Reya adjusted the dagger on her belt and dusted off her clothes before sitting down on the ground. Most people would do it after, but well, fine. I regarded her antics from atop Fern and hoped she would just get to the point.
“Come, sit.” She patted the ground next to her. “It’s not comfortable talking to you like this.”
“I am hungry and you are keeping me from my hunt. I think I shall stay up here. Much safer for you,” I told her with a wry smirk. Those weren’t the real reasons I wasn’t coming down from my horse. She really was trying for something. I could play that game better than anyone. Height advantage. Position of authority.
“What? You’d attack me? Drink my blood?” She laughed. “Girl, I admit I was scared before, but I’ve had all day to think about this. You magicked your brain right out last night and even then barely did a thing. Give yourself some more credit.”
Really, if that’s how you think this works, then enjoy your misconceptions.
“Right. Just, get to the point already.” I rolled my eyes at her, made her think she amused me. With some luck, it would make her lower her guard even more.
“Okay, okay… I still don’t know where to start with this… how to broach this to you…” she meandered from apology to apology, uncertainty apparent in both her posture and her scent. “It’s been a long night and I haven’t had a lot of sleep…”
I was not going to indulge her stalling. “The point, Reya.” I pressed her with a gentle smile, applying enough pressure to keep control of the conversation, but with sufficient sympathy to make her think I cared.
“Ugh!” She sighed, delayed some more by glancing around as the air around her grew heavier with worry. Eventually, she pushed it out. “Gery never lies, Vale.”
Ah, that then.
This was… surprisingly a far easier subject than I had anticipated. I was ready for her to beg me to stay just like Meg. I had even expected her to maybe lash out at me for the brain thing, or the way I’d used Meg, or maybe even something worse I didn’t even remember. But Gery’s little lie, the thing that had initially made Reya wary of me, I had nothing to do with that.
“You think I made him lie to you?” I blurted out in perfectly acted fright, leaning on my childish appearance for added effect. “You think I thralled him?”
Of course I didn’t believe she thought that. Following a vampire you suspected of enthralling someone into a dark forest… Reya wasn’t the kind of person to do that. Never mind that enthralling someone didn’t even work like that. It was a perfect opportunity for me to paint myself as a victim of her prejudices though. I was not going to pass it up.
“Haha, no,” she tittered with a disarming smile, trying to calm down the scared little vampire girl. Just like I expected, my actions resulted in an attempt from the town healer to make me feel at ease, even while she herself still reeked of fear, uncertainty, and anger. She had walked right into that. This was almost too easy. Even Onar had been more of a challenge than this woman.
“I’m not responsible for other people’s lies, Reya,” I explained, deflecting even more blame. I shook my head for good measure, pretending to be put out at Gery’s shameless lying.
“No, you’re not.” She sighed as the fear and uncertainty in her flavor turned to cold determination. Then her mellow expression turned into a sudden angry sneer. “But you did back up his lies without even batting an eye!”
Wait? What?
“I… I was scared okay?” I startled, quickly twisting my own shock and surprise into an appropriate cowed-and-scared vampire girl response.
This had been way off the mark for expected responses from her. That happened sometimes. People were hard to predict. I adapted, playing different angles until I found one that worked. Only I still didn’t know her game, didn’t know what she was getting at. And that sudden sneer of her was unnerving, almost as if she was baiting me.
“It’s okay,” she spoke gently, sighed once more, and shook her head. “We were all scared back then.”
I only barely refrained from narrowing my eyes at her. Her scent no longer matched her words. Not at all. She really was trying to manipulate me, and she was not acting out of misguided kindheartedness like the other villagers had done earlier. This was deliberate, premeditated, designed to steer me towards certain actions and reactions. I did not like this woman. It had been wrong to stop for her.
She really think she can play me like this?
“It’s all about trust, isn’t it, Vale,” she mused. “You didn’t trust us and some of us didn’t trust you.”
Stop repeating my name. That way to instill trust doesn’t work against people that know you’re doing it.
“But trust is a funny thing, you know?” she continued. “I trust you enough to sit here with you, alone in the forest. With a suspected vampire. Why? Because you’re just that nice? No. It’s because you want to be liked and trusted, enough to drive you to almost kill yourself in an attempt to get that trust.”
Getting this sudden unexpected validation was nice. It was heartwarming, which was probably her entire intention. That’s why it didn’t work on me. Somewhere along the way, this entire conversation had gotten twisted. I was no longer playing her. She was attempting to play me. It was a novel kind of experience, so I decided to indulge her a little longer, to see where this would lead.
“That’s why a lot of people want you to stay Vale. Because they can see how utterly broken you are, because you’ve done so much for us, saving Uncle Tare, killing those monsters, not to mention all you did for us last winter. People want to do something in return, even if you might be a monster.”
Was that why everyone had been so nice to me? Because I was broken? Had I truly shown so much of myself to these people? Had I messed things up that badly?
This was her point then. The problem was, her machinations were getting to me. It was time to put this conversation back on track, before she could unbalance me.
“You can stop now. I know what you’re trying to do, and it’s not working,” I scoffed. “And purely for the record, those ahuizotl I killed technically aren’t monsters. They’re actually hybrids, partially Atlus based.” I threw in that last bit to catch her off-guard. It was irrelevant information, completely of track from where she was going. “You can’t—”
“Random topic changes? Really? This is exactly why I don’t want you to stay, Vale,” she interrupted me with a grin. “I don’t trust you, not as a person anyway.”
Really? You’re complaining about topic changes by changing the topic?
“You are indeed broken, Vale. Just as easily as you hurt yourself, you lie and you manipulate other people, hurting them in turn. If you want to hurt yourself, that’s your business and you do it on your own time. But toying with other people in this town, just to get your way, that I will not tolerate,” Reya lectured.
“Haaha!” I laughed a fake laugh, mouth open, and fangs on display for her to see. “The only one here being manipulative is you, Reya.” I was past not liking this bitch now. She wanted to get me riled up. Fine. She’d see me riled up.
“It’s not so fun, is it, Vale? Being lied to, being manipulated so casually?” Reya broke in once more. “This is a small town, Vale, a very small town. It doesn’t take long for people to figure out you’re being dishonest in a community as closely knit as this.”
She just will not let up, will she?
“Get to your point, Reya,” I sneered at her, and began counting of all the conflicting viewpoints she’d expressed on my fingers. “You want me to stay, you don’t want me to stay, you’re accusing me of being manipulative while being manipulative yourself. Your lecturing is all over the place, going nowhere, and pissing me off in the process!” I snarled the last bit at her, quivering in rage.
“Finally caught you off balance, didn’t I?” She grinned at me, letting my anger wash over her as if it was nothing. That only pissed me off even more. “You messed with Meg! She’s the nicest sarding person in this entire town. You saved her life last winter. She’d do anything for you in return. And what do you ask of her Vale? Please sit here and watch while I shit my intestines out of my ass?”
I… what?
She saw that?
I hid that!
She couldn’t have known!
“She didn’t faint, Vale. She refused to leave so I had to drug her just so your self-mutilation wouldn’t scar her for life. That’s the only reason she can still look at you right now. Because I shielded her from what you were doing.”
Not going to work. I had told her she could leave. Her staying was her choice and her choice alone.
“Right. Nice try. We’re done,” I smiled amiably, then gave her a little wink as I nudged Fern into motion. “Don’t follow me. I’m not responsible for what happens if you do.”
“Ah, running away then, that’s your solution to everything isn’t it,” she crowed at my back. “But you don’t want to leave, do you. Not now that you’ve found people that might accept you as you are. A tiny little part of you wants to try it, wants to stay.”
I ignored her ranting. Her words were like water, flowing of me without a care. They could not reach me, could not hurt me. They were not like water smashing into a dike, ready to burst. They were not.
Not!
“We’d let you, you know. But you’d be kicked out just as fast, Vale. Not because you’re a dangerous monster, but because you’re a lying, manipulative bitch.”
I continued riding. Out of sight now, almost out of earshot. Reya’s last shouted words were becoming barely more than a distant whisper in between the dense trees.
“Consider this a favor, Vale. You’ve got a simple choice, really. Come back and clean up your act, or get lost. Think on it. Let me know your answer when you’re ready. But trust me, if you come back and lie one more time, then I’m reporting your ass to the Inquisition myself.”
I strained my ears even as I kept pushing Fern forward. No more words followed. Blissful silence. Alone at last, away from that accursed town.
Bye Reya. The real bitch here was you, by the way.
Good luck with the health. Hope you recover well.
Smart title choice and nice event. You are right about the mind game. Everybody angry and afraid! Reya and Vale are really in different premise here one living a life of deceit, another blind to her own part in event she clearly detest. There are some nice denial here. Trust goes both way as Reya said. Who should extend it first though?
Also from chapter 17:
I glanced at Meg. She did look rather ashen. No matter how much I wanted her here, asking her might have been a mistake. "I am sorry Meg, I may have underestimated how hard this is on you. Would you like to leave? I am sure we can do this with the two of us."
"No, no, it's fine," Meg said after swallowing several times. "You wanted me here, right, for trust." She gave me a thin smile. It looked entirely unconvincing.
"That's it? She's here because you don't trust me?" Reya lashed out at me.
Her outburst wasn't entirely unexpected. The village healer had shifted from being wary of me to being displeased with me ever since I'd insisted Meg stay. It surprised me more that it took her this long to really make a point of it.
"Yes," I nodded meekly, assuming that making her feel validated was the quickest way I'd get this shut down. With some luck displaying some vulnerability would isolate her a little from Meg as well.
"That's cheap girl. Real cheap," Reya admonished me. "Trust goes both ways you know."
"It's fine Reya. We did kind of threaten her earlier," Meg shook her head. "I'd have trouble trusting us as well."
"I… fine!" Reya spat in a way that made it clear that this was anything but fine. "Let's leave this until after we've saved this man's life."
Directly after chapter 18 quote in the author note:
My fault she's like this.
Should have let her leave.
Should have forced her to leave.
Thank you for the story and once again hope you recover well from your emergency.
(Eeep, finally getting around to more than a week's worth of comments)
Thanks for the well-wishes. Everything is already going much better.
You actually went back and looked stuff up. Amazing! I hope I succeeded, and that it is obvious in hindsight that Vale manipulated Meg into staying.
And you're right, things really have gotten kind of out of hand. The conflict I write into my stories often isn't about people being "right" or "wrong". It's about people being flawed, having blind spots and preconceptions. It's about what happens when people with different mindsets meet each other. If things go wrong, it can get messy. Who should extend trust first in this kind of situation is indeed a pertinent question.
@Muddy Vale admitted it herself. Her attempt for Meg to leave was too little too late. Either this attempt was genuine or just a guilt release for Vale that never intended for Meg to leave is a point Reya and Vale will nicely and calmly discuss over coffee for sure. Either way Meg is owed some apologies around here.
Everything Reya said was completely reasonable, and to see Meg not being able to see past rage was really refreshing. No "one chapter solves all character flaws" trope that is really prominent on this site. Reading about Meg's character development when she realises the error in her thinking (or even never at all) is going to feel pretty damn satisfying. TFTC.
Also, health comes first in life so watch over yourself and come back when you're better.
(Eeep, finally getting around to more than a week's worth of comments)
I was wondering what people would think about Reya in this chapter. It's nice to know that Reya's intent shines through, even if her delivery isn't exactly the most diplomatic.
It's easy for readers to fall into a sort of protagonist-blindness where they are completely oblivious to the flaws of the MC. In fact, I actively played into that, hoping that people would gloss over some of Vale's flaws until I began actively pointing them out. In that regard, this chapter is supposed to be a kind of wake-up call. The protagonist is deeply flawed, and it are exactly those flaws that drive the narrative.
I'm very much against quick and easy resolutions for character flaws. It's going to be a long, slow road, with plenty of denial and relapses. So much in fact, that not everything is going to be covered in this first volume. I'm still hoping to deliver a solid ending though, with a protagonist on a clear path towards improvement.
"I am not manipulating you" -person who threatens with murder (HY-PO-CRITS)
Says me, often describing myself as "self contradicting in every way."
Thanks for the chapter!
Here's hoping you make a speedy recovery