Clove

"That afflicted child"
Whispers quickly spread about a village that found two small babies in the woods, a girl and a boy, crying and malnourished, hair light as eiderdown, eyes red as rabbit blood. The village elders were afraid of a curse, so they ordered the villagers to leave the children in the forest. On the next day, the village healer, unaware of the elders' order, found the two baskets in the forest. The boy was gone and the girl in the second basket was crying, freezing and afraid. The woman rushed to save the child and decided then and there to adopt her. Some called the old woman a witch. The elders forbade her to enter the village, and only came to her if disease should visit them or their own children.
For days, the woman tried desperately to feed the baby, but it refused to eat. On the verge of dying, she tried to feed it the garlic soup she had prepared for herself. Miraculously, the baby started eating. Astonished, the healer named the girl "Clove". Years passed, and Clove grew up sickly, feeling worse during the night. As fate would have it, on her sixteenth birthday, Clove tasted blood for the first time in her life. After her mother taught her how to hunt, she felt an irresistible urge to drink the blood of a duck straight from its neck. Horrified, her mother told Clove to never speak of her urges to the villagers. As the months passed, however, animals started disappearing from the villagers' yards, and rumors spread that the old healer was harboring a vampire. It was absurd, Clove thought. She was no vampire. Silver had always attracted her, the rays of the sun invigorated her, and the glow of the moon made her sick. One night, the light of torches illuminated the forest. Clove, now a young lady, returned to find an empty home with bubbling garlic stew still on the fire. She ran towards the village to find her mother, but there was no trace of her. Her crimson eyes lit up in red when she found the village elders cackling near the city square.
"They found the witch and sent her to the city. I'm sure she'll be tortured until she admits she was casting a curse upon the village, or she tells her where the child is," one of them said.
As she approached the elders, the burning rays of the moon could not stop her. After all was done, Clove returned to the house. She found a small note written by her mother:
"I know where your brother is. In the city over the hills, there are whispers. Whispers of a criminal named Bela the Nightless. Hide in the forest. If I have not returned by tomorrow morning, don't try to find me. Live your life and remember that no matter what they say, you are not cursed, and you are not afflicted. You have always been good. I love you, Clove."