhurst, the just insanity of everything kept most folks unable to get full nights of sleep, and definitely not in any proper schedule. A fact that Legundo had voiced his disdain for multiple occasions. But when up against vampires the night is often an active battlefield, as the humans and vampires traded beacons. Pearl had the tendency to just walk off into the woods without telling anyone, which of course made it harder to coordinate anything. The best they had been managing was the occasional shared meal. This all meant that for the both of them to be home and able to sleep at the same time was a precious commodity. And when Cleo got turned their circadian rhythms were thrown fully off the tracks. After all a creature of the night was wont to remain in the night and hide or sleep during the day.
And as much as Cleo's soft heart yearned to return upstairs and join Pearl in bed once again, they still had something to attend to before they could. Every week or so, for the past sixty-odd years, Cleo had sat down and written a letter to her late mother. If someone asked her, Cleo would likely brush it off as unimportant as to when she started this tradition. But truth to be told, they wished they knew, but their memories from that time were blurred. Like they had been submerged underwater, those years stand as muffled, foggy shapes moving rapidly around them. Clear enough to never be able to forget . . . but too clouded for anything besides the killings to be remembered in any meaningful detail.
All she knew was this, whenever the habit had begun, it likely saved her. Without these letters Cleo likely would have stopped existing as a person long ago. The child-like instinct that her mother could fix it all, that all she had to do was tell her and things would be okay. So foolish to run crying to the memory of a woman who, for all intents and purposes, was nothing more than a distant guardian than a parent. But that's what Cleo essentially did with their letters, even though the woman they were addressed to was long dead by the time the first letter was penned.
And maybe that naive thinking was true in some way, as those letters kept Cleo afloat for all this time. Even after escaping that man, they couldn't bring themselves to stop writing. Then all the bullshit with Oakhurst had begun, and if nothing else the letters let her release her frustrations at the inane actions and thought processes, if there were any, of her fellow towns members.
With silent steps Cleo exited the stairs to the main floor of their shared house. She stopped next to the kitchen table and reached down to one of its legs. With practised movements they pulled loose a chunk of wood revealing a small compartment. Stashed inside was her ink well, old slightly stuffed up quill, and spare paper. Underneath their writing supplies were some of their completed letters. There was no proper place for Cleo to store all her letters so she stashed some around the house. Before all she could have done was to hold on to a couple before burning them when it got to be too many, it was necessary otherwise he could have found them. If that had come to be, the letters would have been used to make Cleo's life even more miserable.
They reached in and carefully grabbed their writing supplies. Cleo turned and pulled out her chair from the table, she gathered the fabric of her dress forward around her legs to make sitting easier before sitting down. They laid out the writing supplies neatly upon the table and took the quill in hand. With only the very tip of the quill being dipped into the ink well, Cleo then tapped the excess off before they begun to write.
The sound of quill scratching paper softly filled the air quickly followed by Cleo's voice muttering along as she wrote. A habit that they hadn't even realised they had until the Doc had jokingly mentioned it. It was all the more impressive that she hadn't been caught before. Besides even now they were aware, they couldn't quite stop the habit. The act of speaking the words makes the thoughts flow easier and on some occasions she can almost convince herself that she's actually talking to her mother.
" … with love, Cleo." The soft scratching of the quill against paper stopped. She set the quill down gently next to the paper filled with drying ink. Then Cleo took a glance around her surroundings to centre herself back in the present and world of the living and the now.
The moon and sun continued their eternal dance as the moon dipped below the treeline and the sun begun to crest the horizon opposite. In-between morning and night, the sky no longer just a mournful red, but now was streaked with the beginning dredges of orange and some pale yellow. A fire burning gently in the sky, it had yet to reach into the house proper. Since their transformation, Cleo had to be cautious to avoid the sun where they could. They did not have the will to abandon day entirely. For within their life was eyes that reflected the light blue sky that accompanied the sun so beautifully. It was under the sun that her hair lit up with all the tones of wood, rich and alive. Day was where Pearl was, and Cleo couldn't turn away fully from that.
Maybe if the moon wasn't permanently drenched in blood red, Cleo would see those eyes better matched the silvery-blue that watched over the night. They might notice that Pearl seemed more alive at night. But as it were she was human and they were a monster, and monsters haunted the night and the day belonged to humans.
Shifting her gaze away from the window Cleo took in the large open room she sat in. The dark wood floors that Pearl had insisted needed to be put in before anything else. Shelves that held chests covered a large portion of the walls. With another row sat on the floor beneath, giving the perception that the chests were stacked neatly on each other not shelves. On the wall opposite of the table they sat was the kitchen. From the left to right it was made up of an ice box that housed the raw meats, next to that was roughly a meter and a half of counter space with cabinets underneath where the pots, pans, and cutting board lived. The furnace came next, a small bundle of charcoal sat in the fuel spot. On the other side was another meter of counter space, before the line ended with the crafting table in the corner.
Sat on a small shelf above the crafting table was the cat skull that had been named Oscar. The skull was a yellow-ish hue, and the back that sat in the path of the window had begun to be sun-bleached an ivory white.
The far side of the room from the entryway was mostly empty other than large floor to ceiling windows that looked out over the northern part of town. Back in the entryway of the house there were the stairs sandwiched between the two doors on either end of the small hallway. Along the walls adjacent to one of the doors their boots were lined up next to each other. Pearl's long boots leaned slightly over onto Cleo's short tough leather ones, all together it created an albeit messy but charming sight. Hung on some hooks were their bags. Her brown canvas shoulder bag next to Pearl's worn leather travel satchel.
The silence was broken by the faint sound of wood creaking from upstairs. Pearl must be awake now, Cleo thought with a smile. They turned back to the letter, its ink now dry enough to store away. Carefully she gathered up all the writing supplies and slid them back into the compartment in the table leg, then returned the wood covering.
Sure enough moments later, Pearl rounded the doorway, looking as if she had come down straight after waking up. Her nightgown was wrinkled and there was some hair stuck to her cheekbone and the rest was doing its best impression of a bird's nest.
Pearl rubbed her eyes as she came to a stop in front of Cleo and greeted them with a yawned "g'mornin."
"Morning Pearl, did you sleep well?" the edges of Cleo's eyes crinkled with amusement. They walked over to the chest where the flint and steel was stored and moved to relight some of the lanterns in the room. Cleo had strong enough night vision that the lack of light hadn't bothered them at the slightest, but from the way Pearl was squinting they figured the same was not true for her. As the first lantern was lit Pearl stood there blearily, adjusting to the sudden increase in brightness. After a moment of blinking and rubbing her eyes, she walked over to a storage chest.
"Yea', but what's got ya up so 'arly? It wa' kin'a lonely bein' the only one sleepin," Sleep clouded her speech and on top of her accent mean her words were almost impossible to understand this soon after waking up. Yet the sound just endeared her to Cleo. A quick sideways glance revealed Pearl was leaned into a chest, her head tilted to one side, in a way that immediately reminded Cleo of the livestock dogs of her early childhood. Pearl shook her head with one last yawn.
"Don't worry about it Pearl, just simply woke up early and couldn't go back to bed is all."
"Fine keep yer secrets," Pearl said as she stuck out her tongue. A barked laugh escaped Cleo as they turned back to their task.
Cleo had at this point finished lighting all the lanterns and had pulled various food items out onto the counter-top to begin breakfast for Pearl. It wasn't much, only two pork chops and two medium potatoes that had been harvested from the farm outside. The water bucket they used for washing dishes and cleaning their produce had been emptied and refilled last night, and would serve well enough this morning. They reached over, potatoes in hand, but was intercepted by Pearl's warm hands quickly snatching the tubers. Undeterred by the glare Cleo sent her way, Pearl begun to wash the vegetables. With a long sigh, extended for the dramatics of course, Cleo shook her head before turning to prepare the meat.
"Are you still planning on gathering some wood today?" Cleo inquired.
"Yep! Thinkin' I'm gonna' go further in'o the dark oak section and see if there 're any goodies waitin' for me," Pearl replied as she dunked the potatoes under the water to finish rinsing them. Cleaned of dirt the potatoes were ready to be cut into wedges. Pearl stood in front of the cutting board that Cleo had gotten out and after setting the potatoes down she carefully picked up the kitchen knife.
The two of them worked in a pleasant quiet filled only by the sounds of a knife hitting the wooden cutting board and the fire as it crackled in the furnace. Cleo snuck up behind Pearl as she paused in her cutting to reach for the other potato and swiftly grabbed the knife from Pearl's hand. She whipped to face Cleo who had a light smirk plastered across their face as they gently hip-bumped Pearl away from the cutting board. Snickering filled the air as the both of them struggled to withhold laughter. Every time the two of them got the chance they would playfully tease each other. And in a town that always had some form of dangerous or stressful situation building, the two of them cherished the moments of domesticity where they could get them.
Pearl moved to man the furnace. Once the fire had heated the pan inside to an appropriate temperature she carefully placed one of the pork chops onto the heated stone. The sound of pork sizzling filled the air, followed shortly by the chopping staring back up again. Cleo took note from the corner of her eye that Pearl was only cooking one of the pork chops.
After the reveal of Cleo's turning, the two of them had danced around the subject. It wasn't that they ignored that Cleo was now a vampire but more of a silent shift to incorporate and adapt to the change. There was a part in Cleo which knew that Pearl was only continuing to be kind because she was unaware of their monstrous actions. After all Pearl was a monster hunter, if she knew the truth, she would surely hate them. And they wouldn't blame her.
The sizzling of the pan had faded as Pearl removed the cooked pork and placed it on one of the plates. Cleo passed the cut and lightly seasoned potato wedges to Pearl.
"Thank you," She said as she added the potatoes to the pan and begun to cook them. Cleo moved to set the table for the meal. They placed two wooden carved forks across the table from one another. The plates, which were also made of wood and that were carved to be used as both plates and bowls, remained next to Pearl so she could add the potatoes once done.
Eventually the potatoes finished and Pearl swiftly plated them, she then grabbed the two plates and brought them to the table.
"Here ya go," Pearl said with a smile as she placed the plate with the raw meat in front of where Cleo had sat down, they nodded their appreciation. Pearl's skirt swished as she made her way around the small table and sat down with her food.
The two of them began to eat and throughout the meal light banter was traded back and forth. Smiles and laughter and teases flowed freely as the two enjoyed the early morning air and their food. There was no rush, no earth-shattering conflict that demanded immediate attention. One could almost completely forget the insanity that the day to day life in Oakhurst had become.