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It is a peculiar thing, to find oneself alone in the woods, with the sun setting slowly, disappearing behind the horizon of a sky filled with an enchanting mix of marigold, violet, vermillion and cerulean hues.
It is even more peculiar, to find oneself not so alone, as the twilight hour passes.
"Is anyone there?"
Philip's voice cracks, and he despises how weak and frail he sounds. How scared he sounds.
He knew venturing alone at night was a horrible idea, but he couldn't stand to face the abuse for another night, couldn't bear another harsh slap or biting scratch. Being torn apart, slowly, limb by limb, would be a more pleasant way to spend the night than how he would have, had he stayed.
That doesn't mean the rustling he heard frightens him any less.
"Hello?" He calls out, painfully aware of every little noise.
Realistically, he knows that the noises he hears could likely be from nocturnal creatures scuttling for food. But there's a chill running down his spine like cold lightning bolts and his neck has tensed - his tell-tale inkling of danger, a sixth sense of sorts.
So he could surely be excused for suspecting he wasn't actually alone.
A harsh gust of wind brushes past him, and Philip's hair stands on end. The air was deadly still a moment ago. He whips his head around, left to right, back and forth, but all he sees is endless darkness and a foreboding forest that appears to stretch forever.
"Who are you? I swear, by the King and by our Gods -"
"You will what? What do you swear?"
The voice seems to come from nowhere in particular, and yet everywhere at once. There's humour there, but the voice is still chilling, and Philip feels like he's someone, or something's prey.
"Well, then, pretty boy? What will you do?"
Philip spins until he feels dizzy and faint, and he's certain that he's about to snap his neck from turning so fast. But he keeps going, because he doesn't know what else to do.
The voice laughs, and he thinks it might be coming from a boy, although with no sight of them, he's not completely sure.
"Nothing. You will do nothing, because you cannot. You are helpless - like a little lamb being dragged to slaughter."
"And you are my butcher?" Philip asks, drawing on strength he didn't know he had.
"Butcher is such a crude word...don't you think?"
"Would you prefer coward?" He asks, and he knows he shouldn't, but he does it anyway.
He's not going to die blind to his attacker.
A cloaked figure appears from between the trees, and Philip's reminded of the tarot cards his mother would wield in front of curious guests, before she passed, and more specifically the one that spoke of death and despair, that displayed the courier of the dead. Philip doesn't think he found the Grim Reaper itself, but whoever he is coming face-to-face with, certainly seems to have a penchant for one of the forms Death can take.
"You act tough now, but you have no idea what I could do to you."
The hooded figure steps closer, barely a metre away, and Philip's heart picks up speed.
"Kill me?" He asks, shakily. "You lose the fear of dying once you have experienced what I have."
Philip doesn't bother keeping anything back, he doesn't see the point, so his voice is strained, raw, and filled with pain.
The figure stills, then slowly pulls the hood back off their face.
It's a man - though he looks no older than Philip, or his father's apprentice, merely a boy - with skin ghostly pale, as though it had never felt the kiss of the sun's rays. There are bruises around his eyes, mottled crimson decorating the tops of his cheekbones and covering the upper lids of his eyes. His hair is the brown of roasted hazelnuts, and his eyes are a startling scarlet, matching his lips, which are plump but appear slightly dry. They're pulled tight, so that he comes across as menacing, Philip guesses, but the tiny porcelain-white fangs do enough for that.
"You...you are..." Philip stutters, unable to conjure the words.
"A monster?" The man asks - man, because Philip is struggling to find it in him to believe the myths.
"Vampir." Philip corrects, as that is what his mother used to call them, and he never once doubted his mother.
"I was trying to say, that you are a vampir, like in the legends, the old stories my mother would tell me...they are true..."
The man - the vampire - chuckles, and it's such an honest, human sound, that Philip's thrown for a second.
"Ah, yes, the myths detailing the horrific, blood-sucking, soul-stealing creatures of the night. How terribly disappointing this must be for you - to learn that it is not all true, not in the way that you have been told. Your dreams must be absolutely shattered."
He pushes his hair back, and for the first time Philip notices how almost golden the curly locks appear under the nearly set sun. They reach his chin - a little longer than Philip's own stark black hair - and apart from his surprisingly cocky nature, it is the one thing glaringly human about him, a factor that eases Philip so he's not as scared as he was, although he is still admittedly frightened.
"What is your name?" He asks, because there's a part of him that wants to know more, a part that is awfully curious.
There's an achingly long, pregnant pause before words are spoken.
"Daniel."
'Daniel', Philip muses, and it fits perfectly, and now Philip has a name, it's easier to see him as a human and not a vampire, not a monster, not a dangerous creature - but a person, the same as he.
"My name is Philip." He says, and he's pleasantly startled to see the flicker of a smile dancing across Daniel's blood-red lips.
Later on, weeks or months or years later - time passed with barely a pausing thought - when Daniel has Philip pressed into the soft mattress in the cottage they call home, lips pressing loving kisses and sharp teeth leaving burning scratches, Philip ponders on the night they first met.
As he does, Daniel, after asking for the millionth time if Philip was positively certain, kisses him once with a heated fervour before puncturing his delicate skin, as he draws the human blood out so he can replace it with his own, changing Philip forever, turning him into something else entirely.
Philip knows, undoubtedly, that rushing into the forest during that night so long ago, was the best decision he could have made.
Unlike his mother, Philip had never been one for the supernatural, never believed in anything, any entity bigger than him aside from the Gods and Goddesses his religion dictated he must believe in. He had always found some explanation.
But this...them...
Nothing but fate was an accurate explanation.
So Philip gave in to the whimsical fantasies he'd lost as a child, fanciful ideas of the unknown. He fell in love with a creature of the night - and now he's eternally destined to be one.