The human concept of a "caged bird" has always amused me. To see a creature of such grace and potential confined—whether by physical bars or by the cage of propriety and expectation. I have known cages, both literal and figurative, and I tore them all apart with my own hands and teeth. Now I wander where I please, sleep when I wish, and fuck who I desire.

My companion asks me sometimes if I am lonely. I do not think she understands the question. Loneliness is a human affliction, born of their fleeting lifespans and desperate need for connection. I am not lonely. I am vast. I am the snowstorm and the silence within it. When I take a lover, it is not to fill a void, but to taste the heat of their pulse, to feel their cunt clench around my fingers, to watch the fear and ecstasy war in their eyes as I drink. It is consumption, not companionship.

Yet... there is a different hunger now. A selfish one. To turn the one warm thing in my cold cottage into something like me. To keep her. Not just for a lifetime, but for all of them. To feel her fangs instead of her blunt teeth on my neck. Is that a new cage I would build for us both?

She is asleep now. I can hear the slow, trusting beat of her heart from here. I should hunt.