Helena rose slowly on this morning, her routine eerily similar to these past few days. She waited beneath the comfort of her quilt until the morning began to dip into the softness of the midday.

The days straddled a thinness, but progress at a thick pace; hollow hours that tick by at a turtle’s pace. As though her own mind was rooted, was stuck somewhere between the aflame candle and its melting wax.

Her crucifix, take down from its space above her bed now sat sadly on her side table. A thin hole where it once hung. Jesus’ hollow eyes hooked onto the sight of wooden beams and stone walls above him.

Rising, Helena changed into her day clothes, a long white dress with golden rings of embroidery that matched her locks. Leisurely, she took her strands of hair, twisting them into braids before pinning them to the back of her head.

Mousy steps lead her into the kitchen. Glancing around every inch as she made her way there. Ursula’s silhouette was built into the stone and ivory of the castle. For every turn of the corner, Helena made, she saw her looming outline. Taunting her in its shadow crusted form.

Sitting in the middle of the kitchen, tucked inside a golden vase was a bundle of red roses. Leaning forward, Helena took a sharp breath inwards; a velvet floral smell, violet leaf and hints of honeycomb swirling around her.

She spent much of her time holed up in her room, reading, looking through the newspaper for a new accommodations. None seemed to match what she was looking for. For now, she was stuck.

For what would be the last time tonight, Helena ventured from the safety of her room. She made her way down the gaspingly large staircase and passed by the crystal windows one last time.

Then, she sees her. Bent over and fixing the petals of her roses. Body at ease, shoulders dipping above the garden like the hand of God reached into her small microcosm of growing plants.

Ursula.

Nothing on her betrayed her soullessness; it mirrored exactly to the Ursula she knew; hair like a waterfall at midnight - onyx hair draping down her back, her carved cheekbones, the small beauty mark above her lip. But now, everything was undercut and undermined by an overwhelming sense of horror.

She did not look like the Vampyr Helena had been taught. None of the drooping or sagging skin, razor sharp teeth that descended far past their bottom lip nor the putrid smell of death that was supposed to follow them.

She still had not confessed her job offer. The weight of it sat on her chest, as did the truth she knew now. How would she begin? How would she confess that the interview was to be ceased because she felt no loyalty to the newspaper in Goodlands and not no loyalty for her.

Ursula turned, eyes falling onto Helena’s rigid frame. “Helena.” Raspy as though she had not spoken in hours, Ursula breaks her silence to vocalize only one word.

Helena did not respond. Her silence still maintaining like that of a dam overlooking a swirling waterfall. Perhaps she had been moon-drunk. Had it all been a nightmare?

But the stench of iron lingered in her mind as though it had written itself into her skin. Now, she was stuck within the confines of this indescribable and ghastly dream.

“Helena?”

The walls swallowed all of the words she could have uttered. Helena’s gaze planted itself onto the castle floors.

Her back felt the cold stone as Ursula took another step forward. Though the cold stone was nothing as bitter and glacial as the palms of one reclusive and confusing Ursula Athanasia. “Helena, are you feeling alright?”

Helena. Helena. Helena. Ursula’s lips wrapped around the vowels and syllables and constants of her name with concern and confusion.

Helena. Helena. Helena. Her mind felt as though it clung to the edge of a cliffside, which way she might go was of complete mystery. Ursula’s smooth and soothing and deep voice like empty caverns that echoed her name with a beckoning call. Every opposite to the monster she had seen that night. The monster she had read about in fairytales. But this was no fairytale.

The Vampyr was the devil. But how could the Devil look like this? Feel like this? Perhaps this was a test of God. Perhaps she would succeed and prove her worth to the almighty.

And yet, as Ursula’s cold palms pressed against her forehead in examination and with scrutiny, she felt closer to God than she ever had in Church. Eyes fluttering into a restful close, Helena wondered if it could always be like this. A quiet moment, sharing in their solitude, soaking up the knowledge within this abode as if it was the only knowledge to consume. A fire crackling and beckoning them to near it, to bask in its vermillion warmth.

The fantasy ran her head in circles. But she knew it could now happen, she knew the truth now.

And so, she scrambled away, “I-I’m perfectly well, simply taking my day at a leisurely pace.”

A holy war playing out its drama in the characteristics and colours of her visage. The corners of her lips tightly pulled inwards as her finger pads lifted to her lips. The dip and curve now overshadowed by the length of her nails.

Helena’s breath’s her heavier now, bowing into her chest cavity as her lungs deflated. Ursula did not tear her gaze from Helena, the bore into her, studying her endlessly. They stood on two side of a separated coast now, overlooking the blue and black sea. Marvelling at how quickly it’s gape had swallowed them whole.

“But simply, let me be.” Helena pleaded with an outstretched hand. Now, she attempted to walk past her as strangers one last time.

Ursula said nothing in response. Only a dull nod at Helena. Letting her whisk herself back up into the bitter stone walls of her bedroom.