"...In truth, I'm no more a little girl than you are. I was once, of course. Three hundred years ago. Vampirism tends to keep one remarkably... fresh. It's been quite a boon looking like a child. No one ever suspects a thing." -- Anon Guest
Half a world away, before it turned, there had been a girl who called herself Daphne. She realised that it was easy to be invisible. You had to wear ribbons in your hair and skip everywhere. It fooled everyone.
It certainly fooled lots of people when she was Princess Ermintrude.
Those days are long gone, now. Long in the past. So long, in fact, that it might as well be another world. The past is, after all, another country. They speak a different language, the food is weird, and you can't always trust the water.
But that's several hundred years' experience talking. Looking back on it, it's always strange. Living through it - it was all perfectly normal.
I suppose you're wondering how I survived as an eternal child. Caregivers come and go. Sad, mortal things. I tried having a vampiric 'child' of sorts to play the part for a century or so. Power went to her head, so I had to kill her.
Of course, the foster system whisked me away for a while. Bouncing from home to home with nobody who really looks at the paperwork was something of a boon to me. I found all the ones who were in it for what they could use the children for, if you know what I mean.
Power, in their case, went straight to their groins.
I was never dumb enough to leave them in my room, or the rooms I shared with other girls. Mortal girls who were terrified of the rattling of the doorknob. I always made certain to have 'nightmares' about monsters in the bedroom. It was never long before they turned to their animal instincts... and I turned to mine.
Everyone looks for puncture marks in the neck. Hardly anyone looks for them near the groin.
And in between times, when I had a thrall for a 'parent', I could walk the dark streets without fear. Well. Skip the dark streets. I always had somewhere I was going. Some mission my 'mother' or 'father' had sent me on. And crime had a remarkable drop around me.
Now that smaller adults are in more public view, I can give that up, if I so choose. I can, with effort, pass for older than I look. I'm rather proud of the artificial crows' feet. They can pass very close inspection. I still hunt predators, of course. They are plentiful and eager to volunteer themselves.
Sooner or later, I guess, humanity will learn the lesson I've been trying to teach them for hundreds of years. But not yet. They haven't... yet.
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