Should Have Walked Away | Aarmau Vampire AU

𝔱 𝔥 𝔦 𝔯 𝔱 𝔶 - 𝔱 𝔥 𝔯 𝔢 𝔢

Though the debris and damage inside Falcon Claw's walls were thorough, I couldn't help but think of the exterior.

Plenty of people were cleaning their streets and it would be a few days at most before they were back to their original glory. However, the forests were different.

From experience, I knew that trees and branches of all sizes probably littered the rich earthen ground, endangering the fauna that lived and thrived there.

I may not live in the wild anymore. . . except I can't help but care. I can't throw out the part of me that was raised in the forests and mountains.

The wilderness will forever be a piece of my soul.

I walked down the path, smiling to the few guards that watched the front entry gate as I walked past. Two smiled back, nodding in a hello. The others stayed focused on their watch.

Regardless, I'm still a vampire. Some guards watched me leave and kept an eye on what I was doing for good measure. The sun had just risen, and the clouds above my head were still pink and orange.

Falcon claw was surrounded by an array of deciduous trees around the front, but the back was more evergreen than anything. It sat in the perfect middle of two biomes. The brush got thicker toward the south and west, but the trees were tall, old, and pervasive everywhere in between, so the moment I stepped out of the city, it was no shock to find a large oak collapsed to the ground. It covered the rural pathway that was mostly used for trade, which was quite an issue.

Thanks to my strength, it took me only minutes to lift the tree upward once again and push it the other way, (hopefully not waking anyone up inside the walls) beginning my personal pile of debris.

Title of my autobiography.

Over time I gathered and cleared more of the larger trees, and it was midday before I even blinked up at the sky.

It's harder to angle my body away from the sun while I had to do so much manual labor under the inadequate tree cover, so I put my face mask on as well as an extra layer of gloves.

It feels so foreign to cover my fangs, and I never thought I would be more comfortable to reveal myself as a vampire than to act human.

Who could have known?

A few minutes of lifting and throwing logs later, I stopped in my place. I had been lifting a long branch that really felt like nothing to me when I heard footsteps and chatter behind me.

There was a smiling woman, shorter than me, standing to the right of the gate as another woman helped her lift a branch around the same size as mine. They joked slightly at the difficulty and giggled as they moved it to my ever-growing pile.

Not far away were three boys, all around teenage, counting to three before lifting a tree double their height, but also half their width.

Half the city's residency was now walking over as they noticed the work going on, jumping in to help out.

I was too distracted to remember what I was doing and jumped slightly when the branch in my hand started moving. Two people smiled at me as they took the safety obstruction away.

This sobered me, and I quickly got back to work with a tree farther down the road.

More and more people piled in, and I didn't see any sign of it stopping. If I weren't busy, I would probably have noticed Kawaii~Chan sooner, aiding with the small litter of leaves, pine needles, and small branches. She put them in a large cotton bag with a few others and waved when she saw me.

I watched a few orphaned kids laugh and run around a branch before moving it to my pile and using spare twigs as playing swords. Donna chastised them for the danger but quickly joined in the fun, chasing them around to find more branches.

I continued my own job with a large smile, accepting help from others even though I didn't need it. I couldn't shut down such a nice offer, but still held most of the weight off the others.

Throughout my past, I have been in countless storms across Ru'an, and after every one of them, I've helped clean up the forest and rural streets that nobody often got to.

But I've never done it with other people, and I gotta say. . . it was a welcome change.

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ι нαтє тнαт му ¢нαρтєяѕ кєєρ тυяиιиg συт ѕσ ѕнσят. ιм ѕσяяу.
Word count: 783