…flying too close to the sun is not always so dangerous. [story part 20]

May 31st, 2005 – the whole day

This whole time I had no idea where we’re actually going, and I didn’t ask. Except France, it was a blur.
However, we finally did arrive at some point. We’ve landed in Le Mans in the middle of the night, morning actually because it was already way past 12, and immediately stepped into a car waiting in front of the airport.

It took about another hour until we had finally arrive to what it seemed for me, a forest. We were in the middle of nowhere, yet not even an hour ago we were in a very large city.

We had passed a small village then turned a left and after a short drive through a patch of forest we arrived in front of a big mansion, castle maybe, 17th century style estate, with a river nearby and everything.

We were in the middle of nowhere, and yet here it was this beautiful estate. All light up and alive, somebody was at home for sure.
We were received by a tall man with blond hair, Karl. He immediately greeted Regina and then nodded towards me in acknowledgment.

He treated us like no less than royalty in any other sense, and as we stepped inside I immediately felt the little blood I still had left in me after the Moscow adventure, rush to my head.

This was a full-blown party, yet very much tuned down. A dinner party if you wish, formal but not quite.
Everybody was dressed very well, tux, dresses and everything, except me and maybe Regina. We looked like two teenagers stepping by mistake into a ballroom. We were also the youngest there, appearance wise.

Everybody greeted, bowed and saluted Regina in his or hers own way, friendly, warm, yet formal.
The party itself was nothing than a bunch of them, around a table, with a few lying around on sofas and armchairs.

Viktoria was there too and greeted us very warmly, yet looked towards me and instantly knew something was wrong. I really didn’t want to explain everything now, and I would rather let her speak with Regina.

I was tired and I wanted sleep.

“Welcome to Chateau Launay” Karl immediately said after everybody was gathered round us.
So that’s where we were.

“Thank you, I’m glad you all decided to come.” Regina said, which meant she had this little meeting set up all along.

We stayed around an hour or maybe even more, although it seemed much less. Viktoria was very friendly during that time, she spoke to me about various subjects. She was an open book. She spoke even about World War II. Regina silenced her shortly.

After that, and Regina looking in all direction as in a sign of desperation of being assaulted with requests and problems and formalities, not even half an hour after our arrival, decided it really was time for rest. She ended a conversation with a:

“We shall see tomorrow night about it.” and then added “But now if you’ll excuse me, I will be heading to rest. Moscow is not friendly this time of the year.” And with nothing else she started going up the stairs.

I was left there surrounded with not even a single human. They were all looking at me interested in my story, but also interested in me as a cake I suppose. I can’t tell, but I didn’t feel threatened not even a minute.

These were Regina’s most close people, these were her elders. They were, some, almost as old as she was.
I quickly followed her up and with not even another word we just crashed on the bed on top of each other.

We were both very, very tired. I had never seen her getting tired, but now I was assured that it was possible nonetheless. Be it because of the lack of sleep, or because of her little experiment with me, it didn’t change the fact that we both fell asleep in under five minutes.

I, Icarus.

OK – the above part is a bit boring, so I’m going to skip presenting a whole day step by step. But I will leave that here, because it’s an important part of the story in making you form a clear idea about how was Regina treated, her status and her way of reacting near other members that are not critters. Other members that she respects as much as they respect her.

The next day (actually the same day…) when I woke up, around 12, Regina was once again still sleeping and I got to enjoy watching her do just that once again. I don’t know if I mentioned this but that was the best feeling ever.

I always loved old things, antiques, and now, I was watching one sleep. She looked so beautiful and so innocent that at time, I wished she would never wake up. Then I felt bad for wishing that, realizing what that actually means, and started thinking about something else.

I thought about a small thing that Regina said to me, right after I hinted to her that I might what to go home, if things turn up to be against my liking.

And she, surprisingly, came up with a very poetic way of telling me what she thinks about that. So she loved reading, I remember thinking, because I was pretty sure I had read the same thing in a book. Anyway, what she said when I told her I might want to go home was:

“What magic moments do you expect to capture, by again walking roads you once walked? They are now probably smoother, and more straight, but their destination, is the same.”

And by god she was so right. Nobody could have said it even better. Why would I go home? That’s the reason I left with her anyway. To change the road, to change the path, to change everything that I had up to that point. Going back to the same town would mean going back to the same life also. That was not an option.

My life at that point was pretty much the same, but with a twist. Sometimes you looked back and realized that nothing much really changed, yet in the same time, sometimes just walking around or doing a common thing would just made you suddenly realize that you feel like in a dream, that you feel like you’re in someone else’s body.

At this point, between all of this members of the kinship, next to such an old thing, looking at her sleep, I was looking back at my life. And that made me realize that in that very instant, looking back at my life, through everything that has happened up until this point, was like looking through a frosted window back at it. It was wavy and unclear, but in the most part, it was still the same.

And then would also be the thing that Regina had said to me earlier, in Moscow. Th quote about “one does not discover new lands, without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.”

And that stuck in my head. I asked myself whether Regina was doing just that, losing sight of her shore, by being there, with me. By revealing so much to me. Why was she doing it? What were her reasons and was it so? Did she leave her land, her comfort and sailed across the unknown with or for me? Why?

A lot of questions were flooding my mind at the time, but I was sure of one thing. Regina did indeed discover new land, centuries ago and she may have drifted for a very long time after she left the land, before finding that new land, whatever that was for her.

Before having any more opinions and thoughts in this post I will stop here and just tell you that even though I was literally in the hornet’s nest in that mansion, surrounded from all sides and all floors by vampires, I did not feel one bit afraid. Sure, I was uneasy a bit with the situation, but I felt protected, and not necessarily by Regina. I felt even more confident in myself and my safety than I would feel with a bunch of unknown people, humans.

Why was that? Because these vampires were so old, and had such good manners and moral principles that it would astonish anyone.

Mass-media teaches us so many wrong things about vampires. How they are monsters, how they are evil, how they don’t have any moral values and don’t give two shits about human life, etc.

Yet this wall all wrong, at times it seemed that human life were even more important for them that their life itself. But I will get into that in the next post, which I will detail exact how that night went.

Before writing my diary for the day, and before Regina waking, around 13 or 14, when everyone was still sleeping, I went downstairs and was once amazed by the amount of detail and care they had for even one single human, me.

The kitchen was fully stocked with everything you might want and everything was ready for a human, just waiting to be tasted. Fruits, meats, juices, everything fresh and tasty. They didn’t need it, yet took the time to remember that hei, they will have a guest, a human guest. And they did. Although I was pretty sure it was Karl, who always seemed to go to great lengths in order to please Regina. Sometimes it was weird and felt a bit off, it felt as he had alternative reasons, other than being submissive.

So that’s about it for my thoughts that day, I took this time to explain them and my opinions, and I’ll detail in the next post what actually happened that day and how flying too close to the sun, as sleeping in the same mansion with a bunch of vampires, in the middle of nowhere, proved to be nowhere near as dangerous as movies might make you think, and proved to be more enjoyable than actually spending holidays with relatives.