But tonight I feed on the lush green grass hoping to postpone my need to satisfy an overwhelming appetite. It tingles on the soles of my feet, but gives no feeling to my ankles or calves. I laugh at myself. I truly am a fool to forget the basic lessons. This will not help. It only whets my hunger.  

I pause digging my toes deep into the damp earth and wait. The camp of the elarphane beckons to me, but I find another walker to the south. It is my maidservant, Alyssia. She often follows me, hoping to discover my secrets. I have always attracted shadows of myself, mirrors of my own insatiable desire for hidden and forbidden knowledge. They come willingly into my service always full of dreams that I will teach them the mysteries they believe I possess.  

I think it is time to reveal myself to her. After tonight I hope not to need her service, so I will answer the questions that haunt her dreams, but mercifully I will give her to the sleep where the answers cannot become nightmares.  

Alyssia hesitates, but I draw her forward with a wave of my hand. She rushes forward across the garden path. Like a coquette, her heart begins to pound flirtatiously in her chest teasing and tempting me to take it and silence its steady and rapid rhythm.  

Alyssia is beside me. Her small chest heaving, her pale blue eyes glittering, large knuckled hands twisting expectantly in her skirts. I take her hand. It is warm and dry. I smile. It is strange that she loves me and desires me, coveting my person as much as she covets my knowledge. I understood the latter, but the former was alien and disconcerting. In this moment, I realize that my transformation has not been so great.  

Before the change, I had used people and things until they no longer served me and then I cast them away like so much rubbish. I have always suspected Alyssia of the same motivations, but this is not true. She wants to share the mysteries with me in some intimate exchange of love.  

I almost reward her for being able to surprise me after so many years by releasing her hand. But my need is great and instead I begin to let her life seep into the skin of my palm. She cries out in pain, and tries to pull away. I pull her close and enfold her into my embrace. My body molds itself to her flesh draining the warmth and life from it. Her heart jumps and pumps frantically sending out blood in an effort to renew the life I am taking from her. Soon it begins to slow and falter.  

It is time.  

I bend back her head and close my mouth over hers and drink the sweet breath of her soul and spirit.  

Alyssia's body is brittle and shatters into a thousand shards as I drop her to the ground. There is nothing left in it to even nourish the ground which will soon swallow it. It is because of this, my kind is hated and cursed by the very earth we walk. Death is not unnatural in this world. It does not even judge why or how it comes. But it does begrudge us the total theft of energy which we must have to survive. Because we are immortal, we rob from the cycles of rebirth, and what we take is never returned. Not even the sacred and holy soul that is said to be a spark from the divine fire. It is lost from this realm forever and thus it is enraged and fills its children with fear and hatred of our kind.  

And yet there are always children like Alyssia, like me, who ignore her warnings and find either damnation or annihilation.