The Vampiress

The grey and darkening skies, still bleeding in vivid velvet above the hills which stood like megalithic sentinels over the once bright sun, like grave-stones over the dead light, stretched on in starless night over the valley, and in a dress which seemed stolen from those very clouds, as though the fabric had been cut from the scintillating colors of the dying day, she paced the parapet of her tower, staring off into the west with a longing no mortal can express. Oh, to see the sun, to feel his gentle touch again, to live, to grow—even to die.