The diner I had spoken of was an old place; it had been here for as long as I could recall. Not that that was strange; it was run by vampires, and they don’t die. The owner was an old-looking vampire, one of the pure bloods. The pure bloods were an old race of vampires, and it had always amazed me how different pure bloods could look: some looked like they were twelve years old in human years, while other looked ninety.

Once, I had mustered up enough guts to ask him why that was; the answer was as simple as it was hard to grasp: “That is easy, miss; we pure bloods decide when we stop aging in looks, so there are those that want to look young forever and others, like me, who wish to look old and wise forever,” he had said. He pointed to a young-looking vampire girl, flirting with customers while she gave them coffee refills. “You see Shoda over there? She is nine hundred years old, but looks younger than I do; and I am just five hundred years old, that is all.”
“If it isn’t my favorite curious non-vampire, bringing a new customer, too,” he said as he clapped his hands together. I noticed Victor was wondering about the spontaneous applause. I smiled at him and we sat down at one of the empty tables.

The diner held a wide selection of drinks and foodstuff, from the traditional vampire food – ranging from rat blood to high elf blood, all given voluntarily of course, sometimes to pay a bill when they had “forgotten” their wallet – to genuine scrambled eggs on toast, and coffee. As we entered, the owner, who was named Heathcliff, greeted us.

“Why did he clap?”
“It’s a vampire thing, they applaud you if you bring a friend over for dinner, or in this case a new customer,” I replied.

He nodded and opened the menu that was always on the table between the pepper and salt shaker; he stared at it and I could swear that if his fur were able to turn white, he would have been the color of a sheet.

I took the menu from his hands and smiled. “Don’t read that, it holds the vampire-oriented stuff.”

Shoda came over to our table. “What shall it be, lovelies?” she asked as her pencil tapped the notepad. I knew she was teasing Victor a little; he was staring at his hands as if still holding the menu.

I turned to her and replied, “The usual for me, and the same for him.”

Shoda winked at me as she scribbled on her notepad. “Okay, two large pitchers of virgin high elf blood and a plate of live baby chickens al dente. Good choice,” she said as she turned around and walked to the kitchen.

Victor looked at me with a face that was a mixture of horror and disgust. “What the fuck do you drink and eat?” he asked me.

I laughed as I shook my head. “Don’t worry, Victor, I always have coffee with eggs on toast. She was messing with you; it’s your first time here they love to do that to people.”
“Let’s not get into that right now, Victor, please. Let’s just have lunch and coffee and talk about other things; sometimes that way we get new insights.”

He sighed, then chuckled. “You had me there, good one.” He took out the paper with the riddle on it.

He nodded, looking at the kitchen door and waiting for Shoda to walk out; he still seemed anxious about exactly what she would bring with her. It took ten minutes before Shoda returned with the food I had told him it would be, and finally he calmed and could see she had been joking.

“So Victor, care to tell me why you don’t teach anymore?” I asked him as he sipped his coffee and stuffed some toast in his mouth.

After he had stopped chewing, he looked at me and sighed deeply. “The school doesn’t want art as a subject anymore. Human rule; there is no future or money in art so why teach it? They say it is a dying thing; the city no longer waits for artists. No, New Billingham needs more firefighters, doctors and such.” There was sadness in his voice

I understood all too well: the city had been turning bleak, various street artists had been arrested for defacing buildings and their artwork removed with what the humans called sandblasting. The city looked more grey now; I had once heard a human sigh in relief and say, “There, doesn’t that look so much better?” Personally, I didn’t think so. I had loved the brightly colored walls; it had made our city look like a pretty canvas filled with paint. Now it was still a canvas, but with plastic over it and yellow tape screaming DO NOT TOUCH.

Victor had been a victim of this changing attitude, and I could see the hurt in his eyes. It was probably why he had kept the paintings in his office and why he had taken an office on the mostly abandoned third floor. He was reliving the old days there; there he could look at the paintings of places he had never seen and would never see. He was a sad remnant of the city’s greatness, an aging relic in a city that every day looked more and more like

a jewelry box filled with cheap knockoffs. I grabbed his paw as he stared outside at the falling snow.

Victor sighed again. “You know, snow is the last great art of Mother Nature. Every snowflake is unique; there are no two the same in the entire world. Until they find a way to make them all the same.” Tears ran down the fur in his face.

“It’s just a phase. The human race has reached puberty; they think nobody understands them and they are acting out. Yes, they might be aggressive in doing so, but do you really think they can keep this up?”

He gave me a faint smile. “A nice thought, Tara, but you know I am an old lion. By the time they stop enforcing and start actually coexisting, I will no longer be here; I will be on the great savanna in the sky.”

I looked at him; it was the first time I had heard a predatory furry speak of such a thing. “Is that like a private hereafter for lion furries?” I asked him.

He shook his head. “No. After my student told me about the savannas in the world she came from, something inside me has yearned to go there and see it. That is why I choose for it to be that. Who knows, it might even be truly that; I never met a furry who has been to the hereafter and told me what it was or wasn’t.” A small smile played on his lips.

I smiled as I got back to my lunch and coffee. For the rest of the time we spent in the diner neither of us spoke, we just looked outside, watching the snowflakes; the last things that made the city look like a canvas of art unique to anyone who looked at it.

Next Chapter: Kendra