Beth groaned as her head swam, everything a strange and fractured blur. Her head was pounding and she desperately wanted a Tylenol. She remembered the club, remembered her boyfriend Liam. They had an argument, she thought. About what she couldn’t remember, and truthfully didn’t really care. She never cared much for him, he was just a fling. Something for fun. 

Slowly she sat up, her world spinning. She felt so strange, like something held its breath, like she was waiting for – something. The late morning sun streamed into the sitting room of her house. Well, her parent’s house. Her mother’s stare was ice, and she knew she was due another lecture she didn’t want. 

“Where were you that you had to be dragged home in the night by some,” Her mother stuttered, “some private investigator?”

Beth didn’t try to hide her wince. She truthfully had no idea and feared that maybe she went too far, to someplace too seedy. Was she drugged?

“I… I don’t know.” 

Her mothers eyes softened, but only a hair. 

“You need to get your life together. You have every opportunity to do whatever you want. Yet you insist on all this… nonsense. It is time to grow up Bethany.” She snapped, glaring eyes raking up Beth, “Time to do more than get black out drunk and party.”  

There it was, Beth thought and she tuned her mother out. She didn’t care, not about her fathers political ambitions, her mothers goings on at the law firm. It was all just so pointless. They derided her things, her love of fashion, and expression. Yet that is all they did, just another kind of theater. She wouldn’t say that, not again. That lecture never ended. 

“Yes, mother.” She sighed, with a frown, “You may be right. I truthfully don’t remember a thing.” 

Her mother gave her one last long look, before getting up, grabbing her things and leaving. She was alone, again, in this damn house. She found it far more suffocating than the cloying scent of bodies and smoke of a dance floor. She lived for getting lost in music and movement.

Is that still true?

Yet she couldn’t shake the feeling something was new. Her mind was so foggy. She grumbled slowly ascending the stairs to the second story. She needed her room and a shower. Glancing at the baggy tee, she really didn’t have a clue where this came from. 

She sighed, as she stepped into her bathroom and stripped, gasping when she her ruined bra, discolored with so much blood. 

How did that happen? WHAT happened?

Checking her body, she found nothing. Nothing to indicate she was hurt. A phantom ache pulsed through her chest, but there wasn’t anything there.

She just couldn’t shake the feeling curling in her belly, a new and growing need for… something. Without thinking on it further, Beth popped a Tylenol and hopped in the shower letting herself rejuvenate in the cascading hot water. After blowing through an impressive amount of hot water she took to her room and shut the door and switched on music and let it wash over her before scrolling her social media. At first it was the usual fluff and nonsense, posts of acquaintances girl bossing into careers, or whatever. Then – she saw some confusing posts. 

“We will miss you Liam.”

“Rest in Peace friend.” 

And more like that. Her mind was blank, numb. Not in sadness but in a kind of strange confusion, and her head pounded more. Each beat of the music she had on thrummed in her head, in her mind. She shook her head and closed out of it, opening her photos. She was sure, sure, she was with Liam last night. He couldn’t be dead. 

She gasped and froze at the last picture on her phone. A woman, dark hair, pale as the moon, dark eyes shimmering like a cat’s in the dark. Blood dripped from her chin as she was dropping Liam. Flickers and sounds and images flooded her mind. The argument. He had been kissing some other bitch. She walked out on him and he followed. She slapped him, and he hit back. Then

“Silence.” She couldn’t say anything as icy tendrils wove web in her mind. She watched her move faster than she could blink, slamming him against the wall. She could see the look of bliss as she bit.

Something new curled in her belly again, low and foreign. A dark hum. She watched as the memories flickered by, a projector on repeat. She remembers the two men, the gun shot, being shot. The way the cold pulled at her, drowning, falling. She remembered the pain of fingers in the wound pulling the bullet out and the inky darkness, something new, something different than the pull of the void she felt. She felt… strong and cold. The name… Melody came to her, she wasn’t sure why.

“Sleep.” 

It was the last thing she remembered before waking up. No wound, no feeling of one foot in the grave, but she could… feel her, out there. Somewhere. Somewhere in the city. That curling ache tightened in her belly once more.  She… she knew she had to find her. She didn’t know what she would do when she did, but she couldn’t let it go even if she didn’t feel this connection. 

“Come on, Beth, this is insane.” She spoke to herself, “This isn’t possible.”

She would prove it to herself. She would just look up the name, so Beth took her time and focused on this… this link she had. She focused on where she felt the name came from. Melody… Chambers. She had no idea how or why she kept coming to that name, but she did. So she searched for it and found her. The same woman, though she looked different. Not pale, not with those eyes. 

So she does… exist.

She didn’t know what to think beyond that. She does exist. She has this photo and Liam is dead. She didn’t know where that left her, so she ignored it. She spent the day on her social media curating her perfect image. The distraught girlfriend who just lost someone they cared about, even though they didn’t terribly. Especially after last night.

She played with her clothes, putting together new outfits, new fashions. She sketched and wrote but nothing, nothing, drowned out the little tug at the corner of her mind. She glanced down at her latest sketch. It didn’t need to look like her, but she knew it was. A body without a face, a dynamic pose, in the dark. 

As the sun glided down past the horizon, the tug became a siren’s call. She could feel it, feel her. She could feel her tension and relief as the night went on. She could feel her growing close and further as she did… whatever it was she did during the night. She knew when she fed again, she could feel that hazy euphoria cloud over her mind. Then… jealousy. 

She wanted that and to give Melody that euphoria. She wanted what she had, what she was. She… could feel the line blur between Melody and herself and it drove her mad. Everything that she was, it was intoxicating. And she chose to save her. She idly wondered if what she did was changing her, yet she found… she didn’t really care that much if it were changing her.

Suddenly life felt very… new. Very full of possibility. If… she was real. If what she was, was real, and she was chosen, then maybe… she could find someone who did see her for what she is. Or maybe Melody saw something in her she didn’t know yet.

As the sun rose, the next morning, Beth hadn’t slept, but she knew what she would do. She would make herself into whatever Melody needed. Movement, art, expression, she would mold herself to the one that chose her, the one that saved her.

All her life she longed for that one prince charming to show up and take her away from everything. From the jaded theater for adults pretending they knew what they were doing, from people that pretended they cared about what they did. Now, now, she knows the truth. She didn’t need a prince charming, not when the dragon saved you. That was real, that was what she wanted, needed, and she wouldn’t stop until she stood by her side.