The Vampires Family (Vicente)

 I've been working on another set of semi daily prompts for August and September, we'll see how many I get done on time admist histiocytosis treatment (or as a friend calls it, cell imperialism) 

 

Anyways...it's wholesome little lucien hours.

The vampires family (Vicente)
Of all the things in my life I ever expected, becoming a vampire was never on the list. Second to that, having any children was never in the list either- until one day I stumbled upon a peculiar little boy wandering the streets of Daggerfall. No sign of any parents, and wearing only a poorly patched pair of pants that looked almost as if he’d done them himself, a shirt that was rapidly being outgrown, and a pair of shoes practically falling apart. To this day I’ll still never know what exactly caused me to go over to the boy, kneel down, and introduce myself, but I don’t regret it. Vampires are often strange looking to normal people, even well dressed ones like myself, and are used to frighten children even older than the boy though for some reason he showed no sign of fear, despite my appearance. With a hood still mostly up to protect from the sun and any patrolling guards I introduced myself to the boy who at the time must have been no more than seven years old, and if that only barely, as politely as possible. I am Vicente Valtieri, I’m here on business, who are you? And to that the boy very confidently answered, as if I should have been expected to know considering here I was wandering the docks of the Iliac Bay, that his name was Lucien LaChance. Over the course of a few months I began to get to know the boy better and gain his trust as he acted as a miniature guide through the large city. Surprisingly he had somehow managed a basic grasp of reading and writing simple words and sentences not far behind typical children his age, apparently having been taught by some of the sailors who had come to recognize him while on leave from their journeys. In return for his help pointing me in the right directions he was provided with food, clothes that fit, and a place to sleep that was not the seemingly otherwise abandoned little house that he must have lived in along with his parents at some point, wherever they were. I never pried as he seemed to barely remember them when asked, mentioning only his full name and that both his parents had brown hair like he did and he didn’t know what happened to them, they disappeared when he was very little, if I had to estimate he’d been on his own with some help from a few citizens who knew him for at least three or four years. As a professional assassin, and due to being a vampire for 300 or so years by that point, I had learned to suppress my emotions, and knew the risks of taking a child back to Cyrodiil with me, but the thought of leaving what had become clear to me a highly intelligent if somewhat hyperactive child to the fate he would surely meet if left to fend for himself under his current practically homeless situation brought out something human in me I had not felt for a long, long time. As a result, after getting to know Lucien and his habits and traits for some time, and him likewise getting to know me, I offered to take him back to Cyrodiil with me and train him. By that time he had after all learned the true nature of why I was in the country. Much to my surprise, he agreed rather quickly, and continued to do so even after further explanation. Upon return to the sanctuary with my new ward in tow there was a period of adjustment, the inhabitants of the sanctuary had dealt with a few older adolescents before, teenagers, young adults taken off the street having lived as thieves before, but never been faced with a seven year old, much less one who for an assassin in training was very sociable and if allowed to could be quite talkative. Other members of the sanctuary were not as fond of him as some, finding him to be too much energy, or as one called him, bouncing off the walls- something that was later found to be related to a chemical imbalance in the brain, but once tired out enough he would calm to the point that those who typically found him at least mildly annoying found him almost endearing. The Dark Brotherhood likes to use the analogy of a family often to describe the bond between assassins, a closer knit group than the Morag Tong of Morrowind who operate much more like a typical guild or in some cases an extension of the government. But, of all the members I’ve known over the many years I’ve been involved, I have never had a stronger bond than with the little Breton boy I found one day, with all his quirks and odd traits, and thankfully more controlled inattentive hyperactivity, and I love him as my own. Sometimes a vampires family can be a 300 year old vampire, his adopted son who as a child would climb into the coffin to nap, and a family of professional murderers…and that’s okay.