The Donor House: Georgina: A Conversation with Jean-Luc

[k_a_webb]

Written for Elizabeth’s Barrette’s prompt.

Georgina wandered out of the back door, unable to sleep again, to find Jean-Luc busy covering himself with sunscreen. He smiled over at her and she found herself making her way over to him, glancing back at the house as she did. The majority of the vampires slept during the day, like she’d expected from what she’d read and seen before she applied to join the donor house, so to find a vampire out in the sun was strange, especially as he hadn’t been burnt in any way. She had a feeling that no matter how long she spent at the house she’d still find herself needing to ask questions to learn more about them.

“Would you do my back, Georgina?” Jean-Luc asked, making her jump. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“It’s fine.”

“What were you thinking about?”

Taking the bottle of sunscreen he held out Georgina shook her head. “Nothing important really.”

After a moment spent studying her Jean-Luc answered the question she hadn’t been ready to ask and she couldn’t help wondering once more if it was possible that they could read minds. “Vampire fiction takes from the myths about us written before we allowed the world to know of our existence. We don’t burn in the sunlight any more than a human would, which is why I chose to use sunscreen. The reason the majority of vampires sleep during the day and hunt at night is because hunting at night is easier. At the house the vampires follow the same pattern as a way to keep the donors safe, because a locked door wouldn’t keep a vampire out. It does, however, deter the human hunters.”

“So you wouldn’t have to be invited beyond a threshold in order to enter a house?”

Jean-Luc shook his head. “Thresholds don’t have any affect on us at all. Neither does running water, crosses or garlic, and a stake would kill anyone if you stabbed them in the heart..”

“Does anything affect you differently to humans?”

“A lot of things affect us differently, but mostly we’re less affected than more. If you take the weather as an example it doesn’t bother a vampire if it’s hot or cold outside, unless they haven’t been feeding regularly, and even then it depends on the vampire. Younger vampires will often still be human enough to feel the cold or eat something and be able to taste it, while older vampires…” Sighing, Jean-Luc glanced up at the sun. “The longer you’re a vampire the less everything affects you. The sun is out, so I know it’s hot out, but my body temperature is the same as it was when it was cloudy yesterday and the same as it would be if it snowed.”

“That sounds horrible,” Georgina said honestly, making sure that all of Jean-Luc’s back was covered with sunscreen. “Are there days when you wish you were still human?”

“Yes, the same way every vampire in this house sometimes wishes they were still human, but there are advantages to being immortal, Georgina. If I wasn’t immortal I wouldn’t have been able to see the way the world has changed in the years I’ve been alive and I wouldn’t have had a chance to get to know the people I’m friends with now.”

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

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No typos spotted.

It sounds like vampires would be very prone to depression.