My Master, The Bloodsucker

I first came to be in her arms. She cradled me as Pompeii burned in the distance, her clothes torn and her skin bruised. She flashed a smile at me as dripped a bottle of blood into my open maw.

"My beloved Flytrap, born from the death of my home, I shall call you Venus. After my great patron. I shall grant you a life of eternal happiness. That which the gods cannot grant me."

She cried as she held me tightly, her vibrant red eyes portraying a profound sadness, far beyond her eterally youthful years. The blood flowed from my maw down to my loose roots and that was when I first knew she was my creator, my master.

The next few decades where a haze, she placed me into a pot and I grew freely. She would leave for hours on end, only to return with more blood to fuel me. I had no chords to speak with, but I was grateful. In the late 300s BC, she'd return home with this man, I could never quite get his name. He'd act as if they were in love, but she would show only distaste. It was four years into this routine that she explained it to me.

"Men. My child. Disgusting, vile beasts they are. They think they can court a being of my majesty, and yet they act like the pigs upon which I carve. But this man, he has power. His connections are what I seek. I loathe his kind, but his consort, now she is interesting. I cannot imagine being around a man like him for so long. I... need to study further."

She fed me in silence and left. I never did see that man again.

Before I knew it, the empires rose and crumbled and we where now in a land she called the "Kingdom Of The West Franks". Little did I know that it would soon become our first era of seperation. She laid my jar down in the forest and kneeled before me, with tears rolling from her eyes.

"My child. I am sorry for what I must do. I shall be leaving for a time, but please do not weep. The gods will make sure we reunite one day. I wish you well, and I pray our distance shall not be sustained for long."

And then she was gone. I was soon collected by a couple whose faces I didn't bother to memorise. I was mistreated, malnourished and enraged that they thought they were worthy of beholding my greatness. My master's arcane creation. I sat in their burning home. Scoffed at the fire as it scurried away from me.

Then came the royals, who treated me like a sideshow. Something to be observed, not admired. I resented them as well. The stakes driven through their hearts was music to my ears.

The revolutinaries came and went to much similar fates of glorious red.

Then came Napoleon, who tried to stamp me out. But my heart raged on and he fell all the same. And in the rubble of his domain, I returned to her care. She wept and clutched me close.

"I am sorry for what I had to do my child. I am overjoyed at how well you've grown."

It was then, that I spoke, the first word a being like myself had ever uttered.

LOVE.

She regailed her long journey over the next many years. I absorbed every fantastical word. Every tale of the lone and level sands, every ode of the sea faring warriors, every song of the vast tundra. My own power grew as she did, soon I felt sensations I could never have imagined before. I could move my vines at will, I could see vast distances at much greater a quality, I could speak in a tongue much like my master's. She was overjoyed.

"My child, oh how you've grown. You are almost a spitting image of me. If I told myself this would happen even one century ago, I don't think I could believe it."

It was a glorious time. But one that somehow lasted so short.

It was an eerily quiet day in the Germanic wilderness when our second era of seperation began.

I awoke, and she was gone. I examined the traces of our small encampment, still adjusting to my newfound ability to move. Claw marks, blood stains, torn cloth. Many signs of a struggle littered the area. In a panic, I ran as fast as I could out into the open, only for a cage to be sprung upon me, with bars too tightly packed for my vines to slip through.

Men babbled in incomprehensible languages between eachother as I was tossed into a larger dark box. Illogically to its seemingly impressive weight, the box began to move.

They transported me to some arrogant building filled with displaced artifacts. A monolith to man's hubris, my master would call it. I was encaged in reinforced glass, once again forced to be a sideshow. I was enraged. What had they done with my master? Why must we be seperated yet again, when we had only just reunited. I tried to scream, but the men simply laughed.

I sat in tha glass for years, drowning in my own mental anguish as many a human passed by and observed me in awe. I could not fight back, it was all too much. That was when I began to notice something. Everyday that the building was allowing visitors, a woman would stand in the corner of the room. One I could not quite recognise but felt familiar.

And on the first of January, my master returned to me. She crashed down into the building, in the arms of a vastly more muscular woman. She brke through the glass and clutched me with tears in her eyes, much like that ancient night after the death of Pompeii.

"Oh, my child!" She cried, the muscular woman's arms wrapped around her waist. "Oh how I've missed you. They shall never seperate us again."

WHO IS SHE? I asked, pointing a vine at the muscualr woman.

"I am Siria Darkness. It's a pleasure to meet you."

"That reminds me..." My master adjusted her hold on me so I was partly in the arms of Siria. "What is you name?"

WHAT?

"A name. I myself have take many over my storied lifespan. Andrea, Sappho, Liz and Helia to name a few. I currently go by Susan. So I must ask my child, what name shall you take?"

I pondered for a long moment before the letters formed together in my mind and flowed from my mouth like a waterfall.

SHRALA.