[Though she teases about the story with a playful, if malicious, lightheartedness, that sense doesn't carry as she tells it. Though it's something distant now, through time and a conscious decision, it's still something painful and unfair. She can't keep her eyes on him as she explains, so she lightly turns her back to him again.]
I was born without a name. I didn't have a name at all until I had already been alive for fifty years, because what I was supposed to be, it doesn't need a name.
[There's a light pause there as she shifts to clasp her hands behind her back.]
Because I told you, right? A Chiropteran isn't something supernatural or anything. We're another species, so when a curious scientist finds a new species, they want to learn about it. And since there was my twin sister and I, she was the one chosen to live normally as a control, but I was the one that was locked up in a tower so that they could find out everything there was to know about a Chiropteran. And it's something enchanting to humans, because we hold the secret of immortality.
So everything terrible you can think of, I know it really well! Cutting off my arms and legs and letting them float in a tub full of blood to watch how they'd reattach. Opening me up in a way that doesn't kill me so that they can watch my heart beat, and then carefully move them one by one to see what's necessary. Injecting me with human diseases to see how I would react, even though it would usually just kill me slowly and over and over again, because even if I can regenerate from anything, what gets rid of diseases isn't much different, I guess.
[She tilts her head thoughtfully] But you get used to those things. I don't remember what it's like to feel pain like that, because I never knew what it was like to feel anything else. But being trapped in a tiny room without anything but chains to keep me there, and always slowly dying and wishing that maybe the next time, I would wake up... You never get used to that. I was just an animal that they were keeping alive so that they could keep doing their experiments.
[She looks back to Garry, smiling pleasantly]
So you know, it's funny that humans are so afraid of me. They're the ones that can be the real monsters.
no subject
I was born without a name. I didn't have a name at all until I had already been alive for fifty years, because what I was supposed to be, it doesn't need a name.
[There's a light pause there as she shifts to clasp her hands behind her back.]
Because I told you, right? A Chiropteran isn't something supernatural or anything. We're another species, so when a curious scientist finds a new species, they want to learn about it. And since there was my twin sister and I, she was the one chosen to live normally as a control, but I was the one that was locked up in a tower so that they could find out everything there was to know about a Chiropteran. And it's something enchanting to humans, because we hold the secret of immortality.
So everything terrible you can think of, I know it really well! Cutting off my arms and legs and letting them float in a tub full of blood to watch how they'd reattach. Opening me up in a way that doesn't kill me so that they can watch my heart beat, and then carefully move them one by one to see what's necessary. Injecting me with human diseases to see how I would react, even though it would usually just kill me slowly and over and over again, because even if I can regenerate from anything, what gets rid of diseases isn't much different, I guess.
[She tilts her head thoughtfully] But you get used to those things. I don't remember what it's like to feel pain like that, because I never knew what it was like to feel anything else. But being trapped in a tiny room without anything but chains to keep me there, and always slowly dying and wishing that maybe the next time, I would wake up... You never get used to that. I was just an animal that they were keeping alive so that they could keep doing their experiments.
[She looks back to Garry, smiling pleasantly]
So you know, it's funny that humans are so afraid of me. They're the ones that can be the real monsters.