A Mountain Divides Us.

Nila snuffed her cigarette out on the bottom of her worn burgundy Doc Martin boot, and gulped a breath of blue tinged, ethereal misty air. She was sitting at the bottom of Silverburn mountain waiting, like she did every Sunday night.

Tapping her foot impatiently she reached into her back pocket to check her phone. 

You’ve got to be kidding me

There were no messages and it was eight forty five. Devon was late. 

“Where the fuck is he?” 

Nila was fooling herself by asking herself that rhetorical little question because she knew exactly where he was. 

She glanced at the rising moon. Twilight was slowly surrendering to the dark embrace of night. Tonight's window of opportunity was closing. 

“Nila!” 

She squinted her eyes and saw him, effortlessly jogging into the clearing from the dark woods that were separated from the village of Silverburn by their beloved mountain. 

As Nila laid her eyes on him, an involuntary jolt surged through her body, causing her heart to momentarily falter.

She reached into the worn brown leather satchel that had been her mothers, and rarely left her own shoulder to dig for her pack of cigarettes. Hoping to distract herself from the uninvited physical sensation that had overtaken her body. She had barely touched the cigarette to her lips when he reached her. 

“Hey, those things will kill you, you know” his smooth voice scolded teasingly 

“Yeah well, unlike you, something eventually is going to have to, so I guess it may as well be a cigarette.”

‘Touche.” 

She took a long inhale before forcing herself to meet his translucent gray eyes with her own dark brown ones. His skin was pale and his lips were tinged a deep red. 

“What was on the menu tonight?” she muttered offering him the pack. 

“Rabbit” he said, easily grabbing a cigarette. “Light?”

Nila handed him her lighter before taking a step back, not wanting to get any closer. She was unsure if she was protecting her spiritual heart or her physical one. 

A palpable tension filled the air, and a delicate web of unspoken words intricately weaved their way through the space between them.

“Nila, this time in our lives it’s coming to an end” Devon was the first to break the silence. He was infuriatingly pragmatic and had been like that since they were children. Even before the terrible night, when she had first lost him. She looked down at her boots and kicked the red soil. 

“I know”

“It’s not safe anymore. Things between the clans have intensified,” he paused before adding, “significantly.“ 

“Your always rubbing in how much you know about the clans” she scoffed. 

Three years earlier, the fog turned dark in the tranquil village of Silverburn where Devon and Nila lived. The House of Silver emerged from the mountains that drew a line between human and vampire. In an unheard of display of power, they ruthlessly ravaged the village, shattering a precarious peace treaty that had been reached 100 years prior. Seizing all the young boys and men and leaving behind only devastation and sorrow, the ruthless immortals took the lives of the boys families before condemning them to an unholy transformation.

“I’m not rubbing anything in” Devon answered bitterly. “I never wanted things to be this way”

“So that’s it? A life long friendship is over?” She retorted knowing that she sounded childish. Her face flushed in embarrassment.

“We can’t meet like this anymore Nila..”

“We’ve been meeting like this for two years!” 

“It must end.” 

“Why?” she challenged? 'Is it too temping being around me? Does it make you want to drink my blood?” 

“Don’t be stupid. You are better than that” he said flatly 

“I’m not being stupid. You are!” 

Devon smiled wryly and they both glowed in the familiarity of their childhood friendship, for just a moment. 

“Go back home Nila and don’t come to the mountain. You are safe in Silverburn. The treaty won’t be broken again. And if you do come back here, know that I won't be waiting for you."

Nila gulped in the cruel honesty of his words

“Okay, fine,” she whispered. “But will we ever be able to meet again? Like in the future?" She cringed at how desperate her voice rung.

“I don’t know,” he sighed. “Likely not”

She looked him over. It had taken a year after Devon was turned for him to seek her out and ask her to start meeting him at the mountain. She suspected the process had been painful and disorienting for him.One day he had confessed it all. The terror he faced in the physical death of his old body to make room for something new. 

Even in the two years since they had been meeting in secret in the place, that divided mortal from immortal, he had continued to change.

The boyish charm and humor was slowly replaced by a coolness that she found harder and harder to penetrate. The distance between them had grown too vacuous to overcome. 

At the age of eighteen, Nila stood at the doorway of adulthood herself. Like a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly, she too had undergone changes over the last two years. Although her metamorphosis definetly followed a more conventional path.

“I hope you get away from this place and go to college in the fall. Pursue your dreams Nila. Live a good life. Do it for me.” 

“Okay” she said quietly. Nila had known this had been coming, but she was surprised at her own acceptance of his words.

He threw his cigarette butt into the lush mountain grass. They both watched the orange ember turn black 

“Go straight home.” he said and without a farewell or further explanation, he vanished from sight. Vampires possessed a supernatural ability to travel at the speed of light, their movements exceeding the limitations of human perception.

“Devon!” she screamed into the dark night. “ You fucking coward!” 

Alone again, she looked up at the moon. I will not cry, This is not a surprise.

A feeling of resolve came over her and Nila did what Devon had told her. She went back home and snuck into her bedroom, without disturbing her father, who was sleeping on the couch with a half drunk bottle of whisky laying on the floor beside him. 

Before crawling into bed, she carefully unfolded the acceptance letter and scholarship offer that had arrived in the mail earlier that week. It was her ticket out of this forgotten place that reeked of blood and death. Sadness and determination swirled within her heart as she scanned the words for what felt like the millionth time that week. 

Her gaze shifted to the photograph that sat on her dresser. Her mother's smiling face greeted hers. A pang that yearned for the comfort and guidance her mother once provided overcame her as she whispered, 

"Mom, I miss you so much," She desperately wished her words could reach her mother beyond the veil of life and death.

Nila's eyes wandered to another picture, a cherished memento of her childhood innocence. She and Devon stood as playful, carefree seven year olds, in Devon’s parents backyard. Their home had been her refuge as a child. Childhood laughter and giggles echoed in her mind. 

But then cruel reality set in. Devon, her only friend had succumbed to the merciless grip of immortality. The picture was a painful reminder of what had been stolen from them. 

A surge of determination coursed through her mortal blood filled veins, overshadowing any lingering doubt. This mysterious enclave nestled amidst the mountains, a place shrouded in unspoken secrets, would no longer hold her hostage. It took Devon and made him its own, but it would not take her. There was an entire world beyond the confining border and she was going to find it.

Nila would leave behind the violent secrets that clung to the mountainside and step into her own destiny, never forgetting those she left behind.