blast from the past 2

so, i was digging through my emails from six years ago to provide screenshots in an unrelated manner when i stumbled across a story i had started and later abandoned. i think i should work on it again. in the mean time, here it is as i wrote it back in 2012. it is currently untitled. this is the only other chapter!
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The sun had just gone down when Ziria decided to go to bed early. She knew that her husband would be home late, as usual, so there was no point waiting up for him when she could just get a good night's sleep instead. With those plans in mind she changed from her outfit into a soft polyester nightgown that reminded her of silk. Unbraiding her thigh-length snowy white hair she gave a soft sigh of relief.

It was a pain putting her hair up every single day, but if she didn't then Darian would just start another argument with her on how unseemly it was to have her hair down like an unmarried woman. She just couldn't understand him these days, he almost seemed like a different person. In the ancient times it may have been customary for a bride to wear her hair up, but this was the modern century and times were different. Sure, people still used swords as opposed to guns, but they needed them to combat the creatures that tended to reside in the forests that lay in the valley outside of town.

With the advent of cell phones and computers came smarter creatures, impervious to bullets but still felled by steel blades made in the times of old. Ziria had no idea why that was, she just knew that was how the world worked and she accepted it without question. Either way, the day had been too long and she was far too tired to think about it anymore. Lately she'd been fighting with Darian over trying to start a family, and tonight she feared that there would be another argument if she stayed up again.

That was why she was going down to sleep and there would be no qualms about it. Sliding between the sheets, she couldn't help noticing the moonlight reflecting off of her pale skin. As a child, she had been nicknamed 'ghost girl' since she was nearly as pale as your average albino. There was one key difference between an albino and her though, and that was the fact she didn't burn in the sun like they did.

While her eyes were a deep sapphire blue as opposed to the pink of an albino, they had a tendency to turn ruby red when she was extraordinarily angry. It was part of her heritage, something she knew very little about and quite personally wanted to keep it that way. Putting those thoughts out of her mind she closed her eyes and promptly drifted off to sleep.

~*☼*~

A noise woke her up several hours later. Thinking it was just her husband getting home, Ziria didn't get up right away. When it happened again, she got out of bed and padded into the hallway. Hearing nothing as she approached the head of the stairs, Ziria then decided to turn around and go to the bathroom and get back into bed.

It wasn't too long after that when her alarm went off, waking her up for the day as usual. A tremendous crash below caused her to vault out of bed and come running down the stairs just in time to see someone running across the lawn and launching themselves into the air. Rubbing her eyes, Ziria wondered if she was still dreaming. Her mouth pursed when she realized that she was in fact wide awake, since the patio door was ruined and shattered glass lay on the flat porch.

Thinking then that a burglar must have broken in, she wandered around the house to see if anything was missing so that she could inform the police. After about twenty minutes she couldn't find anything out of place, so she decided that whoever it was must not have been after any valuables. Sometimes homeless people would break in just to have a warm place to sleep for a night, so she simply placed a call to have her patio doors repaired. Darian wasn't home, but that didn't really come as a surprise either.

He had a tendency to lie low when things were going rough. Either way it was nothing to worry about since he would come home and talk to her like they always did; that was their routine as of late. Repairmen tended to work regardless of whether or not people were home, so Ziria knew that even if her husband came home before she did it wouldn't be a surprise to find unlocked doors. With that she went back upstairs and got herself ready for the day.

Going through her closet she selected a plain off-white shirt and black slacks. The stark contrast brought attention to her pale skin and paler hair, but she didn't mind as she was going to put on makeup anyways. After getting dressed she went into the bathroom to apply her 'daytime face' as she liked to put it, swiping a thin layer of mascara on her eyes and using a hint of blush to bring some color into her cheeks. The effect was mesmerizing, and she completed the look by applying some light pink gloss to her lips.

Now she looked like a vampire out on the hunt, a thought which made her giggle. Vampires never wore white and they certainly didn't get ready for the day when the sun was actually up. Ready to go now, Ziria grabbed her bag and her coat and headed out the door. She was looking forward to getting to work and distracting herself until it was time to go home and see Darian.

~*☼*~

The day was nearly over when it was time for her to come home. The sun was approaching the horizon, turning the sky red and gold while she drove through town to grab a snack and ingredients for dinner. Drumming her hands on the steering wheel in time to an obscure song on the radio, it occurred to her that she hadn't heard from her husband all day. Finding that odd, she picked up her cellphone from where it rested in her bag on the passenger seat and called him.

Voice mail. Frowning, she put the phone away and pulled into the parking lot. With those thoughts in mind she went back to that morning when she had discovered the broken patio door. Had he been abducted, perhaps? While uncommon, some vampires did steal their prey from houses even if there were serious consequences for those actions.

Deep in thought she made a face while wandering into the store to grab her food. It wasn't very likely that a vampire would bash her patio, but stranger things had happened; and that was the understatement of the century. Shaking her head Ziria grabbed a shopping cart and wandered up and down the aisles listening to gossip while grabbing cans and various other items. Surely if there was someone abducting people it would be making its way through the grapevine, but there was nothing of that nature today.

Just the usual cattle rustling, petty theft, nymph slave auctions, and other nonsense drama. Nothing to really tell her that there was something out of the ordinary. Trying to call him again she once again got voice mail, and once she got out of the store she had gone from concerned to worried. Without a body, no evidence, and nothing more than a shattered door there was no way the police were going to do anything, so it was up to her to find out what had happened to him.

On the way back to her car with a cart full of groceries she passed by a random person handing out flyers, and without thinking about it she grabbed one. It wasn't until she was driving home that she thought to look at it, and Ziria wondered if it was a coincidence, or there was something more to it, like fate.

WANTED
Information leading to the identity of the "Phantom Burglar"
Victims disappear overnight, never to be found again
None of the covens and clans are claiming responsibility for these crimes,
but someone out there must have something.
CONTACT Mizurei at 555-1246 for more information/investigation

There was more on the page itself along with a photo of some smiling guy, but Ziria was already dialing the number. Looking up at the road she jerked on the wheel to avoid crashing into a parked car, she continued on the way home without any further incidents. Once she got back to the house she remembered to hit the green button and initiate the phone call itself, and she set up an appointment to go meet up with this guy Mizurei to see if she could find out more about what was going on and why her husband had suddenly gone missing.