[ how strange, kaveh thinks, that the shape of your childhood lingers with you, that long since have you have unboxed yourself from its confines, you find your limbs forming those long-ago shapes anyway. there are some things you carry with you. there are some things that carry you. and there are some things that are such an intrinsic part of who and what you are that the decision of living with it and living without it is one and the very same. what strikes kaveh is thus: that there is love for midnight's mother, and there is no hate for midnight's father. this does not necessarily draw upon equivalency, but you can define the outlines of something by what isn't there as much as what is.

and then, because this is kaveh, the look on his face clearly loops back to this very transparent thought: that all this time, he's assumed that midnight was just a very strange human who could see in the dark, had slightly pointer teeth, and sharp edges to his ears. ]

Oh.

[ oh, kaveh's brain supplies a winding, tipsy beat later. the bourbon in his hands find its way back up to his lips in rote, mechanical form as he considers this very new thought.

well, kaveh thinks, i suppose that this means you aren't a particularly good vampire, then. this, he doesn't say, because kaveh has a sense of what ought and ought not to be said. what he say is thus: ]

Well, I suppose that this means you aren't a particularly good vampire, then.

[ ... wait.

the mind-mouth filter checks itself, observes the gaping hole in its sieve, and shrugs the shrug of the entirely dispossessed. kaveh considers himself, then midnight, and grimaces. ] No, sorry, I hadn't meant to say that. [ kaveh's fingers picks along the rim of his glass. he says: ] It's just that, well - as far as I can tell, you decided not to hurt a single person in your life, so you simply decided to hurt yourself instead.