Snowfall

Time went on for us as it does, the years went by in a blur. Edmund finally got up the courage to confess his feelings for Rebecka, mostly at the proding and teasing of Fin. Soon we had little versions of them running around and Edmund found that while most people listened to him with respect, his children, just like his wife, proved more difficult. They loved their father but they were a wild bunch, into everything. Rebecka would send Fin and I many nights to go search for one of her missing children. The local tavern was the first place to look, then the stables and so on. The one we had to watch most often was the youngest, a cute little misfit by the name of Kyle. He had his father\'s brown hair, his mother\'s green eyes and a smattering of freckles across his nose. Kyle was terribly curious and quite sociable, I have found him many times in a tavern sitting at a table telling a story or asking questions of some stranger, at an age that his feet did not even touch the floor.
It was Kyle that warned me about the group of men from the Order. He had been conversing with the local bar wench who thought him adorable when he saw men in the black and red outfit that had been described many times around the campfire. He was his parents son though, quick and clever. He continued to chat and smile with the woman until they went up to a room and then lit out of there like his tunic was on fire. His mother had looked at him sternly and questioned him more than once when he came in with the story during a performance but I could smell the fear and excitment on him and stopped her from interoggating him further.

\"I believe him, Rebecka.\" I smiled at Kyle and asked him if he heard what room they had been given.

\"The keeper said last one on the right.\"

\"Good work.\" I ruffled his hair and headed out the door. \"Kyle, do me another favor?\"

\"Anything!\" He beamed at the praise, so used to being on the receiving end of a disapproving scowl for one of his misadventures.

\"Warn Fin for me.\" Turning to Rebecka, I said. \"Tell Edmund to get the cavarvan moving right after the performance is over. I will catch up if I have to and tell him not to move on to the next city, go west, it will take us through some rural country and not be the standard stop. I don\'t want them catching up.\"

When both nodded that they understood, I left and headed to the inn. Climbing the roof, I listened outside the window of their room.

\"We have to be careful. These two are dangerous. I know that you are new to Iuris Divinus, Brother Steven, so I warn you now do not expect this to be the same as fighting a human. These creatures are demons, they are killers and they will not hesitate to try to drag you down to hell with them or merely kill you. If it comes to it, hope for the later.\" It was the priest from the very first meeting. I dared a peek through the window, knowing that it was dark and would be difficult to see outside.

\"I understand, Father.\" The new member of the Order seemed young and nervous.

But the priest seemed much the same despite the years, his hair was grey and no doubt he moved a bit slower, no longer joining the fighting but ordering the raids. I wondered how many innocent humans this group had dispatched in the name of divine justice. Witchs, demons, mostly someone else\'s imagining. \"We\'ll move in the morning before the troupe wakes. We made the mistake of believing them not capable of waking during the day last time. We won\'t make that mistake again.\"

Hmm, they\'d have been right in the case of Fin. It would seem I am a light sleeper but Fin slept like...well, like the dead when the sun rose. It took a great deal to wake him up. It made me glad that he had friends to guard him. The Order... Iuris Divinus, I now knew, believed us both able to wake in the day, but last time Fin had not been anything other than human. It was perhaps a mistake that would help us later. Though I did not like the idea of coming across this bunch again.

I listened to them for as long as they were awake, learning their names and some of their habits. It was about time we knew something of the people chasing us instead of them holding all the information. I was particularly curious how they continued to find us. I dreaded the thought that one of the troupe was giving away the information. But the actual facts were perhaps worse.

\"Send a pigeon to the other teams and tell them we\'ve located Fin and his friend. Continue on with their missions and we will be delayed until further notice. Tell Father Jonas to take over our task after he has completed his own as he is the closest to us.\" The priest told one of the other members. There was more groups, this organization was larger than I had thought. A few fanatics would not have been so difficult to deal with given time but a large Order was another matter, I could not get rid of them all. Worse, yet, but I did not learn until later, they had more than one location. Keenan may have be mad, but he was far from stupid. His group held different churchs around the world so that they were not so easy to exterminate.

Once the men went to sleep, I left to catch up to the moving troupe. I went out the north gate and ran down the road until the latest wagon tracks turned, headed west as ordered. Taking a large branch, I moved backwards obscuring the divergence as I went. In the morning, merchant wagons going from town to town would cover the abrupt ending of our trail and now there would be little sign of the troupe wagons having left it.

This time we managed to escape the Order but it to be a rare occasion. Over the years we had more than one clash with them. We seemed to be a preferred menace. Perhaps because we were truly something other than human, most of their quarry were ordinary and not aware that they were being hunted. It was usually over before it even started.
Kyle took over after his father and on down among the family. The troupe stopped traveling eventually when it became a rare sight to see a traveling troupe. Instead they settled in London changing the name of the group to Nimbus Theatre Company with a horse leaping over a cloud as their emblem. The white horse costume harkened back to the days of the Mummer\'s dance so it was not so uncommon a symbol for a theatre troupe. Of course they were visited by the Order once they realized they had lost our trail. They began to check all the theatre companies and groups. They had started coming in disguise and snooping around. It was only by chance that they were even caught. One of the men found a stranger back stage looking around. He seemed intent on the floor. That was strange enough but when questioned the stranger was of fine speech. His story of searching for a friend that he thought had come backstage would not have been totally unheard of but his actions were suspicous enough. Luckily, Fin and I were not in the area, we had taken to traveling much as Amar and I had done. We were told of the incident when we returned.
Fin and I never stayed with the group after they settled down, for just that reason. After a while the Order seemed to leave Nimbus Theatre Company alone. Over the years we stopped in to visit and each time they became mini holidays for the group. Stories of our adventures and tales of the Company filled a few days until we moved on again. It was much like my family all over again, we became distant and less involved but we were still warmly welcomed every time we returned.
Fin grew used to the years in time but in the beginning it was hard for him. Losing Edmund, Rebecka and then Kyle. Even though they each lived a long full life it was difficult to let them go. These were his family and my own, as Edmund had said, but I had grown accomstomed to the loss. It did hurt more to see those you\'ve talked to and laughed with go away but I was more prepared for the passage of time and its effects on us, not physical but emotional. Fin had left the last Nimbus with the Company as a lucky mascot, far more tame this his great grand sire. It simply became too hard to see them go and so he walked now the same as I. We clung more to each other knowing that the best chance for placing your cares in someone who would always be there lay in another immortal. I worried in the beginning that he too would be taken away from me, like Amar. After all that seemed to be the way of fate. The irony of my time with Amar was that it was only a few short years for a couple who had been planning eternity. As we passed the generations together I began to hope that this was not our lot this time. My bitterness that had been slowly melting away with the Night Army seemed to finally leave me with Fin. Perhaps it was merely buried very deep, but truly what does it matter?
Fin\'s life had not begun any better than my own, in fact in many ways it was worse and yet he embraced his new life. I could not help but see our existence through his eyes. The wonders he saw and the chances we had beyond a mortal\'s scope. I\'ve seen things that humans now debate as myth the evidence having been wiped from the earth by the ravages of time. We,vampires are walking history books. Fin began to write these things down, turning to novels instead of plays. He went under an alias and wrote about anything and everything. Even about our kind. In the beginning he merely kept journals and non fictional accounts of things we saw in order to have it perserved. I had told him about Amar and how his vast knowledge of an old way of life was lost forever. Fin was determined to save what he could of his own experience and mine too. Heh, he hounded me with question after question about the way of life in my childhood. What the speech was like, the fashion, customes and superstitions. Not a bad artist, his journals contained little sketchs of my ramblings. I laughed at his little drawing of a young Albin fishing by the river in rolled up pants, barefoot. It was timeless in a way, the costume changed very little from the same image of Huckleberry Finn or a Rockwell painting. I had a tunic and no straw hat but there was more connection than difference. We saw that too and Fin wrote about it. The connections through time, the things that occured again and again. Some of his writing put together events that the people of the times would not have guessed were related but we could clearly see how the past brought it into being. In more modern times we played around with the stock market, amusing ourselves with educated guesses on various trends based on our knowledge of the past and typical patterns. It became something of a game to research a particular company and its people. Fin would write down our findings, including tidbits about the personal lives of owners and major board members. We are watchers, we vampires, and this game was just another form of it. Time had perfected those skills and patience made the snooping easy. Rarely did we intervene, that was counter to the nature of the game. Though we were amused at how many of a major coorperation had each other spied on or tailed. Sometimes it was interesting to see who had alliances with whom and not just inside the company. Soon we had a web of interconnected people in our chosen city. Fin then decided we need to get closer to our subjects. We formed a stock broking company with our money and eventually moved around amongst the very companies we invested in and watched. High society was an amusing past time more for Fin than myself, but watching Fin was my past time. He had become so clever and charming over the years, he had long ago come to accept his unique appearance and now he used it to his advantage. All heads turned his way when he walked into a room, and he mingled among them with the grace of a king.