Whatever reasons Marnie had for being in Lomma, Gavner wouldn’t question her further. He was curious, just as he had been when he was only ten, and even the passing of a century couldn’t dull that - but now, he knew better than to pry, sitting quietly as she removed her sandals and allowed herself to step into the frigid stream.
He didn’t move to join her in the water, instead staying seated on dry land, listening with fascination on his face - along with a tinge of worry in his mind. As she had spoken of what Lomma’s people believed in - superstitions which they believed with their whole heart - Gavner idly rubbed his thumb over the long scar on the right side of his face.
( It was superstition and fear which had granted him the matching scars on his cheeks. Inflicted upon him by a group of men who had been hunting him, fuelled by their false beliefs as to Gavner’s nature, they are marks for that tight brotherhood of hunters to identify him by. )
The issue with those who are superstitious, is that they are often fearful.
They fear anything out of the ordinary, spinning stories and tales to justify their feelings. When they’re exposed to what they’re afraid of, they believe the stories they’ve told themselves, and they become nothing more than panicked animals. Self-preservation instincts kick in, and you cannot negotiate with a mind which sees you as a demon.
You can explain yourself to a human, but when a human is stricken with panic, they lose their humanity and cease to be what they were.
( It was the panicked who drove Gavner from Postwick, from Motostoke, from Vaniville, from Lumiose… )
Lomma, as fascinating as it sounds to him, seems as if it’s filled with the same crowd.
At least Marnie didn’t appear to believe in such tales.
Of the things she told Gavner, he had only ever heard fairytales of trolls. He hadn’t heard of Orthism, nor of a horse who drowns its rider. He supposed he believed in deities, for his kind have beliefs in their own gods, but beyond that…
“I don’t believe in those sorts of tales, no.” Gavner replied simply, though maybe it was a bit foolish for a vampire to be so quickly dismissive of tales of other creatures. “But I’m sure their beliefs have basis in something real.”
In all tales, there is a seed of truth. While the stories that humans tell of the vampiric are exaggerated, they still have their origins in fact, even if they had been twisted and morphed far beyond the truth. They are beings of the night, repelled by the sun, who feed from the very humans that they hide among - humans simply added on until their tales barely resembled reality.
“I think, when people are scared by things that they don’t understand,” Gavner’s eyes fell somewhat somber for a moment, as he looked down at the scars on his fingers. “They create stories to explain that fear, until those stories become what they truly believe.”
After all, that is what happened with his kind. That is what happened with him.
Maybe there were other unnatural, inhuman beings within Lomma, whom these tales were based on. Maybe these stories, too, had been twisted and exaggerated, taken as truth due to fear of the unknown. Part of Gavner wanted to find out for himself, his curiosity having worked its fingers deep within his mind, itching for him to discover the origins of these myths…
But he knew how dangerous that would be for him. Should he spend time in that remote village - in an entirely unfamiliar land, filled with fearful souls - it would only be a matter of time before he was exposed. He supposed that even his nails, sharp and unnatural as they were, unable to be trimmed to resemble anything normal, could be enough to raise suspicion from such a paranoid crowd. Even if they didn’t know what he was, it wouldn’t be a reach for them to claim that they were signs of a demon, a shape-shifter, a trickster spirit…
Of something evil, which needed to be eradicated.
“And if there’s no basis…” The friendly look in Gavner’s eyes returned as he looked back up to Marnie, his fingertips returning to idly playing with the grass, his palm brushing over a small weed hidden among the blades. “Then their tales are a good way to keep themselves from getting into danger, at least.”
-“I don’t believe in those sorts of tales, no.”-
-Marnie had said something similar the first week that she’d spent within Lomma’s staked walls. Younger than she was now and in a time where, perhaps, wonder had begun to be lost within her eyes; she’d met with Damian in hopes of earning lodging for a few odd nights. Just like for many other wanderers before her, Lomma had been entirely unknown – but a speck within the wilderness surrounded by mountainous terrain. Natural boarders and walls, just as well as manmade.
It had been cold, late winter before the lakes would even begin to thaw. But Damian had been warm when he’d taken her clothed palm.
‘You’re an outsider,’ he’d told her, as clearly as one could. You’re not one of us. ‘But… You expertise, your trade. We lack capable hands.’
Damian had been but a child himself when they first met. A boy amongst men but with the responsibility of ten or more. She’d taken his offer without much bargaining or fuzz – a home to call her own, she’d asked for, and she’d make it her clinic for the time that she spent upon their land. Once all was said and done, in halls carved from wood and stone; she’d been asked to see to her first patient.
A little girl. His daughter in name alone.
Marnie gazed down upon the water of which surrounded her pale, bare ankles. The ghost sensation of touch and her toes, carefully, flexed within its depths and disturbed the gravel laid floor.
Kari had been ridden by excruciating fever, her frail body too young to fight it off on her own. In winter, with little light and access to herbs and medicine; she’d been out for almost a week and had only gotten worse since it all began. But what had perplexed Marnie most hadn’t been the girl’s sickness. No. But rather, the words of which her father had hissed beyond her shoulder.
‘A mara.’ He’d sounded his age, then. Boyish and afraid. ‘A mara has taken her and won’t rid itself from her until she’s gone.’-
-“But I’m sure their beliefs have basis in something real.”-
-She hadn’t known what that word had meant, this ‘mara’ that he so frightfully spoke of. When he’d told her, she’d offered her honest opinion. That the girl was simply sick, like so many other children in Hisui who died well before their fifth birthday – and that no such creature truly existed.
He hadn’t challenged her, then, and never truly would. Hadn’t said a word more of it after that. But he’d grasped his daughter’s warm palms within his own and begged for her to leave them be now that all was done.
And Marnie had left to return another day.-
“Real or not to us,” she offered, the gathering of her wear spilling down into the water below as she bent at her waist. Her fingers danced over the water’s surface in memory.- “I must admit to having seen things that have made me wonder…”
-A mara was sometimes said to be a human spirit, though it did not necessarily have to take a human form when it haunted people at night. It could appear as a cat, a dog, monkey or mouse, a feather or even a ball of yarn.
When Marnie had returned to the Nazarov’s home the next evening, she’d been met by a sight that she’d never forget. Past Kari’s ajar bedroom door, dimply lit and cast within candlelight; Marnie had seen it. A black, looming mass sat high upon the little girls breast. Her breathing, labored and slow. Tortured.
To this day, she still didn’t know what it had been. Never before had she seen a creature shaped quite like it – a blur within reality as though she’d never been meant to see it. Still, she had entered the room and almost fallen over as a rush of nausea had overcome her – and when she’d looked back to where Kari slept, the mass was gone.
Kari recovered a day later.-
-Cool water spilled over her features. Even at night, the heat was scorching and perhaps the medic could’ve spent the rest of her evening right there. Endlessly washing her face until her skin rubbed off raw. But her previous theory stood true – what it would bring her was but momentary relief followed by eventual sickness. She could already feel her feet grow numb.
Casting a glance towards her company of the night – ah, she hadn’t had that for quite some time now had she? – Marnie wondered if Gavner would’ve believed her story if she’d told him. Or if, perhaps, he’d lay claim to the fact that she too had come to grow fearful.
The grass of the bank felt soft as she finally left the cold sea. Slippery and wet.-
“… You know, even without its unique superstitions, Lomma’s a place unlike any other that I’ve seen in Hisui.”-A smile tugged at the fishing lines of her lips, then. Haunting memories or not, that village had left an impression upon Marnie in more ways than one. Frightful and unusual though its people may be, with the fearing of beasts and religious dreams; the people there were some of the kindest Marnie had ever met.
The most welcoming, despite their isolated ways.-
“It’s my home away from home.”