“What is he doing?”

The light, beaming down on him, was blinding. His pale fingers grazed over the surface of the sand, leaving trails along the surface, before he took to digging his fingers in. Grabbing a handful, he raised the fist and let the sand trail down…most of it getting in his sleeve.

“Why is there so much sand in here?”

“It’s only sand. Surely you ca—“

“Yeah, right, why did is he lying on a pile of sand on my new leather sofa? I just…I’m out.”

There was the sound of a door slamming shut, in the distance, but it was quickly forgotten. There were some sharp heel clicks, and the light far above him was obscured by a face looking down at him. Brushing his white hair back and over out his face, he squinted slightly to focus on the evidently upset face of the woman. Middle aged woman. It felt like he had blinked, and she had aged twenty years.

Shooting her a smile and sitting himself up, Antares heard her sigh and felt the woman reach over to brush the sand off of his leather jacket. She sighed, and he mimicked the action himself, sighing. Sighing, letting out a breath…he didn’t need to breath. Turning to face the woman, setting his shoe and bare foot on the sand covered floor, “Julie, why was your brother so upset? It’s peculiar, he’s been sleeping in sand for weeks now…”

Letting out a small laugh, before dropping herself onto his lap, ‘Julie’ pulled the vampire’s head closer…face now at the crook of her neck, he could feel the subtle movements as she spoke to him, even the blood flowing through her veins. He knew she knew he could feel it, “Lets forget about him, how was that staycation of yours?”

“…”

“Hello, Antares?”

“Oh…of course, yet. Staycation, was it?” His eyes went over to the lamp he had stared at for a while, but, “You are home early. Has something of note come up?” The woman let out a sigh, before getting up off of him, making her way to another room. Waiting, he heard the lamp whisper something about the weather a few days ago in Spain, and he couldn’t agree more.

Returning with a number of folded clothing pieces, the pale vampire was already without his leather jacket, removing his shirt now. The sand around him hadn’t disappeared, but it was ‘gone’, in a sense. For a moment, he anticipated his hair pulled into a man bun, as the middle aged woman played with his hair.

Touching the tops of his ears as she stood behind him with tapered fingernails, his white hair swayed just as as he slowly tilted his head back to look at her, and she took this opportunity to tell him what he wanted to know, “Walkley has business out of country," Her tone was a little flat, like a pizza..."But he wanted me to let you know that the Prince is holding an important private meeting that he thought you should attend. I’ll arrange for someone to bring you over, in the meantime…can you go take a quick shower?”

“Ah, hmm?”

Moving her face closer, she kissed his temple gently, before reaching out to brush some loose sand from his shoulder, “You smell like the ocean.”

“Ah, but I’m quite fond of the scent of the ocean...” Pink eyes were lazily trained on her neck, trailing back to her eyes.

“Take that shower.”