Similarities Restored

[Hayzie]

Hayzie nodded at Sombre's statement. She knew all too well how hard it was. The blonde girl had experienced nightmares for weeks after her friend's siring.

"I know..." she whispered as a sigh, "But it's... it's hard. I mean... I tried to go back..." Hayz confessed for the first time since she had come back, "but it's obvious. I just don't belong there any more. I can't belong there," she continued, lowering her gaze a little.

[Sombre Verite -Leaving-]

It seemed that for the first time since she had turned that night, one of her friends understood her complete abandonment. It was best for all. The meeting of any human now was almost unbearable, the throbbing noise as she watched the veins in their next expel blood, it twisted her mind.

“ah well, Change is beneficial really,” She said in a dead, unconvinced tone. “And you have a whole new place to fit in, Humans don’t fit well in the forest but the Lycans are as much apart of it as the trees themselves...”

Lycans somehow seemed so much more a part of the world than Vampires, tragic really and unavoidable.

[Hayzie]

“I don’t want to fit in though!” Hayzie answered fully aware that she was probably sounding like a little child as she closed her eyes in despair. The number of times she had heard those words over the past few weeks seemed to be infinite. “Don’t tell me you never wanted to go back, Sombre. You never wanted to turn back the clock and go back to being Cara?” she asked, her voice a little shaky. She knew her old friend would be as stubborn as a mule over this topic, but the previous time they had met, she had given Hayz a little wooden figurine. That could have meant anything, but to the blonde girl, it made her think that maybe, just maybe, she missed being who she was before.

“See, before, I was on the side of the tunnel lycans. Now, if I go back, I die. It’s that simple! It seems I’m not allowed to make my own decisions any more. I can’t even go and see the friends I made in the tunnels, and the one time I have gone there, it was to hand them a letter.

“I know it’s similar for a Vampire, having your life being dictated by the rise and fall of the sun, but is it what you wanted? Didn’t you hate it at first?” she asked, looking the girl right in the eye. “That was why took Marina, wasn’t it. You wanted some of Cara back…”

[Sombre Verite -Leaving-]

Sombre ever so slowly shook her head, “No Hayzie... That isn’t the reason I took her.” Sombre didn’t want to go into the issue. It was one of the few things that cut deeper than her porcelain exterior to the shattered remnants of the girl that had once held such promise. “I... I wanted to go back to the school... Not as Sombre, never as Sombre... As Cara.”<br>
She sighed, staring transfixed at her boot clad feet, pushing aside the leaf litter on the ground, but it wasn’t what she saw. Memories, the most dangerous thing you can take with you, and no one but you can really change that. “But when... when I realised... Cara was dead... Sombre was all there was...” She cut herself off, shaking her head.

She spoke again, her eyes clear with resolve, “The past is the past Hayzie. Don’t bother mourning it, it wont change. What you have now, this is the present. Don’t be sop wrapped up in the past as to nt live for now.

“You are a Lycan. You are Miss Hayzie Roberts, ex-member of Magical Horizons School and lastly, not undermined by anything, but not undermining anything itself, you are Lycan.” Sombre’s eyes stared calmly into Hayzie’s as she nodded, almost encouragingly, “If you don’t accept that, you wont fit in ANYWHERE. If you don’t accept that, you’ll never be able to make your own decisions.”<br>
She turned around, back towards the caves, taking a few steps forward, she paused and turned back. “On e of the forest obviously turned you. It was no doubt because you interfered with THEIR war. You made you decisions Hayzie, you just weren’t ready for the repercussions.”

[Hayzie]

“So you did want to come back,” Hayzie mumbled under her breath. She should have known that Sombre was being too quiet, that she kept herself reserved more and more each day, but she had thought nothing of it. Just that it was normal. The calm look about her vampire friend was starting to scare her, especially seeing as the words and tone she was using was so harsh, yet true at the same time.

She watched on silently as Sombre turned and started to walk away, not even bothering to call her back. The blonde lycan only spoke when she spoke last. It seemed as though while they had been the worst of enemies, yet the best of friends, Cara had got to know her too well. “You’re right,” she answered, almost lightly. “It was one of the forest, and yes I did try to interfere… but think about it. The war would have affected your kind as well. I know that some vampires have offered to help the tunnel lycans, yet you walk around the forest as calmly as anything.”

Hayz thought back on Sombre’s words, all of them. “And Cara didn’t die. If Cara had died, Sombre wouldn’t be standing here now. What happened to the person we used to know? The stubborn one who used to breathe authority. Now, you’re just someone’s play thing. Don’t you see that?” she asked, turning away herself. It was obvious to her that the two girls wouldn’t be able to get on now as well as they did before.

[Sombre Verite -Leaving-]

Sombre made a sound somewhere between a screech, a hiss and a snarl as she turned around a venomous look in her eyes. “A play thing? Anything but that my dear Hayzie,” Her tone was as strained as she had ever used, her anger at being defiled with such simple words surging through her.

“The fact that I walk through this forest like when, like you said, so many of my kind have joined the tunnel Lycans. Lycans are pack animals, Vampires are lone. I am no ones mere ‘play thing’, I, for the first time in my life, am my own person,” She shook her head, her eyes some how losing their ferociousness.

“Cara is as dead as the grave. I am the personification of her... better qualities,” Sombre slowed her voice, making sure Hayzie was understanding her. “You, of all people Hayz... You should know...” She shook her head.

“It seems old allegiances can’t be reforged even with similarities restored,”
Sombre dipped her head slightly, whether in acknowledgement or sorrow and once again turned to make the long trek back to the security of the tunnels darkness.

[Hayzie]

“Sombre!” Hayzie called out, a desperate tone in her voice, but the vampires had already gone, the darkness enveloping her.

For a few seconds, the blonde girl walked round in frustrated circles, trying, and failing, to piece together the ever-complicated puzzle of events. Cara wasn’t dead. She never would be. As long as Sombre was alive, a part of Cara would be too. The vampiress knew that, but would refuse to believe it.

“Better qualities? I’ve seen better qualities in a baboon!” she muttered under her breath, staring at where her old friend had been standing only moments before.

Shaking her head, Hayzie headed back off into the forest, and it hit her for the first time how she was heading in the opposite direction to everyone she had ever known.