Countdown Classics

Will go here

"Time is irrelevant, it's not linear" U2- No Line on the Horizon

Funny thing about time. It seems to move so slowly when you are young and then speeds along when you are older. I thought I would never get to 16. It was taking too long. Then it was twenty-one, I couldn't wait to be able to belly up to the bar and order a cold one, even if I did have to present ID to the bartender.

But once you hit twenty-one, time begins to race down hill. And you look around at people racing down that same hill and you are trying to figure out where you stand. Are you where you are supposed to be in the social time line that other people create for you?

I think that of all things that is interesting and marvelous and a little sad is the way the clock stands still for Vampires. They are frozen to the look they had whenever they were turned. But they see the passage of human time and they know and see human history. Perhaps they ignore most of it as the affairs of human kind and beneath their notice. But imagine, being friends with someone like Eric, who lived for a thousand years and has seen man go from the dark ages to the new age.

Imagine, that when Eric was made Vampire, most people, even the wealthy, could not read or write. Books were expensive luxuries, transportation was a horse or horse and cart or by foot. Women were property (though there are some people who think that today) to be disposed of as their father, brother or husband or even son saw fit. Religion was a strange mixture of pagan and extremely early Christianity (if it was known at all). Language was different. Even English as it was spoken a thousand years ago was very different from English today. Ask any High School senior about The Canterbury Tales and they will tell you just how different it is.

Communication was word of mouth. Major news was by town crier (though spin was always what it is). Singing minstrels made their living delivering news all through the European world and America was a rumor, a legend told by some Norseman someone like Eric made have heard and may have even smiled at the man's imagination.

Food was whatever you managed to coax out of the ground or hunt down. War was truly hand to hand, money was whatever precious material you had (Iberians, those people who would become the natives of Spain, used tin).

Health care was whatever herbs and roots the local midwife or herbalist/alchemist could prepare for you. The human body was the ultimate final frontier and the world beyond the clouds was inhabited by frightening and terrible gods and beasts.

Go forward five hundred years. If Eric is a real person and a Vampire, he will have seen the first female queen of England (no, not Elizabeth I, there was Maud, granddaughter of the Conqueror). He would have seen the first of several worldwide plagues, Christianity would be the main religion, and he would have seen the beginnings of the Holy Inquisition. He would have seen the discovery of the New World and perhaps remembered those old stories he heard about Norsemen finding a strange new world on the other side of the sea. He would have heard about the wonderful new playwright William Shakespeare but he would not have been able to see a play until theatres came up with a more effective means of lighting. The Globe was an open air theatre and used natural sunlight to light the stage.

Beginning with the 1600's he would have seen the Renaissance, where art and science and philosophy made violent love to one another and gave birth to medicine, mechanization, industrialization, astronomy, advanced mathematics, democracy, physiology and more war and revolution.

And Time would continue to pass. Our Eric saw the first imaginings of flight, of creation, of accelerated travel and ships that traveled constantly over the seas. He would stand in line to ride a train and be fascinated to know it was being run on steam. London's streets, by the time he meets Pam, are probably gas lit. By 1865, when Lorena is making Bill Vampire, Eric will be seeing the beginnings of mass production and the use of electricity. He will read the newspaper, if he is in London a couple of decades later, about one of the first serial killers in modern history and consider Jack the Ripper an amateur.

By the early 1900's, Wilbur and Orville Wright will have flown at Kitty Hawk, the first World War will have broken out, the Spanish Flu will have caused a pandemic and more soldiers will die of the flu than of combat. And he will buy his first car, probably a model A. He will see World War Two and the atomic age. Man will fly transatlantic, then fly to the moon. The Cold War will break out, America will go to Vietnam, a woman will go into space in the space shuttle, there will be a space station inhabited by human beings circling the earth and he will see the dawn of the computer age.

By the time we meet Eric if you read the books first, the paper back imprint on my copy says May 2001. Five months before September 11. When we meet Eric on the screen, he is already texting, messaging and playing video games on the same little hand held device.

Imagine, going from horse back to driving a high powered Corvette in a thousand years, of reading a book he purchased (probably) with a debit card/credit card, when wealth was usually whatever you carried with you. And that book was printed by a machine instead of being laboriously hand written. Eric gets his news directly from CNN and not the town crier. And England has a Queen on the throne, Elizabeth II, and there is no longer a Holy Roman Empire and Islam is edging up on Christianity as the largest religion on earth.

Women are no longer chattel (for the most part) and boy do they dress differently from when he met Pam in her flounces and lace. Wars are still being waged and diseases still threaten us, but simple infections, like the one that killed his wife Aude, can be treated with penicillin.

Recon someone like Eric would be a little busy? And we think waiting six nights and 30 minutes is tough.

With or Without You

"Sleight of hand and twist of fate..." With or Without You- U2
"A Vampire or a Victim, It depends on who's around," Stay U2
"You're not the only one/ Staring at the Sun" Staring at the Sun U2

"Because I could not stop for death / He kindly stopped for me" Emily Dickinson

"Father, brother, son," Godric

I was singing a hymn on my way to the bar. "I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses," I sang the song that came unbidden to my mind as I watched the sun go down over the horizon. I am not a singer and this evening, I heard my voice tremble and crack.

Eric Lover was asleep in the back, and Violet was in the passenger side of the car. She handed me a tissue, from her endless supply of tissues, and I wiped my eyes and put my hand between my legs to fish a cigarette out of the pack nestled there with the lighter. Eric Lover draped her hand over my shoulder and I put the crumpled pack in her hand with the lighter. God Speed, who had driven the earlier part of the trip was in the back with Eric Lover. I thought he was asleep but he just sat there, quiet, looking at the darkening scenery as we bulleted through the deep south.

"Aren't you tired Aslinn, want me to drive?" asked Vi. I shook my head.
"I could drive all night," I said, tears till on my cheeks. I inhaled on the cigarette and blew out a plume of smoke that was caught instantly by the suction from the driver's side window. I looked in the rear view mirror and I could see five other cars with members of the True Blood Anonymous group following us. When I left, my dad asked me where I was going. "To see a man..." I began but I simply turned around and got in the car and took off.

I had called my counselor and he tried to tell me that the Lead Counselor would not want to see us right now, that we should email him and send him our regards but for the first time ever I disagreed with the low soft southern voice. See, we knew them as well as they knew us, we knew them better than they knew each other.

We would not last till Wednesday for the regular meeting, we would not be able to tell him what was in our hearts. Losing the visiting counselor was a blow to us, we didn't know how to feel about it and we had to get to the man who would know. Finally we came to our journey's end.

The bar was dark. It would not open tonight out of deference to not only the man who was gone but the man remaining. I got out of the car in time to see my counselor come out of the shadows.

"Are you disappointed we could not take your advice?" I asked the shadow.
"No, but I do not understand," he said in his soft voice.
"It's not to understand, it is to do, it's what our kind does," I said. "We grieve."

I turned and followed the others the others into the bar, the door held open by a short thin blond woman, dressed in black and brassy looking with a hard edge about her. But even this simple creature felt the pain in the man in the bar.

We sat down at the bar and at the tables and the woman who opened the door for us came around the bar.

"Offer them something to drink Ginger and when they are served, leave us," said the voice in the corner. It was a sad, unusually tired voice. The woman asked to the bar in general what we would like to drink. To make it simple we all had a beer. She began setting up bottles and God Speed and Liberator and anewaphorist went up and got the bottles and passed them around to us.

"Ginger, Aslinn is shivering, get her my jacket out of the office," said the voice. "You should not be here."
"Do not presume, with all respect, to tell any of us who should be here and who should not be here, not after what we have witnessed," I said to the man in the shadows. When Ginger reappeared, I did take the jacket from her hands and slide it around my shoulders. But I felt other hands, settling it over me and reached up and squeezed the cool hand of my counselor, who squeezed my shoulder and sat behind us, several feet away, in the shadows.

Several of us noticed the female counselor settle herself at a booth in the corner.

"So, why are you here?" asked the voice of the lead counselor.
"You said "Trust Me" so now, I guess we want you to trust us," said Sweet and Wild."You need us."
"Need...I don't understand..." he said hesitantly.
"Enough of that," said Eric Lover. "That whole 'Don't use words you don't understand/don't use words I don't understand' crap. You know what Sweet is saying to you. We are grieving too,"
"Why are you grieving?" he asked.
"Come on, we may be junkies, but we understand devotion, love, inspiration," said God Speed. "We understand loss."

"We did not know the visiting counselor for long, but he brought something wonderful to the group," said Roygbiv. "He was magikal, a pure spirit, and now we will miss his goodness and his compassion."

"He wanted peace for himself and his kind," said anewaphorist. "He wanted to sacrifice himself for the sins of his kind."
"Christ," muttered the man in the shadows.
"Perhaps, just like that," said Vi. "But more like a protest."
"Protest?" repeated the lead counselor.
"The monks in Vietnam," I said. "Buddhist monks sacrificed themsleves to try to end the war by an act of self immolation."
"But," said God Speed. "I think he did it to prevent a war."

The shadow on it's throne did not say anything. We sat quietly, expectantly, and still he said nothing. His hands sat motionless, the only bit of him that we could see. I reached out to Violet who gave me several tissues. I got up and walked toward the shadow. I stopped in front of him and extended the tissues to him. He took them and then took my hand. He pulled into the shadow that was himself and I felt his cool lips on the back of my hot hand.

"Thank you," he whispered. "Is there nothing I can do for you in return for your kindness and understanding?"
"Nothing, I am earning a star for my crown," I said.
"Is this a ritual among your kind?" he asked.
"Yes, it is called sitting up with the dead," I said.
"How appropriate," he whispered.

I Come to the Garden Alone

Cold hearted orb that rules the night,
Removes the colours from our sight.
Red is grey and yellow white,
But we decide which is right.
And which is an illusion- Late Lament-Moody Blues

The lovely suburban house in Northern Louisiana was the home of the most powerful man in the state, though no one outside his exclusive circle knew that fact. The man in question, Eric Northman, stood in his moon garden, looking at the dark flowers which would seem so brightly colored in the sun were black to him. He looked at her, barley visible in the sky, just a small silver curve.

They stayed til nearly dawn. These people, these humans, why? Why did they care? And why did he think of them now. They seemed to know exactly what he needed. There were no cliched platitudes, they simply sat there and chatted and even laughed softly and drank beer, switching to coffee as it came time for them to leave. He refused their money but they all put together the equal of their bar tab and gave it to him to give to that feckless Ginger. He had it in his pocket. It would be the biggest tip that little fangbanger had every been given. But even she was good, in her own way, not hovering, not whining or rolling her eyes. Even she had a simple sort of dignity about her. But one at a time, they each made their way to him and shared something they felt from his maker, something only he though was aware of. They were cautious and generous and thoughtful.

Perhaps that is what Godric had been trying to explain to him. He was so willing to fawn over him and be servile to him, the dutiful child to his father, but he did not see what these people saw in the one person Eric loved above himself. Not until they all arrived at the bar.

Bill had called and said that Aslinn was coming and the rest of the group. He told Eric he tried to dissuade them, but Aslinn is feisty, rowdy, and has a mixture of both respect and a funny sort of disrespect towards him. Eric Lover had emailed him and told him she was on her way to pick Aslinn and some of the others up and that she would take no refusal. Of course he and she had a little chat in his office before she left. So lovely.

But now he was alone. He thought about the ancient child who had been everything, just as he said he would be: Father, brother, son. Eric tried to hold himself together but he began to cry again. He hated his weakness and was glad to know that the only things that would see him was the little sliver moon winking down at him. He turned his face to it's dim light that turned his night black tears to silver.

Wiping his bloody tears away with the back of his hand, he resolved in his heart that this would be the last time he cried for his Maker. They had a few more adventures to enjoy in the next weeks and he was anticipating them.

Memory Lane

The Viking was at his rest in his comfortable home in Northern Louisiana. Aslinn had sparked something in his imagination and now his mind was running on it. He lay there in his ornately carved bed,his body prone, head resting on a pillow. His eyes were closed, still behind their lids.

He had, of course, thought about the place that had been home so many centuries ago when Godric was with them. He missed home from time to time and it startled him when Aslinn asked him if he ever got home sick. Since he had been made, he had tried his best not to think about the small village he was born to. Of course, to modern standards, his village and his home and the grand mead hall where his father held court and feasted and told stories, would seem dismal, primitive but at that time, he thought it was the finest village he had seen.

The mead hall was his father’s domain. It smelled of fur and leather and mead and warrior. He remembered now the first time he was brought to the mead house after his first hunt when he was 12. He had brought down an elk and he and his best friend had field dressed it and brought the heart and liver to his father as tribute. His father had blooded him and kissed him roughly on the face and when they came into the village, he brought his son into the hall and poured him a cup of his best honey mead and his mother brought him food and smiled proudly at him.

Norse people built lodges, similar to the ships they built, long and well supported by heavy logs and mud and wattle and covered in stacked stone on the outside and reindeer hide on the walls on the inside. His wife had made separate sleeping compartments of large mattresses of grass and clover and herbs and covered them in thick furs. The compartments were closed off by heavy hand dyed fabrics in muted greens and rusty reds. He remembered the stone floor he’d laid himself for her that she covered in reindeer hides. There was a fire pit with a spit for roasting meat and she had heavy earthen ware bowls and platters that she cooked vegetables and greens in, supplementing their diet.

In the summers, they would pull away the hides in front of the windows and his wife and the women who were servants in his house would carry out the furs and bedding and rugs and wall coverings and beat them, taking out the filler and burning it and gathering dried grass and refilling them. They would sweep out the lodges and air out the lodge and make things ready for the summer. They would plant their crops and plan hunting parties and fishing parties and war parties. The women worked as hard as the men. She was bright, attractive, full bodied from child bearing but all together pleasing and intelligent and knew what was expected of a future chieftain’s wife.

He remembered how he would come to her bed and she opened her arms to him and he made love with her while the snows and winds and rains of the winter howled all around him. He remembered how ferociously he loved her before a battle or a hunting journey, hoping that he had left a part of himself to grow inside her so should something happen to him, he would be immortalized in his sons. He remembered how she had been taken to the women's house to birth his first son and he lay in the bed they had shared, waiting for the news that his wife and child were safe in the world and the midwives came to him and said, “You have a son,” and laid the fat red boy in his arms and he lay there on his side and cradled the child in the crook of his arm, unwrapping him to look at his child, his large hands seeming to big for the task at hand.

His son had been born in the winter, and he loved the winter. In winter, his wife would cut branches of fir and cedar to sweeten the air and brighten the drab lodge with holly and its red and white berries. They would gather at the mead hall and celebrate Yule, the time of winter when the spirits of their gods walked the earth and celebrated with them and blessed them during the bleaker, shorter days of cold. They would make stews and soups and roast meat and drink mead and tell stories and dance. How long had it been since he had danced to some lovely Norse song. He wondered if these new friends of theirs liked to dance.

Why does she do this, little Aslinn, why does she evoke such things in his mind? He had not thought of the boy or his mother or his village in a long time. He was not sure he liked it, but he was curious about his feelings now. They all made him think of his past, when he was not as he is now. He asked her counselor if he was disturbed when Aslinn did this, and the dark haired man simply looked at him. Of course, he was not that far from his past, he would have clearer memories and he had a closer relationship to his feelings, though this too was difficult for the southern gentleman.

With this thought, Eric Northman finally went into his deeper rest.

There is Nothing Like Riding in a High Powered Car

Especially one driven by a person who can really drive, who knows the road like he knows the intimate curves of a woman's body. He is a big man but knows how to elegantly fold his large frame into the driver's seat of his blood red Corvette. Watching him slide into the driver's side was like watching sex, he fit so carefully into the seat, his hips relaxing as he slouched back and he put his hands on the ignition and the steering wheel. Once the motor purrs to life, he takes off.

The pale faced blond is illuminated by the dash board lights, a sort of blue light dancing over his features, enhancing the color of his eyes as they traced the road in an unconscious way drivers do. His hand is relaxed on the steering wheel. He likes to go fast, but he slowly builds up his speed so you don't realize you are going so fast until you see the lights of houses becoming strange otherworldly streaks. But you don't mind. You are with him and he knows this road very well.

You are sitting very close to him and you try not to stare, but you do. You can feel the butterfly light passage of air as he moves to shift gears (of course he would drive a standard clutch, no automatic for him) and the air feels like static electricity. You don't want to look at the speedometer, you don't want to know how fast you are going because with this man you decide you are either perfectly safe or you aren't, whether you are in his fast car or ___somewhere else.

And so you keep going, the road in front of you winding like a coal black snake into the darkness, the beautiful blond is driving very fast and it is the ride of a lifetime and you decide to relax. Whatever happens tonight simply happens. There is no turning back and there is no time for regret. It is too late to stop now. He probably wouldn't anyway. You decide to surrender.

There really is nothing like riding in a high powered car.

The Dreamer must Awake

An hour before sun down and the dreamer lay still as a statue on the bed, the room dark except for the soft reddish glow of the small bronze lamps with their red crystal shades on the plain, darkly stained dresser, flanking the large mirror. The room is in the center of the North Louisiana suburban home so there are no windows to bother covering with black paint and heavy lined velvet curtains as he had in a previous home he once owned.

The chest of drawers on the right side of the room stood against the wall, near the walk in closet and a low leather couch, big enough for two people, was positioned on the left side of the room. A highly polished square table sat before it with an ornate chess board, pieces moved around as though the dreamer had been in the middle of a game when he simply went to the bed and lay down and closed his eyes and sleep took him with the beginning of dawn.

The bed itself was right out of a fantasy. Made of oak cut from the forests of Sweden in the middle of the first millennium, the dreamer had carefully stored it in first a monastery and then with various royal families until he made his way to the New World. It had as long and varied a past as he. Kings were conceived, plans plotted, and orders commanded in this bed.

Oak was sacred to many people's and tribes and his was no exception. The bed itself was heavily carved, on the headboard the goddess Frigg, reclined and looked down on the dreamer. She was the wife of Odin and looked to in matters of love and sex and the dreamer, though he had no religion, liked knowing that as he went into his rest, the goddess stared down at him. Other animals in phantasmagorical knots and tangles decorated the heavy bed and patient, thoughtful viewers could find plants, animals, even lovers, like a Norse Kama Sutra in lovely detailed tangles in the vines and leaves and fruit.

Upon the bed laid a large heavily worked patchwork quilt of Burmese silk pieces, thinly pounded leathers and heavy hand brushed velvets, all in a festival of jeweled colors. The sheets were a pale faded saffron color in expensive Egyptian flax, six hundred thread count per square inch and looked like rubbed satin.

The dreamer lay with the sheets and quilt folded at the waist, his chest bare and still. His right arm lay parallel to his body, his hand flat on the mattress. His other hand rested on his belly somewhere between his navel and...the rest of him. How many nights and how many woman had allowed her hand to smooth over the pattern of hair there and gently twine her finger tips in the pale gold of the curls around his last vestige of humanity, the place where he and his mother, a woman he did not remember, were physically joined. The belly was naked to the viewer and a light sprinkling of blond curls made a gentle diamond shape around his navel and had he been nude, would have trailed down to "Adam's Thicket". But as it was, he was discretely covered.

Still there was something wildly indecent about what was visible to the viewer. His belly was slightly concave, lying prone as he was. His rib cage was just visible under his slightly pink ivory skin. Even at rest, the muscles of his chest looked what they are, hard and heavy with preternatural strength earned first in his mortal life and preserved in perfection in his other existence.

His clavicles stood out strongly, but not in a starved way but as a further detail of his sculpted form. His head was slightly turned to the left, his face clean and clear, his lips slightly parted as if to breathe though he did not. They were just a shade darker than the rest of him and delicate. If he were a prince, albeit a dark one, the princess sent to wake him from his daytime rest would be pleased to kiss him. Above his lips sat his nose, not delicately made but strong, straight, a good feature to pull the rest of his features. His eyes were well set, not too deep yet not too shallow.

His eyes were closed and his eyelids had a slight sheen to them. His eye lashes would seem scant to the observer but closer observation yielded a truth that his eye lashes were lush, lying without a flutter. His eyes were unmoving behind them. No REM sleep for him, but he did dream. Though what this man was dreaming no one could tell, and certainly not your humble observer. When he wakened, he would look at the dimly lit room with light colored eyes, depending on the light, seemed either blue or green, and perhaps from time to time, winter sky grey.

His high brow was uncreased and his strong but pale eyebrows hung relaxed over his eyes. His hair was swept away from his face, showing his even hair line. His short hair was tousled in a casual way and was softly blond, cut carefully around his ears, his side burns sharply following the contours of his gently oval face.

He lay there, silently as the grave that never yawned before him, until the sun went down finally over the North Louisiana landscape. When it finally disappeared, the dreamer must awake.

The Kiss

This is for me...I need a date with my favorite Vampire, but please, insert yourself and your favorite Vampire here.

Have you ever wanted to be kissed by a beautiful stranger? Perhaps you are walking on rain swept sidewalk one night and they are walking toward you and your eyes lock and they slide their arm around your waist and stop you and lean in and you first feel the pressure of their mouth on yours and then your heads turn ever so so slightly and you open your mouth for the full effect and you feel their tongue playing clever little games with yours? Would you push them away a little? Startled at first then excited?

Everything that you are would be consumed in enjoying this kiss. What would you do if they held you just a little closer? Pulling you against them and you feel everything about them, the structures of their bodies through their clothes, their hand against your back, or lower, pressing you closer, the gentle sway of your body against theirs. Your legs slide against theirs and they press you just a little closer with one hand and their other begins to move over you, searching the map of your body, learning the curves and rises of your form.

They break their kiss and nuzzle your neck, their lips pursing against your skin and maybe, you feel the slight upwards tilt of their smile because they can feel the way your pulse is pounding against their lips. They like it, it is intense and they like it they are doing this to you, making you feel this and they don't stop you as you begin your own exploration of their shoulders, back, chest, wherever your hand wanders and they perhaps guide your hands to more interesting places to explore. Curves and muscles and peaks and valleys that is their terra firma.

Are you surprised that though you are on a city street you are being very intimate with this stranger who found you alluring enough to break with taboo and pull you into their embrace and kiss you, like they have resumed doing. Don't close your eyes, take in every second. Breathe and experience their scent, clean and different, a little wild, other worldly. Taste love and sex and desire and danger incarnate on their mouth. No one is watching you as you consume and are being consumed by this being, this creature, who has enchanted you who is seducing you where you stand.

You know you are playing with fire. But it is a dangerous lovely fire that only comes once in a lifetime if ever at all. Don't ask yourself who this being is or what will happen next because it is too late. Whatever you were going to do, whatever your destination had been is unimportant as you feel the stranger's lips on yours their tongue in your mouth, their hands on your body and their body in your hands. Because it will all be over in a second.

Let the moment take you and spin you and intoxicate you as they put their hands up to your face and begin to end the encounter. You want desperately to hold them to you but it is futile. It was never meant to last more than a moment. Don't speak and break the moment that they look into your eyes and you theirs. They kiss you gently one more time and caress your face once more and seem to disappear.

But it will be a moment you will savor. And then smile.

Good Evening. ;D

La Famiglia (The Family)


Red Headed Harlot and I were setting up the treats, silent, wondering about our Westexan and the Kaiser. God Speed was laying out treats, little bagel pizzas and mini CB's and Linzy made us some Hard Lemonade. Mel and Liz came in, Mel laden with cinnamon rolls as large as a Viking Vampire's gracious plenty. Dude and Sal came in with Butter and Fairy.

"Have any of you heard anything about Westexan?" asked Sal.
"Nothing yet," said God Speed. Lina came in and sat down her coat and purse and came over and got into the cabinets and pulled out cups and plates and plastic silverware (I love using my favorite oxymoron) along with napkins.

"Has everyone seen the new promo yet?" asked Lina.
"The back in production promo?" asked Dude.
"That would be the one," she answered.
"Only on the net, I haven't seen it on the TV yet," said Dude. That was where I had seen it. I was excited now more than ever. It was just enough to get our blood going, especially with the revelation that there would be a fourth summer of adventures. Had it really been almost two years that we had become addicted? Of course there were some who had been strung out on B long before the adventures began, but junkies are junkies and this drug was so deliciously addictive. Delicious, like a tea cup human to the Sheriff of Area Five. That made me think again of our Westexan.

Violet and Minnie Mouse came in and sat their things in their chairs, carefully preserving the place our Westexan sat. We could feel her absence, as though one of our nest mates had gone missing. Maybe that is how we really felt about each other on the forum, "virtual" nest mates, all cozy in our internet lair from where we watched the world with our counselors at our backs, shadowed figures that we trusted without knowing why. I shook my head from such thoughts. Surely this was a sign of just how deeply addicted we were, not just to B or TB, but to one another's shared addictions, only we really understood each other. Renee, Violet, Bella and I understood our love and admiration for Bill. Linzy, Lina, Burke and Fairy had their allegiances to Eric. Sal, Dude and God Speed were under the spell of Jessica and we all loved the rest in between. Even the villains were wonderful and we loved them too, even if what we really loved was to hate them.

We began to settle finally, Mikeylikesit rounding out the circle and it was not much longer til the lights went out except for the ambient lighting of the four little track lights that now shined down our little circle. The lead counselor, tall and mysterious in his shadow, where I liked him the most, was standing leaned against the door. My counselor, the one I shared with Renee, Violet, and Bella was sitting in his chair, his arms relaxed on the arms of the chair and his legs crossed. I could hear the young counselor whispering sotto voce to the lady counselor, asked her where Westexan was.

"Yes, has anyone heard from Westexan? Has she safely delivered her child?" asked the lead counselor.
"We don't know yet," said GS. "Aslinn has not heard from her yet."
"Even a safe delivery would be taxing on her," mentioned the southern counselor in his soft voice. "But, when you hear from her, please pass on our best wishes, won't you sweetheart?"
"I will, I am sure she will let us know soon," I said.

"What shall we talk about tonight?" asked the lady counselor.
I slid down into the comfortable chair and sipped my lemonade and bit into my bagel bite. Red Headed Harlot spoke first.
"Do you think we will find out about Sookie's other family?" she asked. "This summer, I mean, though it is so early."
"The first season was about love, finding love. Sookie is looking for it, Bill found it though he might not have been looking for it. Maudette was looking for love in all the wrong places," said GS. He was interrupted by Dude crooning "Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places" We all laughed.

"Well, Jason too and Sam and Tara, and Amy....Sometimes, love hurts...." said Liz. I opened my mouth and Liz gave me a look. "I know, I know, don't start Aslinn." I stuck my tongue out at her. Razz

"And then, last season was about being held against one's will, and everyone was at one time or another trapped," continued God Speed. "Bill, Eric, Sam, Tara, Eggs, Sookie, the entire town of Bon Temps."
"Godric," I mentioned. We were silent for a moment, remembering the beautiful and savage Godric who's reborn humanity was too painful for him to live with. "So, this season is all about Family, finding family, defining family, loving and hating family.....This is going to be so tough."
"How so Aslinn?" asked the lead counselor. I saw Violet readying her box of kleenex. I didn't know if I was about to cry, but I leaned forward and made a come on motion to Vi for a handful.
"Family...is the most complicated social group you could belong to," I began. "You can love them, marry them or make some meaningful relationship with someone, have children." Again our minds went to our absent Westexan. "You can be a sibling or a parent and adult child, lovers and best friends, but there are a subtleties in the family. Like little things you say out loud and things you keep to yourself. Emotions you hold in check because they are so fierce that if they escaped, they would burn you up. Even the good emotions, all the love and passion."
"Like in making love?" asked the young counselor.
"Like in making love, sure, but even platonic relationships. You can love someone fiercely and it not have anything to do with sex, it transcends physical love. That is what sometimes makes it hard to be in family," I said. "Look at Tara and her mother. That is the most intense love/hate relationship I have ever seen, and we have all had them." Everyone nodded in agreement.

"And everyone is going to be reunited with someone who is family, even Bill," said Sal.
"So, what would you do if you found out you were not the person you always thought you were, like Sookie," asked the southern counselor.
"Well, she doesn't have anyone to confront. The only person she could have gotten the answers from was her gran' and now she is dead," said Lina. "Poor Eric, though, he doesn't have a family. His family died a long time ago and now Godric...." I handed her half my wad of tissues as she choked up a little over her Big Viking.
"That doesn't mean he can't explore something of his own self. Some people go all their lives without benefit of family and they find comfort or self by exploring the world. Perhaps exploring his lost humanity will be like a homecoming for Eric," said Dude thoughtfully. "Maybe Sookie will help him do that."

"But family means betrayal sometimes," said the lead counselor. The southern counselor looked up at him but the lead counselor did not acknowledge him.
"Sure, I mean, again, look at Tara and Lettie Mae," said Mel.
"And Bill and Sookie," I said. "That is what we are thinking right? That Bill betrays the seed of a family he trying to make with Sookie by asking her to marry him and goes back however briefly with his maker...at least in the Connection's world...in the Source's world, it may not be be quite like that."
"And then Sookie betrays Bill," said Bella.
"Not really," said Red Headed Harlot."I think that Sookie turns to Eric out of pain and desire...lots of desire, sure, why wouldn't she? But part of it is pain, and if the Source makes Eric as he was in the Connection's world, then she finds something sweet and gentle in him. Of course he is still a Vampire and lethal and all that, but there is something sweet about him that might in someways remind her of Bill. There is a lot of healing that goes on between people who are alone. And just then, there weren't two lonelier people in the world than Eric and Sookie. She even said it herself, that Eric had gained something that night, he had gained her, and in a way, she had gained her feeling of being loved."

"And then he forgets," said God Speed.
"But then....he remembers, he remembers everything, and he remembers most of all that he was happy," said Linzy, finally.
"Family." I said it aloud, unbeknown to me til I realized everyone was waiting for me to finish. "It doesn't matter how much you kick and scratch and gouge and spit and fight among family, you still are, at the end of the day, family. And family, sometimes, is the safest place to be."

We broke up the meeting not long after that and went our own way. The last one out was the lead counselor. He stopped for a moment at Westexan's chair and put his hand on it. His went up and pulled the Thor's Hammer out of his shirt and fingered it. He looked up at the ceiling and saw past the ceiling to the black sky. He stood there silently for a moment and closed his eyes. Was the lead counselor praying? Could he remember how? Even so, the light from the small lamp shown on his fair features, making his hair shine like spun gold. Whether the Viking remembered his prayers or not, I could not say, but after a moment, he opened his eyes and left the empty meeting room, turning off the last of the lights as he shut the door.

Cooper
I had just returned from the meeting and fired up my computer and I saw the message notice on my yahoo bar and I clicked it. There was a note from Westexan telling me the little Kaiser was here and they were both healthy. I thanked the Lord and picked up my phone and called my counselor.

"He's here," I said, excitedly.
"Aslinn?" he said.
"Westexan gave birth to a baby boy, Cooper, they are both fine," I said
"Call the lead counselor sweetheart, he will be pleased," he said.

I rang off and dialed the lead counselor.

"Hello?" said a deep voice.
"I thought you might like to know, Westexan bore her son, they are fine," I said.
"All the gods of Valhalla...." he prayed softly. "What does she call her son? Certainly not the Kaiser."
"No, his name is Cooper," I said.
"Happy Birthday Cooper..." he breathed.
"Good night, " I said.
"Good night dearest, thank you for calling me," he said. We rang off and the lead counselor, the most powerful man in Northern Louisiana sat in his lavish home. He felt wetness on his cheek and put his hand up to investigate. There were the sanguine tears of his kind. He smiled a bit, then laughed softly and laid his head back and closed his eyes, still chuckling to himself that he would be so full of concern for those who were not like them. Perhaps they were right, he was remembering his humanity after all.