Demon and Fairy WeWriWar 5

Hello Warriors and dear readers. 

Thank you so much for all the comments you left on last week-end snippet and special thanks to Cindy and Natalie for the edits, Siren Star for the shout out and Sharon for the head up about autocrit.  

Now let's go to this week snippet, more on Demon and Fairy

In the previous episodes, Seti was in pain and flying to see Kallisto who is the only person who can help him get ride of it. He remembered how he had met her the first time but unfortunately this time it was late at night and she was nowhere to be seen. Seti couldn't spend the night on the Beach and decided to fly home not noticing that another demon entered her house. Last week we discovered Seti's chaotic bedroom today we are going to meet his family.

Here are my 8 sentences

He opened the kitchen door. His father was sitting at the table arguing with his mother and his sister was in tears.

“The day had started so well”, Seti thought for himself.

“He is not good for you”, his father said.

Samira didn’t answer, she didn’t care really, she knew that already.

“It was decided before they were born, our first son marry their first daughter or our first daughter marry their first son, they can’t change everything like that after eighteen years”, Seti’s mother said probably for the tenth times in a row.

“Well Seti will have to apologize then. It’s probably all he wants”, Seti’s father answered.

And of course, Good Morning Seti !! I hope you enjoyed today's excerpt and see you next week for more of Seti's adventures.

If you are interested, you can read more about Demon and Fairy here. 

Discover the excerpts of other participants through the Week-end Writing Warriors's blog here.   
Facebook Snippet Sunday group for more posts here. 

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JuNoWriMo: Vampire Heart part 5

It has been a week since the beginning of JuNoWriMo. I spend the first day rereading Vampire Heart which had been abandoned in a corner of my computer for no less than three years. I can't believe that I remembered so much about it and I even remembered the part of it I hadn't yet written at that time. I think that story never really left me and was still hoping to be written some day. I had stopped writing it because it's not really my usual thing. It's a Vampire Story and I really often use vampires in my stories but it's also an historical fiction. It starts about 600 years ago in Sighişoara which is located in today's Romania but was part of Hungary at the time the story start. Viorel, the main character is escaping and traveling West to Europe to find himself and a way to take revenge. I wanted every historical fact and geography to be correct over 600 years of travel. That was overwhelming! After 69449 words, I have only covered 4 years but they are 4 amazing years. I also want to put some science in it as to how a vampire can actually live on blood and so on... It is another challenge that I'm ready to work with now.
What I discovered while rereading was all the editing needed but it didn't stop me and I'll go for it and finish this draft. It might be my longest draft ever because Viorel is still very far from his goal and has a lot to learn before going back to Sighişoara. I had thought once about making this story a trilogy but I guess I'll decide that when I have a full draft in my hands.
All Novels Drafts 

Anyway, enough talking let's go to the facts. I'm at 16208 words in total for the current JuNoWriMo challenge. I was supposed to be at 17500 words last night but I decided to sleep instead, I can't possibly go to bed at 4am every night. I'll catch up today.

And as promised here is the fifth part of Vampire Heart for you to enjoy.

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Go to Vampire heart part 4
Go to Vampire heart part 6

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Sorina

I haven't always been a vampire. I was born a human so long ago and I still remember the sun, it's warm and the colorful shade it gives to this world. But my fate had been decided despise me, on the fatal day when my world collapsed. 

I was a little girl in a Romanian village called Sighişoara. The village was ruled by vampires but they and we were living in harmony. They would come at night like shadows and ask for our blood tribute. They especially liked to feed on young girls. It seemed to make their imagination run high but when they needed more strength, they would chose a man. My father had an inn in the center of the village, like everyone else, he was afraid of the vampire but he knew he had to pay tribute and that some day they would come for me. They were faster, stronger and they could kill you with their bare hands, if they asked for something, there was no way to escape, no way to refuse except in death. I wasn't in age to be feed on yet but my parents still hide me front the vampires and only allowed me to go out of my room during the day, they were hoping for the vampires to forget about my existence even though they new it was unlikely.

But I felt in love with one of them. A lady had come to the inn with a wolf, people were scared of her. She was the only human living in the castle with the vampire, she seemed to have some magical power of some sort which had the priest thrown her away from the church. She could talk to wolf. She entered the room and sat at a table near me. My father made a sign for me to come close to him but the wolf was between him and me. My father looked scared, he always had the same twinkling on his cheek when he was scared and his left eye would narrow a bit because of it. It was the look he had at night when the vampires were coming. I knew that wolfs were supposed to be scary, they came out of the wood to kill the sheep sleeping peacefully around the village, sometimes, they even stole little kids who stayed out alone. I had never see a wolf before and this one didn't seem so scary to me. He lowered his head to the ground and brought it near me, his muzzle touching the stone floor. My mother put a hand on her mouth horrified to see it so close but I raised my hand slowly not it scare it and stroke it gently on the thick fur on the top of his head. It didn't move and let me do then lowered his body yawned and stay put next to me.
"I would like your daughter to be friend with my son", the lady said.
My parents didn't look please at first but they couldn't refuse. She was with the vampires and everything from the vampires needed to be accepted. I was happy. I never had friend before and I wanted to see the boy. But every day the lady would come with the wolf and I soon realized that he was the one she was calling her son. It didn't make sense to me at first but I was still happy to play with him.

As I was growing up however, I was becoming of age of becoming food for the vampires. They were coming to the inn more and more often and one day, one of them asked to see me. My father started to refuse, saying that I was too young, that I still have a year before the coming of age ceremony but the vampires started to shout and threaten him.I had never seen him so sad when he came to my room that night and took me down the stairs to meet them. There were three of them and just the look of them scared me. They were pale, their skin had the color of milk, with red eyes and very old black clothes, they were playing cards and interrupted them when I arrived. They started to shout again to ask me to come closer. I had never been so scared. One of them stood up and walked toward me.
"I won't feed on her", he said to my father who was still holding my arm so strongly that I could feel his fingers entering my muscle painfully.
My father released me against his heart.
"Let's go to the garden", the boy said.
He was smiling at me. I was too scared to smile back. I had never see the vampires before but I had heard stories about what they did to people in the village, I had heard of them killing people when they were too thirsty or just wanted to play with their victims. Every week at church the priest was telling us of the eternal damnation awaiting the vampires victims and the one being bitten by them. Girls were crying and praying for forgiveness with a scarf attached to their neck to dissimulate the trace of the vampires' fang. My imagination was running high about the possibility of what he might do to me and the pain of being bitten and my soul going to hell after I died. I really wanted to cry.
"Let's play on the see saw" he said inviting me to sit.
I shallow hard seeing him going behind me. It was even scarier not to see where the danger was coming from.
"I'm sorry I can't push you during the day", he said pushing the my back and letting the see-saw slightly balance.
I didn't answer, I was too afraid to speak, to say something that might have leaded him to bite me. I clung my fist around the see-saw's ropes and tried not to cry.
"Please tell me a story again", he said, "you know the one about the princess."
I still didn't answer, it was my story about the lady in the vampire castle. She was so nice that I had imagined that she was hold prisoner and that she could only come out during the day but a strange force was bringing her to the castle and the wolf was there to protect her of course.
My father was looking at us through the window. If the vampire was to bite me, I couldn't even think of what he would do. In an instant the vampire was in front of me. He stopped the see-saw high making his face just in front of mine.
"You know who I am, right?" he said.
He had picked up my curiosity. I looked at him deeply. He had the same eyes as my grey wolf. But it was impossible. I looked at him more and more unable to forget the initial though.
"My wolf", I finally said.
He smiled brightly and I was sure it was him. I threw myself in his arms, I was shaking like a leaf in the winter wind. He held me tight and turn around to show to my father that he wasn't feeding on me.
"The vampires don't know about it, that will be our little secret", he said. "Why are you trembling like that?"
"I was so scared that you were going to bite me", I said.
"Nobody will ever bite you, I will never let anyone bite you."

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6 week Challenge update: My anime addiction

I finally caught up with my late hours and even have so time "in advance" on my schedule. Not that this time "in advance" is going to make me slow down, at the contrary. The more you do something, the more you get used to it and the easier it gets. I'm getting used to create my Japanese environment every morning and it helps a lot with getting all those hours of study done with. One things that I found makes it very easy to study is for me to watch anime without subtitles. I just need to have them play on my computer and watch and that can be very addictive. I have been watching about 130 episodes of Bleach and I can recognize the different character voices and particular expression. It's very interesting to discover that you can grasp some subtlety like that without  necessarily understand every words. Another good thing with anime is the repetition of the songs at the end and at the beginning. Repetition is really the key to memorize words and I find those song very helpful.


 On the other hand I feel a bit bad for not taking more care of my Japanese blog. I think I might find a way to be more active over there later but for the moment learning Japanese is more of a priority so I want to concentrate on what works. Blogging might work at another learning stage, who knows. For the moment, I seem to be addicted to Bleach and it's really helpful. I can feel that my Japanese is improving everyday and that's what counts.

I'm also participating in the Read More Or Die challenge this month and it seems that I have overestimated my pages goal a bit. I had based it on my previous page goal of reading mangas but this time I'm reading novels without much of furigana and it is a lot more difficult and I'm slower. However I don't want to give up just yet because I'm really enjoying myself even with more than partial understanding only.

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France : Carnac

En français

We went to Carnac in the South of Brittany to see the sea. There is a secret spot where you can get oysters. Carnac is also famous for it's large collection of Megaliths: alignments, dolmens, tumuli and menhirs. There are more that 3000 prehistoric standing stones which seems to have been erected during the Neolithic periode around 3000BC but some of then were probably already there around 4500BC. One version of the myth that says that they were pagan soldier turned into stones by a pope. Another version of the myth says that they are Roman soldiers changed into stone by Merlin which would explain the alignment. Some theory say that they might be astronomical alignments or a primitive instrument to measure seismic activity. All in all they are funny to watch and as nobody know there purpose for sure, you can always make up your own story.
Travel table of content 

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Dylan

Dylan stood up hearing voices in the living room on the other side of the corridor. It was the middle of the day, everyone should have been sleeping now, it was dangerous to be awake during the day. Lysandro had told him so many times not to get up during the day. But this time Dylan wasn't scared about the day, his chest was feeling weird as if something terrible was going to happen. He went down of  his bed and put his feet carefully on the stone floor, he remembered hurting himself when getting out of bed so fast. He held himself on the wall making sure not to touch the curtain. The daylight on the other side was dangerous. He walked slowly to the door making sure not to make noise. If Lysandro was to find him up he would be a little upset but if his father was seeing him up it would be much worse.

He tiptoed to reach the door's handle, he barely needed to push on it for the door to turn on itself. Lysandro and his father were arguing in the other room. Lately he had never seen them together. It was strange. He crossed the corridor and hide behind the door looking at them. A man was kneeling on the floor, he looked funny with his hands attached in his back. Maybe it was a human, Dylan wasn't hungry yet but he wondered what was for breakfast.

"You can't keep on killing every pure blood vampire who comes your way, you are weakening us", Lysandro said.

"I need answers, when you'll have lived as long as I have", his father started but Lysandro flatten his hand on the desk between them interrupting him.

Dylan startled and looked around to make sure that he didn't make noticeable noise.

"Please not again!" Lysandro said angrily. His father was hiding behind his age and that made him angry, not every old vampire was obsessed with where they were coming from. "Maybe it is just that you are too old to think about what is good for your people."

"How dare you?" his father said.

Dylan hide a bit more but couldn't help watching.

"You're old and crazy, you're obsessed with something that can't be found when we are becoming weaker every day, the only viable vampire are the one we sire, there haven't been any pure blood growing up since Dylan, he will be the last of us to be actually raised as a vampire, don't you see what it means? The humans are growing in number every day, they will soon find a way to increase their longevity. The sired vampires are menacing to rebel against our weakening authority as there are more and more of them and less and less of us. How can you spend your entire life looking at the past when we have an eternity to live?" Lysandro said.

He seemed tired. Dylan had seen him becoming stranger and stranger lately and more absent minded as well. His brother was worried about something but Dylan couldn't understand what it was. 

"We need answers, once we know where we come from we will be able to find a cure", his father answered.

"You are like the humans who need to reassure themselves that their god created them and love them. There is no need for this and you can get your answer without killing anymore", Lysandro said. 

He looked at the vampire attached on the other side of the room. If he managed to argue with his father until sunset he might find a way to let him run for his life.

"We need the answers", his father said again. His voice was growing deeper and deeper with anger. Dylan was scared. His father was the scariest person he had ever seen. He would get mad and throw everything in the room. He didn't really remember what had happened to his mother but he knew that his father was mad at her and yelled and made a mess in the room. Lysandro had taken him away from his mother and he had never seen her again. He wanted to talk about it but it was better not to say anything and to stay as far away from his father, that's what he had learned. Now he was scared because he didn't want Lysandro to go away too. He clung at the sliver bracelet Lysandro had given him. It was supposed to protect him but he wasn't sure about what.

"There is no answer, if there were you would already have found them, will you ever be satisfy?" Lysandro asked.

"There are answers, we are here for a reason and I'll figure it out even if I have to kill all the vampires on the face of this earth to reach it", His father said. He was holding a long knife and walking toward Lysandro.

"What will it give you? to wake up one morning knowing that there is nothing left for you in this world, that you are alone", Lysandro said.

His father was coming toward him menacing.

"You don't want to do that", Lysandro said.

Dylan put both hands on his mouth to repress a cry. 

His father attacked but Lysandro was faster, in a fraction of a second he was the one holding the knife bellow his father's throat holding him in his back.

"Is that what you have been waiting for?" his father said, "Do it! Do it! Kill your own father and reign over the vampires!"

Lysandro threw away the knife which stopped in the heavy curtains, light entered the room a bit, he pushed his father on the floor.

"There is no hope for you but I will find the cure", he said walking to the door. 

He picked up Dylan walking out.

"What did I tell you about going out of your room in the day time?", he said.

Dylan bite his lips having been found guilty. Lysandro carried him to his room.

"I... I will have to leave for a little bit. I want you to be nice and behave, do whatever the others tell you not to get in trouble", Lysandro said.

"I want to go with you", Dylan answered.

"I can't take you with me, it's too dangerous, you need to stay here and wait for me to come back. Can you promise that?" Lysandro asked.

"Mum is gone already, I don't want to be all alone", Dylan said.

"It's just for a little bit, I'll come back once father is not mad at me anymore", Lysandro said.

Father was scary, it was better not to be around when he was mad.

"But you need to come back soon", Dylan answered.

"I promise", Lysandro said before leaving the room.

It was the last time Dylan ever saw his brother.

France : Abbaye de Bon Repos

En français

We then went deeper in the center of Brittany and visited the old ruin of the abbey of Bon Repos near the Nantes Brest Canal. The abbey is part of historical monument since 1940. It was first build in 1184 and the crypt served of tomb for 13 viscounts from the Rohan family. The Abbey became royal and was then left to ruin until abbé Philippe Alexandre de Montault Saint-Genies Navaille starts to take care of it in 1683. The abbey is emptied but preserved during French revolution then burned by the Chouans occupying it.  It then served as a refuge for the builder of the Nantes Brest Canal. It was then abandoned until 1986 when it was partially rebuilt. Now it serves as a theater scene of sounds and light historical shows. 

Travel table of content