Never before had I volunteered the sanctity of my home to another outside of my relative circle. Aside from immediate family, I had never brought anyone to Africa... let alone my actual township outside of Port Elizabeth. The conditions of the township were enough to keep most nonprofits out of the area, why should I bring an outsider into a place that might be too dangerous for NGO assistance? When I was young, I didn't understand why people who were pacifists, people who wanted to do good didn't come and assist us. My sisters tried to explain that sometimes places were too far gone to come back to life from the brink of anarchy. I still didn't understand, no, not until I was a player in the violent, high stakes game that ran the township. While I may have professed interest in providing help to my home, I wasn't ever really prepared to show the home of my nightmares to anyone else lest they begin to have bad dreams, too.

After involving Isolt in a waking, lucid nightmare of mine, we'd fallen into some kind of platonic intimacy after I had begun to allow my demons off their leashes and to get a breath of fresh air instead of forcing them to remain inside their cages. I was not ready to tame said demons, but it was more than time to allow them to stretch their legs. While I wanted to revel in Isolt's kind words that no, I was not hopeless, I found the notion trying and harder to accept than I would have liked. So instead of wandering in my internal darkness, I'd suggested we both might need time away from our routine lives. Visiting home might do me good, and it might offer the vampire a purpose that she hadn't seen since days when her heart was actually beating. I didn't mind the idea of spending more time with her, especially as she offered support I couldn't find elsewhere. Unfortunately, utilizing my support from my brother and sisters seemed somehow like it was enabling. They had witnessed relapses of mine over the years. They had witnessed me fall off track many times, I didn't want them to see me struggle, no... not now. Not since it had been years since I'd involved them in my sordid journey towards sobriety or towards any kind of personal, internal peace. It seemed to me that Isolt might find the trip to Africa invigorating; she would be able to provide something that no one else dared attempt to. Watching how she had handled me the night I obviously couldn't handle myself proved to me that her touch was healing, and would benefit so many more lives than just mine.

While I hadn't needed to pack much for the trip, I'd enlisted Elenore's help to advise Isolt on what to bring. It would be hot, it would be heavy, it would be dirty, and it would be disturbing at best. With that description in mind, I had prepared myself with the help of a sleeping pill prescribed by the good Doctor herself in order to keep myself from falling victim to doubting my decision to bring her home. Fortunate enough to sleep through any fitful memories or dreams, I awoke with a mild headache and hangover from the pill that had given me reprieve from my self doubt. It was with silence that I managed to siddle out the door with a mere duffle bag propped on my shoulder before slipping into the driver's seat of my car in order to pick Isolt up before heading to the airport. Arriving at her door shortly after I'd left my own apartment, I sleepily wandered up to her door before bending the lock and letting myself in.

"Coffee's in the car. The customs guy for this airline hates me and generally will search my bags and all so let's go, yeah?"

There was only a hint of tenacity in my voice as I yawned, attempting patience as I awaited Isolt's presence so we could leave for the airport and get in the vessel that would bring us to a whole different world.

"Wait, do you drink coffee? Oh wait. You drink blood. Ha, ha," I muttered, accepting the fact that I was going to be a raging pain in her ass until I had woken up a little more and wasn't reluctant to expose her to my past. Oh wait, that wasn't going to happen. My stomach was in knots in a way I'd felt mostly after a few hours after my last dose of the medication that was intended to help me get the rest of the heroin out of my system and keep it that way.