First Fourth Generation Fier Graduates

Congratulations Delmarya Fier (Deli)! She graduated from the Foxbury Institute with a distinguished degree in biology. Her final term grades were:

All A+s (just like both previous terms). Overachiever that she was, despite not being the oldest, Deli was the first child of her generation to graduate. Her younger sister, Dysis (another ambitious family member) would soon follow, while Dawn, the oldest, would graduate later. Dawn was calm and to Dawn life was a journey that you needed to enjoy and not rush through at max speed.

The day of graduation was beautiful and sunny, so despite all Deli’s hard work and achievements (A+s for life), she wasn’t able to attend the ceremony or get her photo taken, but at least Foxbury mailed her diploma. Of course, she tried to attend.

But there was too much busyness to manage, running around campus, and waiting in the sun while her flesh literally burned. She endured for a dangerously long time and even with something of a smile. Still and to be frank, she had two choices and attending her graduation wasn’t one of them: 1) die or 2) go home.

At home, Deli went to sleep for the first time in her new bed. As a vampire, she’d slept maybe once since she was a child, but after her near-death graduation experience she needed sleep to recover.

As an adult who had graduated from college and who didn’t plan on living with her parents forever, Deli thought that she needed to embrace, or if not yet embrace, accept that she was a vampire, and that as a vampire she couldn’t go on like this—depending on her parents to provide her with disgusting plasma-garlic cocktails that’d protect her from the sun or simply tolerating the intolerable burning until she tempted death. Instead, she could learn to use her powers to protect herself, as every other vampire in her family had learned.

It wasn’t an accident that Deli was ignorant of vampire lore. She’d wanted to be more like the humans around her, but Deli was still Deli (an intelligent overachiever), so she figured it wouldn’t take much for her to gain immunity to the sun. With minimal effort and desire, she’d already managed to rank up from a fledgling vampire to minor to prime, so what was becoming a “master”?

Her plan was to wake around midnight, travel to Sulani and spend the pre-dawn hours on the beach with her sister, Aster, asking whatever questions and getting whatever help she needed to sort out obtaining sun immunity. Deli knew that doing this would cost her something of her humanity. She wasn’t sure what would change, but it would surely? be worth it. At any rate, together, they’d watch the sun rise and Deli wouldn’t be in pain for the first time since she could remember.

However, the weather…

It wasn’t cooperating. But rain was easy to ignore. Aster greeted her younger sister with a hug and Deli, who expected the rain would stop at any moment, spoke excitedly about what she was going to do when the sun rose.

The weather ceased being an annoyance and became a problem when it turned into a thunderstorm. Between the thunder and the rain, it became clear that there wasn’t going to be any visible sunrise and they could barely hear one another (and neither fancied getting struck by lightning), so Deli went home.

Of course, by the time she arrived in San Myshuno, the sun was out and shining brightly. Aster wasn’t around to help, but Deli understood what she needed to do or so she thought.

She pulled forth the vampiric energy within her and meditated. Easy. Now she could enjoy the sun?

Given that the sun still burned horribly, she’d apparently missed something and hadn’t quite become the master vampire she thought she was. Not knowing what to do and knowing that there was another vampire in the house, she decided to approach her father for help.

When he saw her coming, he thought he knew what she wanted, so he was excited. He’d always wanted her to be more like him. But not wanting to simply jump into things, Deli opened the conversation by talking about music. She’d heard some interesting guitar solos and wanted to try learning them…

Asher got to the point himself.

He started out too strongly with the topic of neck-biting, so he quickly pivoted.

Asher: You shouldn’t worry. You won’t bite anyone or necessarily crave plasma anymore than you already do. The stereotypes about us being gothic and corpse-like aren’t true.

He gave her some intensive last-minute training at the end of which Deli was immune to the sun.

Asher was drained, but he was overjoyed as not only had one of his daughters recently graduated from college, she was also accepting the part of her that was most like him.

He took a graduation portrait for her so she’d feel less like she missed out.