ShadoGal Mai Chronicles I

ShadoGal Mai Chronicles I: Living Forever

There are many vampire stories based on the fact that life loses its meaning if you cannot die. Those stories tend to emphasize that life itself can become a burden in such cases, because after a few centuries there is nothing much of new to be seen or learned, especially because history tends to repeat itself over and over.

That’s how I defined the personality of ShadoGal Mai, my wacky half-vampire (damphyr) character. One can become quite bored after living for 500 years, and many books and movies have covered aspects of it, such as “Interview with a Vampire” and “Highlander”. But in those stories the characters were nearly all male, and I here I wanted to show a female side of the story.

Human nature dictates that we will value the most what we don’t have, or things that are rare and thus, precious. But immortality makes life itself worthless. In a vampire perspective life has advantages, although they have to live without a good deal of them. But Mai is a hybrid between vampires and humans, and she inherited the best of both sides. She won’t burn under sunlight, she has the combined strength of 10 men, she’s not afraid of water, the blood cravings are way less severe and she can eat normal food if she wants to.

On the other hand, Mai was born with bat wings fixed on her back, and a pair of pointy ears that can call a lot of attention among humans. And yes, Vulcan jokes apply. She cannot shift into a bat, but she can fly with the wings she was born with. It’s hard to be accepted in both vampire and human worlds because she is both and neither at the same time.

Humans are afraid of her because she likes “playing with her food”, while vampires envy her for her extra abilities described above. Her father is a very influent vampire, while her human mother perished centuries ago. It’s hard for Mai to respect humans when, in her perspective, they are extremely weak and won’t live for very long. She is also aware of how vampires hide in the shadows and are afraid of so many things. That’s probably why she has become so arrogant and self-conceived. Mai is too proud of her uniqueness, and she considers herself as “very lucky” for what she is.

Mai’s love life was not very fortunate, since vampires are cold and dead, while humans are rather short-lived weaklings. For some reason, Mai is one of a kind and there has been no others born like her ever since. There must be a reason why only she was conceived this way, but the truth is that she’s alone in this world.

It didn’t take long until Mai started developing her own special feeding techniques. A vampire bite has a certain dosage of sensuality, but Mai’s bite is extremely sensual to most humans for some mysterious reason. She indeed inherited the best of both worlds, and in some cases something completely new, like her “love bite”, which seems to have an ecstatic effect on humans from both genders.

As opposed to most other vampires, Mai will not kill her prey because she doesn’t need as much blood as vampires do. Although she can eat normal food, her preying instincts will sometimes force her into biting humans in a quite irresistible way. In such cases humans smell like blood and her body boils with desired for it.

In the beginning Mai would simply slap herself on the face and snap out of it. But once she figured how her bite affects humans, she started to have special pleasure on playing with them. Mai figured that biting at different places not only taste different, but can also cause distinctive reactions. She also learned that biting abstinence reduced her strength up to the point where she can no longer fly and her hypnotic stare gets little effect over humans. To a vampire, that can be quite distressing.

As she grew older, Mai has developed her special biting talents up to the point where humans seek for her “love bites” on their own will. That’s when Mai started to think of humans like her pets. Humans can be “domesticated” by applying a good “love bite”. In most cases they will come back for more, just like pets would come back for more of what they like.

Envy in the vampire political circles has kept Mai in the low ranks, even because she’s too young and foolish in a life scale of the vampires. But despite of that, she often gets away by using her influential VIP daddy who often spoiled her from childhood, which is typical of parents with a single son or daughter. It comes out that 500 years old Mai is still a daddy’s girl, and that might explain her rather tomboy attitude. She barely remembers her human mother, and not surprisingly, the father figure has a much more predominant presence in her life.

For what it’s worth, her father will not allow Mai to date her human pets. Some may not survive her anyway, either because of time or her occasional bloodlusts during her period. Yes, Mai can be a bitch during her periods and many human males have not survived it in her early attempts. Her dad decided long ago that Mai should not get attached to her pets since playing with such weaklings can prove fatal to them in some cases, and Mai does not approve killings.

That is probably a major reason for conflict between Mai and the vampires – she likes humans and will not kill them. Vampires often don’t have that as an option, for their need for feeding is in a much greater scale. For Mai, feeding on humans is more like pleasure and fun. She will normally not bite them without consent, unless she finds a cute one who will not “cooperate” (in her perspective).

Although many humans find Mai attractive, little they understand how dangerous she really is because of her powerful physical strength. Mai is fully aware she has to be extremely careful when playing with her weakling pets. They are cute but very fragile, like bunnies. She also has to be extremely careful not to fall for bloodlusts, for excessive feeding can render her drunk and defenseless.

There were cases where she fell drunk when she was younger and humans abused her while she fell unconscious. She would wake up much later feeling humiliated and stupid, but nothing like learning the hard way – she won’t fall for that again. She doesn’t like the idea of pets playing with her while she is helpless. Her tomboy personality pushes her to always be the dominant side in her social groups. She likes to be always on top (no, that’s not what I meant, you pervert!).

Being young, immortal and powerful as she is, Mai has developed quite an oversized confidence about herself and her beauty. In good part arrogant and self-conceived, Mai can’t help but feel superior to both humans and vampires. In her mind, Mai thinks she is the sexiest, most attractive and powerful being on the planet. For most vampires, she is just the biggest idiot on Earth because she insists on sympathizing with pathetic humans.

To a small vampire faction though, Mai represents a sacred goddess with a biblical mission. They believe she is the reincarnation of the mythical vampire prophet who will unify all vampire clans and factions into a single family (the “Unification Prophecy”, but that’s another story), bringing an end to the vampire disputes and conflicts that plagued their society for thousands of years. Of course, Mai couldn’t care less about what those idiots think of her. She is aware of how powerful (and beautiful) she is, but she rather play on her own side. To what is worth, Mai thinks vampires are mostly envious of her because she is more “alive” than they will ever be.

After all, what’s good about living forever if they are already dead?