treasure || bang chan

part 1

                        ༄ 1824

The circumstances I found myself in were not unfamiliar. Sitting crosslegged on the beach, gargantuan Aleppo pines at my back, moonlight bouncing off the water. The breeze was warm, ruffling my decades-old tunic and cinched slacks, and the waves were foaming gently at my feet.

I'd wandered the most beautiful beaches and cities and mountain ranges for a century. But there were two key factors that set today apart.

The first was that I had recently learned to weave. The brambles in the forest lent themselves nicely to my hobby. I'd woven myself a hut, a makeshift bed and so many baskets that I had to make a bigger basket to carry them in.

The second was the bloody, bedraggled pirate laying a few meters down the beach. He was in pain, convulsing, gasping air down his throat, hands scraping at the sand beneath him.

He was turning into a vampire. He'd been this way for about five days now. I hadn't injected him with enough venom, it was prolonging the process. I wanted to apologize, maybe hold his hand, comfort him, but I was hesitant to push any closer. I had adapted to feeding on animal blood in lieu of human, I hadn't fallen off the wagon since I was a newborn — until I bit him. It had felt impossible to stop once I'd started; the taste still lingered now, prickling on my tongue and smoking in my throat.

I had to admit I wanted to get a closer look at him. I knew he was a pirate because of his attire — the long dirtied jacket, waistcoat and trousers. The sheathed bayonet on his hip was a giveaway as well. I'd been expecting his crew to charge out of the woodwork and snaffle him, but they hadn't. They must have assumed he was dead — I'd found him half-drowned with his ribcage shattered. Maybe he'd looted the wrong people.

As I sat idly and theorized, I wove and tucked and fiddled with the brambles in my hands. I knew the emotional turmoil of being thrust into a deathlike life was not remediable, but, I'd reasoned with myself, might a fetching hat help? I just hoped I'd finish it by the time he awoke.

I pawed at the sand next to me but came up with nothing. I sighed, pushed myself to my feet and headed into the woods behind me. I ducked under wild reaches of leaves, leapt over massive logs melded to the ground with spongey moss. Brambles gushed down from a rock bluff like a waterfall. I followed a stem with my finger, tore it loose from the growth and shucked the thorns off.

Arms full of brambles, I headed back to the beach. I dropped my spoils onto the sand.

Oh dear.

The pirate was gone.

And something sharp was up against my back.

I cringed and raised my hands. "Good. You're awake."

"Don't move. Try for a weapon and I'll blast your head off, understand?"

"I have no weapons on me."

"You had better not."

His hands patted roughly down my torso and legs, along my arms.

Then I heard his blade slide back into its sheath. "Don't follow me."

He strode into the forest. I spun around, gaping; did he not want answers? Even if he didn't, I had to educate him on his new life, the limitations, the vampire world, lest he slaughter an entire town or break a law he didn't know existed.

I grabbed the hat and ran after him. "Wait!"

"I said not to—" A sound like a tree splintering in half. "Shit!"

When I pushed through the last of the undergrowth, I saw he was slumped over an ancient log, the wood beneath him crushed.

"You need to take it slow," I said attentively. "Your body doesn't move the way it used to."