Grief

[libraryofbabel]

To exist is to have things to grieve; it is the rare individual who goes a lifetime without finding companionship in some form or another, and even then, the mind finds it possible to grieve other attachments—in a way, nostalgia can be said to be a sort of grief for the more abstract. When one passes the span of a natural life, therefore, it is natural to have even more grief upon one's shoulders, especially when one seeks to stay engaged with human lives.

Which is to say: when one is a vampire, it is commonplace to find oneself surrounded by death, eventually. If not disaster, if not the excesses of one's own hunger, then time will do the job. When the easiest way to protect oneself is to create distance, that's when humanity starts to fade from even the gentlest of vampires.

I suppose instead she chose to feel; she chose to live and die in the way that felt right to her. But if I can be so bold as to call myself a parent, even a surrogate one—what parent wants to outlive their child?

Would I ransom what remains of my soul to Hell, to give her one more chance? No, but she would not want that; I cannot bargain for her life. "For God so loved the world, He gave His only son—" and yet, He got His son back in the end, didn't he?

For all that I would never turn from this path I have chosen, for all that I believe regardless of any external confirmation that I believe in what is good and just—I wish that just once, God would answer even a single one of my prayers.