Wet and annoyed, I disappeared from the restaurant long before they could even process what happened.  I marched down the sidewalk and paused at a shop door before slipping inside and heading to the back where I knew some computers would be.  The bookshop owner raised an eyebrow at my wet state but didn’t say anything.

That told me enough right there.  The bookshop owner knew I tipped exceedingly well, which meant I’d been here often enough they recognized me.  Which meant I’d been in town too long.  I didn’t like when people knew me, it felt too…risky.  Maybe it was just the life I led in the shadows, but being visible and known always felt like some kind of danger even if I wasn’t aware of any actual danger.

It was time to move on to a new city.

I flipped on the computer and ran through a few things, leaving my erstwhile potential employers a nice surprise if they ever tried to find me again, then switched to the news, trying to find anything that looked like it could be an interesting place to visit with things happening.  Good or bad things, didn’t really matter.  Just eventful.

I took out my phone and set it on the desk, noticing that Sorrel had sent yet another message.

This one wasn’t a funny pic or joke, though.

Sorrel: Hey, is everything okay?  You haven’t really answered me in a couple of days, just the emoticons.  Anything you need to talk about?

I stared at the phone.  Weird, him sending that right after what happened.  Obviously he didn’t know about what just happened and it wasn’t even that big of a deal – it’d happened before – but the timing was…interesting.

I debating telling him about it but decided he’d just worry so I went with something else.  Me: Just thinking it’s time to move again.  I’ve been here too long.

Instant response.  Sorrel: How long have you been there?  Didn’t you only get there like three weeks ago?

Me: Some cities run out of interest sooner rather than later, dude.  You ever tried eating the same food every day for three weeks and not get tired of it?  This place is too small, I need more variety.

This time there was a pause before his response.  Sorrel: You could always come back to Avenglade for a visit, it’s big enough it should give you some variety, right?

I rolled my eyes.  Me: Hey the condition of this friendship was it’s long-distance only.  If I come back to Avenglade for work or any reason, you gotta take a trip, remember?

Sorrel: What, you’re that upset about the idea of seeing my face again?

Actually…his face wasn’t so bad.  He’d sent me a selfie recently where he was crouched down next to one of his patients, smiling – I’d only ever seen him frowning or looking serious, so that was a new look.

But yeah, not admitting that.  Me: Rules are rules, dude.

Sorrel: I thought you like breaking the rules?

Me: Hey, some rules are best kept.  You just gotta figure out which ones are good to break.  Seatbelts?  That’s a rule to keep.  Kinda helpful to stay all in one piece, you know?  Hair all one color and style stays the same all the time?  Nope, no way.  I have way too much fun with switching out the style and color and life’s too short to care what people think about that.  That reminds me, I’m actually thinking of trying a Mohawk.

    I waited for his answer, curious about what he’d say to this.  I wasn’t disappointed.

    Sorrel: Well, that would be…different, but if you want to try, go for it.

I take it back.  Not disappointed, true, but surprised.  He was getting more okay with my free spirit, I guess?  I’d expected him to sputter more at the idea.

Me: Bright pink.  Maybe grow it long enough in the back to work like a tail.

He responded with a laughing emoticon, apparently realizing I wasn’t serious this time. 

We went back and forth for a while, discussing other rules that were meant to be kept or broken, before I decided it was time to leave the bookstore and head back to my hotel room and get ready to leave.

He’d been right, I realized.  It was kind of nice to have someone I could talk to, who knew some of what was going on in my life.  I knew him a lot better than he knew me, because I didn’t open up much, but…what was there to open up about?  Who wants to hear about decades of wandering from city to city, doing odd jobs when I felt like it?

Put it that way, my life did sound kind of sad.  No wonder Sorrel felt sorry for me and had decided he’d be my long-distance friend.  I chuckled a little to myself.  Nope, I liked my life, I just didn’t think other people would be interested in it, and that was fine with me.

As long as I was happy, what did it matter if anyone or everyone thought my life was boring or lonely or whatever word they wanted to apply?

~~~~

1 year, 8 months ago

Sorrel: What are you up to today?

I paused my perusal of the forums to look at Sorrel’s message.  Me: The usual stuff.  Prowling around on the internet.  Did you know that fairies have a minty taste to their energy?  Never been a fan of mint.

Sorrel: That’s unfortunate, I guess.  I thought you didn’t eat much supernatural energy, though?

I got up and went to sit down in a comfier chair.  Me: We can’t really stop what kind we get.  We get some supernatural energy by default, but it’s not very filling.

His answer took longer than I expected in coming.  Sorrel: Hey, you want to talk?

I frowned at the phone, starting to unlace my knee-length boots.  Me: Aren’t we talking now?

My phone rang.  He was calling.  Oh, that kind of talking.  I rolled my eyes.

“What up, weirdo?  Got any interesting animals in the clinic lately?”

Sorrel laughed at my greeting.  “Actually, yes.  We had a shifter brought in by accident.  Someone saw what they thought was a mountain lion hit by a car and animal control brought it in sedated.  Turned out it was a shifter.  We would normally send it to the hospital instead, but some humans had been recording and posting online about how a mountain lion got so close to town and a news outlet actually showed up, asking what was going to happen to it and so on.  We should have had people investigate when it was reported an animal was hit, but our people were kind of busy so they missed it until it was too late.  We had to deal with the whole situation really carefully.  Bring in some of our own doctors in the back way, let them treat the shifter, then eventually announce they were being transported to a safe location, and so on.”

I was kind of impressed.  I didn’t think vet clinics could get that exciting.  “You are a vet, though, and a fairy – couldn’t you just treat them yourself?”

“I know animal anatomy; human, not so much.  I guess I could technically treat shifters when they’re in shifted form, but it’s better to have a doctor that understands shifters and what happens to the bones when they shift forms, for instance.  And yeah, I have healing magic, but we have to be careful not to heal things incorrectly so we try to use healing magic only in conjunction with a doctor.”

I kicked my feet up and got comfier.  “Sounds complicated.”

“Eh, it’s actually pretty normal for us.”  I could hear noises in the background, like he was leaving his clinic, probably.  “I love my family to pieces, but it comes with being involved in politics sometimes.  We get in the middle of stuff like this all the time.  Most people are like ‘hey, let’s just call the patrol and be done with it,’ while we’re more like ‘let’s help the patrol, deal with the subsequent PR issues, arrange for follow-up assistance,’ and so on.”

“That sounds like a fairy problem,” I told him, my tone deeply serious but my eyes laughing.  “All you fairies just insist on getting involved and helping.”

“In my people’s defense, I have to say we’re not actually all the get-involved type.”

“Sure, sure.”  I rolled my eyes and laughed a little.

“Do you ever see any of your people?”  Sorrel sounded curious, but I sighed a little.  He never really got it.

“We’re not as social as you, dude.  We actually tend to avoid each other so as not to infringe on each other’s territory.  Plus, there’s not that many of us, the chances of running into another one are pretty low.”

“I see.”  He paused for a while.  “I mean, if there’s up to 1000, it still seems like you’d run into them occasionally, especially if you tend to congregate in larger towns where more energy is.  But I guess if you avoid each other…it seems weird that you’d never get a chance to, I don’t know, compare notes or anything?”

There wasn’t anywhere close to 1000 of us, I knew that, but I also wasn’t going to explain why our numbers were significantly lower than his dad expected.

“Dude, why do you always want to talk about how sad it is that I don’t see my own kind?  How about we talk about how weird it is that you still live with your parents?  Come on, you’re, what, late 20s?  Isn’t that like a pathetic thing for humans?”

“Well first, pretty sure that’s only for adult humans living in their parent’s basement or something without a job and not trying to get one.  Second, not human.  Third, I do actually have a job.  A good one, for that matter.  Fourth, I do actually have my own place.”  Sorrel sounded amused.

This was news to me.  “You have your own place?  Why don’t you live there?”

“It’s a condo near my clinic,” he explained.  “I don’t spend much time there.  It’s more for days I have long hours at the clinic and don’t want to drive all the way home.  I’d get lonely living there by myself.”

“Ugggh.”  I flopped back more in my chair.  “You fairies are so clingy, always wanting people around.  Fiiiine, be that way, live with your parents.”

He laughed.  “Thanks, glad to have your permission.”

We talked about some other things, case progress – nothing much to report, unfortunately – how his siblings were doing in their respective universities, that sort of thing.  Eventually Sorrel had to go so he could eat, leaving me staring at the phone thoughtfully.

When had randomly chatting with Sorrel become fun?  It was kind of a shame, really, that we didn’t get along back when we met in person.  I kind of regretted it now.  It’d be nice to see what his face looked like when he laughed, for instance.  Not something I would ever see now, though.  That was the deal I’d made with myself for agreeing to be his friend – no in-person contact again.

~~~~

9 months ago

Sorrel: Claire?

Sorrel: Hello?

Sorrel: Everything okay?

Sorrel: You haven’t answered in weeks.  Does this number still work?  Are you okay?  Please just message me back so I know you’re alive.

Sorrel: Claire, please.  Did I do something?  If I did, I’m sorry.

Sorrel: You’re not answering your email, either.  I asked Captain Dennis to reach out just to make sure you’re still alive, but he couldn’t reach you.  Please just let us know you’re okay.

Sorrel: We have a new case – someone else disappeared from Havensville, same MO.  If you don’t want to speak to me again, that’s fine, but we could really use your help.

Sorrel: Claire?

Sorrel: Please, Claire, just…give me some kind of indication you’re still alive.  Please.

Sorrel: …I miss you.

I stared at the last message with dead eyes.  He’d sent it almost a week after the one before that, with the others spread out over a period of about 5 weeks.  Nothing since the last one.  I couldn’t exactly blame him.  It’s not like I was giving him any encouragement to keep trying.

I set my phone down and looked out the window at the city.  Rain.  It felt like how I felt, sad, dreary, and depressed.  I’d tried to pull out of it, tried to visit new places and taste new things, but nothing worked.

I was in my downward spiral, and I knew it.  The real reason why techno vampires didn’t like making connections?  Besides our professional lifestyles, the tendency of people to disbelieve in our existence, or our personal preferences to float free?

We were all doomed.  We were a hybrid species which never really should exist, and unfortunately we could only last so long.  50 years on average, the longest being almost 80 – far less than even the average human life, let alone supernaturals who often lived hundreds of years.  Me?  I was several decades old, but I wouldn’t make it through another.

Eventually, our bodies turn on us.  Energy grows stale and the very energy that feeds us starts to eat us alive, making us feel every emotion that rides with the energy.  We may go crazy, try to lock ourselves away from any electronics just to make the never-ending wave of emotions we can’t control stop.  Or we may turn dead inside, like I was.  Unfeeling, immune to all the emotions but depression.  Slowly, slowly, nothing remained of who we were and eventually, we’d simply cease leeching energy.  It wasn’t something we could consciously control, but when our bodies and minds were tired out, at some point it would just…stop.  And soon after we’d die.

I’d realized my spiral had started about five months ago.  That was when I sent my last text to Sorrel.  A carefully worded one, telling him I was heading to a new place and looking forward to the future.  I didn’t think he’d get the reference, but it was the closest I could come to saying goodbye.

This was why techno vampires didn’t make friends.  People like Sorrel, they couldn’t understand how quickly death could come for us.  This wasn’t part of their life.  He didn’t need to have the pain of a friend dying, not when I knew how soft his heart was under that hard exterior.  He’d feel bad about me, he’d grieve my loss.  As much as a part of me wanted that – wanted just one person who would remember me instead of letting me fade into nameless oblivion – it wasn’t really fair to him.

So I’d stopped responding.  I still read every email, every text, read them many times over even, but…no response.  I couldn’t reach out now, not to let him last a little longer under this pretense.  I wasn’t going to tell him – he’d never know what truly happened to me, no one would.  One day I’d just die, then fade back into the energy my life was made of.  There wouldn’t even be a body left.  It was better to disappear from his life now, before he got any more attached, than risk letting him get hurt even worse – or letting me accidentally slip up and tell the truth.

I didn’t know how much longer I had.  Spirals could take a couple years to complete, but never more than three.  They could be a short as a few months, though.  I’d try to hang on, because I did like living – or…I used to.  I think.  I couldn’t remember if I liked it now.  It just felt so dull, so bleak, so empty.

The only thing I felt anymore was sadness.  Sadness and regret over Sorrel.  If I’d never sent that email responding to his, maybe I wouldn’t feel so bad that he was somewhere, missing me, wondering what happened – a question he would never have answered.

It was a shame.  He really was a nice fairy.