skin had changed subtly, imperfections wiped away, bags under her eyes gone. Her teeth as she grimaced were sharper, more pronounced, particularly the canines.

But worse, worse by far, and that which had truly caused her to recoil in horror, was the entirety of the reflection itself. It was not what she was seeing that brought Two to a sudden and full understanding that something was simply not right. It was how she was seeing it - the details her eyes were able to pick out even in this dim light were somehow finer than anything that human eyes should be able to process. She could see everything about herself, in a way that she had never seen before, and it was this incontrovertible evidence that something within her had been changed so substantially, in such a short time, that broke down the last remaining walls she had constructed in her mind against her rising fear.

Two rolled her had back, let out a wail of utter horror and despair, and gave in to the panic that had been gnawing at the edges of her mind.

She called to Theroen, to Darren, to her mother and father. Molly, Rhes, Sarah, Sid. No help came for Two. No explanation, no escape. She wept, she screamed, she threw herself against the bars.

It was not until she saw the tears she was crying, wiped on her hands and tinted with red, that she regained any sort of composure. The sight was a harsh slap, stopping her in her tracks. Red tears. Bloody tears.

And with that, Two remembered it all, in minute detail. The car, the kiss, the sex. She remembered Theroen bringing her to the delicious moment before that final peak, and pressing his teeth against her neck. Her mind replayed the event in slow motion, those teeth hard against her flesh, nanoseconds of waiting spread out forever, the moment when the body tenses, begging for release. Waiting. And then her heart had throbbed, body climaxing, vein pulsing. Theroen’s teeth split her flesh asunder, and all that was left was the rushing, draining sensation, timed to the throb of her heart.

Two let out a low, animal moan of terror and revulsion and lust as these memories flooded into her head, crowding out any concern for the present. The recollection was horrifying, the blinding white pain remembered all too well. Yet below, a dark fire awoke, a need she could not imagine existing in this time and place.

Two glanced at her hands. The skin had already healed, cuts and scrapes from the fall turned to new, white flesh. Intricate spider webs of veins stood out on those hands, more pronounced against the pale skin. Two understood now what she was, or was becoming. Her mind attempted to shove the thought aside, fill with rationality, fill with excuses. But what excuse could there be? What possible rational explanation existed for this?

When the hunger awoke inside of her, some time later, she knew instinctively that no ordinary food would cure it.

* * *

In the summer of her seventeenth year, Two and Rhes had taken a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Two had never been, and it had been several years since the last time Rhes had been to the galleries. At his insistence she had gone along, not expecting to find anything of great value to her. In this, she had been proven wrong. Two had found herself absolutely captivated by nearly everything they had seen.

Here, laid out before her, was a visual history of the world. Her rapture with this idea was dichotomous. Narcissistic; all of this work lead up to her own creation. Selfless; all of this came from beyond her, outside of her, cared not whether she ever existed, would go on existing long after her own life had ceased. She was everything. She was insignificant.

Two had not been more profoundly impacted by anything in her life, save perhaps her decision to leave home. Rhes had finally been forced to drag her from the building, promising to return with her. She hadn’t read everything on the Egyptians. She’d missed the section on twelfth century representations of Christ. They took the train home in near silence, Rhes astounded and deeply pleased with Two’s appreciation of the museum. He did not ask her to explain, knowing that if she could have, she most certainly would.

Two struggled with it for some time, attempting to put her feelings into words, attempting to express to Rhes how insignificant and