The Warmth of a New Home
This article is a part of Spooktober 2023 and is still a work in progress. Written for the Dry prompt."Hey, O'Connell! Did you see the news?" Daman Ó Conaill, now known as the anglicized Damon O'Connell, turned his head from where he was sitting on the shaded patio looking out towards the Sphinx. "What?" he asked as his friend, Walter Mosley, tossed a newspaper down in front of him before taking one of the open seats at the table. As he looked down at the front page of the paper, Walter started talking. "Carter got Tutankhamun's tomb open!" his friend exclaimed excitedly. "The entire treasure trove was there. Face masks, bows, furniture, food, wine..." "Everything a pharoah would need in the next life," Damon mused. He found it personally funny that he had been in Egypt on and off for the past century on one team or another pulling artifacts out of ancient tombs. As someone who was immortal and had technically come into a new life when he had become a vampire, it was just amusing to see what the people in the region had thought would be needed in the next. "Right!" Walter exclaimed. He then slumped back in his chair and sighed. "That could've been us, man. Instead, we're just digging up pottery shards and broken statuary from already plundered tombs." Shrugging, Damon pushed the paper away from him as he said, "We can't all be famous archaeologists, Walt. Some of us have to be the grunts digging in the dirt and sorting through the trash." His friend scoffed and then asked, "Why do you even stick around with this crew, O'Connell? With your knowledge of what we find you could get a job in any museum. Nice cushy job that doesn't involve being out here all hours of the day." Damon just smiled and tipped the brim of his hat up to look in amusement at Walter. "I like the weather," he replied. "The dryness. The heat. It's absolutely nothing like home." "You're a weird one, you know that?" "I do." Shaking his head, Walter grabbed the paper and stood, shaking it at Damon before he started to walk away. "One day," he stated, "you're going to have to leave Egypt, O'Connell. Maybe you can get a job helping Carter catalogue his find." "I'd rather stick around and bother you for a few more years, Walt," Damon called towards his friend's back. As soon as Walter was gone, he looked back out towards the Sphinx and smiled wanly. He couldn't tell Walter the real reason he stayed. That he hadn't felt warm since 1672 when Yen Xiang Jun had told him that his brother was still alive, convincing him to take the risk to gain immortality. At least he hadn't felt warm until he had begun wandering the world after she abandoned him only two years after making him her child. When Damon had randomly chosen Egypt as his destination in the early 1800s after exploring through most of the countries that surrounded the one of his birth, he had found a new home. The dry heat also made him feel consistently like a cat lying in a sunbeam whenever he made a meal of the various bastards he found to feed on. Warm, content, and ultimately pleased with himself. It also helped that the sun didn't largely bother him so long as he kept it out of his eyes, but it did have the tendency to make him feel lazy. The blazing sun tempered the beast in his heart, making it easier to control. Leaning back in his chair, Damon pulled the hat down over his eyes. One day he would leave Egypt, if given a good enough reason to do so. Maybe on the day that he actually found his brother.
Timeframe: 1923
Location: Giza, Egypt
Event: Daman Ó Conaill - now Damon O'Connell - talks to his friend about the recent discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb and muses on certain parts of his life.
Consquences: Damon determines that he won't leave Egypt without a really good reason.
Eight years junior to his brother, Daman was still a child when his brother suddenly disappeared without a trace. After losing their father to illness, he managed on his own until meeting Yen Xiang Jun who would eventually become his sire in the 1670s. When she returned to her own sire, Malloy, he began to wander the world, becoming an archaeologist in the 1920s amongst other odd jobs.
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