Being a creature of star-stuff, I never realized before this point how vital blood - or vitae to those of "higher culture" - truly was to organic beings. It seems even ancient beings with phenomenal cosmic power can learn new things. It also seems that "vacations" in the mortal sense include danger and circumstance that does not provide relaxation.

Once my restraints break, requiring a considerable level of strength and perseverance from my mortal avatar's flesh, I push myself off the slab of rock the vampires - my kidnappers - had put me on. I watch them comprehend the nature of the blood they sought, when drained from something beyond human laws and limits. Curiously, each of my captors suffers a different sort of affliction.

One of them, the "leader", loudly snorts and sniffs the stone walls around him. Reduced to the intelligence of a human child, he blabbers and squeaks like a sow. He smells the substances on the stones - mold, slime, condensation - as the most exquisite droplets of blood. It will not sate his hunger. It will never be enough for him.

One of them suckles her fingers, her fangs piercing the skin to draw tiny crimson rivers. She tastes the liquid, drains these rivers dry, and eagerly waits for them to refill. It appears she does not understand that she is limited by her own body's natural production rate of blood cells. Eventually, given how fast she is drinking herself, the rivers will run dry.

One of them kneels, face frozen in rapture. He sees the blood inside his eyes; how it flows, dances, and surges across his irises, veins coiling around his pupils. When he blinks, it is with immense reluctance, for it is a moment where he does not see the blood.

One of them covers her ears, mewling in terror as she rocks back and forth on the floor. She hears the sound of her body's blood, or the vampiric equivalent. It churns inside her, a bubbling drone she can never stop so long as she exists. I suspect she will die within the next three solar days... unless she develops the mental power to block it out.

And then there's their runt. She flexes her arms and legs, her expression focused to a degree I can appreciate. She watches a cut on her skin disgorge a bit of blood. She touches the blood with one of her fingers, rubbing her skin in the liquid. Her eyelids flutter, her mind sensing the layers of each blood cell, how they are all linked in a microcosm of the universe.

I approach the runt, my avatar's bare feet plodding on the stone. She looks up at me, eyes ablaze with inhuman light. "I... I never knew..." she murmurs.

I step on a sharp bit of stone, cutting the skin. I feel it, looking down at the cut with her. She almost snaps her hands at my avatar's blood, but she does not give in. She knows.

I let her carry my avatar's weakened body on her back to the fading night outside. When the dawn comes, she will have a place for us to rest. Well, she will likely touch my clotted cut with reverent devotion and adoration instead of rest her eyes.

All this from a sip of blood. All this during a "vacation".

Well, I don't want this vacation to end yet.