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From: The Bane of Yorkshire
"It lingers there...behind my eyes...wrapping its tendrils around them whenever my eyelids creased to closing."
She sat there, kneeling upright in her seat at the couch, the calls having died down for a short time from the enterpising politicians of the region while they dined on their late snacks or returned home to their families. The Ventrue had been awake for days, answering each call and ignoring her more vampiric needs of daily slumber and regular feeding, and now she paid the price. Now, her Beast was trying to rebel.
"I am more than the sum of my parts. I am something other than these foul urges. The spirit overcomes the mind and body."
Her eyes remained closed as she drifted in and out of consciousness. She desperately wanted some of that delicious, wet plasma in the refrigerator... Alas, that was NOT Lucille. It was her Beast, speaking to her in a goading rationale to have a drink...just a small sip...what would that hurt? As if that was not enough, her nightmares shocked her in mild waves that reminded her of a coastal tide, albeit not quite as tumultuous. In each image, she was mortal, drowned in an ocean of blood she had imbibed, pulled down into the suffocating sea by the hands of the vengeful.
A trickle of her own vitae slid from her left nostril down to her upper lip, and over, resting in the crevice between upper and lower lips. Was it the strain that caused this trickle, or did the Beast cause it to mock her? The scarlet liquid seemed to try to find purchase into her mouth, to her waiting tongue, where she would lap at herself in a fierce display of autocannibalism. She idly pondered if the ensuing frenzy would be severe enough to make her chew off her own lips and tongue, as it had in times past. Her Beast was as stubborn as she was, patiently waiting, but always insisting on emerging when it finally found excuse to.
This time, the situation was different. Nay, SHE was different. She wanted no part of allowing her filthy Beast out. She had, in recent years, enjoyed a lull in her Beast's activity, and in that time had grown sick of its company. In earlier times, however, she had indeed enjoyed her Beast on many levels, allowing it free to the point where her Humanity had hung precariously in the balance, ready to drop into the abyss and take her soul along with it...but no more. This time, she battled it with every ounce of strength she had, steeling herself against its impulses, denying it even the slightest oppurtunities to emerge...and trampling it into the dankest recesses of her soul.
No blood, except when SHE decided. No deaths, except when SHE deemed it necessary. No escapades, no pursuits, no adventures, no playtime for this Beast anymore...it was no longer welcome in this body, even if it was a part of her. She had been a Beast even in life, but had at least been able to choose to make those mistakes. Whatever she was, now, it was no longer the despotic Dame Lillian of Yorkshire...denial, though it may be, her past was, well, just that: past.
She slowly opened her eyes and watched the silent great room where her meditative trance had begun. The gloomy habitat hid the expression of wonder splayed across her face at the eerie calm that washed over her form from the ordeal. This was twice that she had resisted her baser impulses, though this time she did not require leaping off a parking garage to the pavement...nor did this ordeal require the use of a potential victim.
Slowly, she gathered herself and rose from the couch, entering into the foyer, then the kitchen, plucking out a plasma bag and taking a sip as she wiped away her lips delicately with a gesture...this time, not because she needed to...but because she wanted to.
The lines were drawn, and her Beast retreated for now, knowing that the noblewoman had achieved a rare stranglehold over it...this time.