North

Within the Northern vicinity of the city, the wealthy gather behind meticulously trimmed hedges and high-class architecture. The pristine streets are paved with stone and the storefronts are brightly lit and inviting - for the right clientele. In the North, every establishment is eager to cater to the rich and the wealthy. Many such places are used to the sometimes peculiar requests of the otherworldly but here there is little that money cannot buy - whether it happens to be illegal or merely involves looking the other way. Vampires and Dark Hunters are often found upon these Northern streets, their long lives often contributing to their sizable wealth which allows them the luxuries that the North provides.

What You'll Find Here

Eternity
The VooDoo Room
The Witchery

Where you invest your love, you invest your life; [Anna]


Posted on January 11, 2017 by DAREIOS
North



It's not the long walk home that will change this heart, but the welcome I receive after the restart.



The sun sets. Dareios waits patiently for the orange haze to fade from behind the silhouettes of the skyscrapers and for the twinkling starts to appear in the hazy violet clouds overhead. He mists himself strategically with tap water - under his arm pits, on his forehead, at the base of his neck, to fit the part. Only then does he crack open his heavy front door and breathe in the smog-like night air of his beloved city.

Droplets of water beads on his forehead, neck and shoulders, casting Dareios' muscular form in a dazzling porcelain glow. It was a ruse, you see, a way for him to seem and feel normal. If he were human, perhaps he'd have a much warmer tone to skin as he sprinted, his feet taking long and easy strides across the cracked pavement, his pace easy but brisk in human terms. Of course Dareios could wiz through his neighborhood at virtually any pace he so wished, given the supernatural elements of his condition and age. But there was something methodical about jogging, about strapping on an tight-fitting pair of stretch pants from lululemon, lacing up his oh-so human-like Nikes, and running for an hour or two or three, depending on how bored or distracted he really was. It grounded him. It reminded him of where he came from. And most of all, it made him seem 'relatable' to the constituents of the city.

When he first started 'jogging' he would sometimes lose track of his pace, his gait growing far too long and feet moving far too quickly. Women walking home from the grocery store shriek and spin out of his way. It was a mental game for him to remember. Slow. Slow. But he's gotten pretty good at it. And now those women stop and wave. Sometimes they ask for a selfie.

Work waits for him back on his desk in his chambers, but Dareios isn't thinking about the numbers he has to crunch just yet. This is his personal time -- his few lonely hours where the past couldn't haunt him. His dreams were forbidden to pop up to the forefront of his mind. Just breathe like they do, he reminds himself, his chest suddenly rising and falling in quick succession.

He carried on in an easy lope, bored with his lazy strides and oddly enough, too distracted by his surroundings to enjoy the simple gesture of what "jogging" actually meant to him. His dark marbled eyes focused keenly on the details of every stoop of the brownstones he passed. He counted the chip marks, where black lacquer had given way to the steely gray metal poles underneath, in the needle-tipped fence posts of the passing yards. His vision followed the cracks in between the concrete sidewalk paths, and snaked after their broken forms that lead into the gutters and under the lamp posts.


Dareios Auerbach | Vampire | Vinyl

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