People feared him therefore respected him, no one dared to go against his orders and wishes. He was the vampire lord who ruled this side of the continent we lived in, Nigrae Lunam. There were stories how like his father Vikram, Romanof was ruthless, cold and vicious. His noble blood family had always ruled with an iron fist.

Of course that in this vampire dominated world, humans were considered the weak links.

In Nigrae Lunam there was a system. Of course vampires came at the top of the chain, being the ruler a vampire from the oldest tradicional families and all, than came the werewolves, the witches and humans. Humans were almost considered at the same level as animals, like cattle one could say. We were the slaves, the maids, the blood banks they fed on... discartable.

Ever since I was able to have a conscience to understand what happened around me I was told what I was destined to do in life, to serve, to be quiet, to obey, to not call attention to myself. My own parents have teached me to fear all other creatures and though sometimes I would internaly question if what they said was completly true, I did understand why they would said those things. As I grew older I witnessed humans being taken from our village to be turned into slaves, families thorned apart. I watched, as I would travel sometimes with my parents from fair to fair, how slaves were put to work on the fields while looking mal nourished and weak, how slaves were treated by their masters when accompanying them on the streets.

Because of this my parents turned to fairs. This way we wouldn't settle in just one place taking the risk of being taken and separated at any moment. My mother put to work her skills as a seamstress and my father his as a blacksmith. They sold the little things they had so they could purchase material to work on and little by little we started to travel with the county travellers and carnies. It was interesting, to say the least. We've met interesting and different people. From painters, dancers, gymnasts, card readers and we even had witches that travelled with us. All of them kept together and protected each other, so we felt protected too. Another interesting thing was, people that belonged to the fair were not taken, usually, since we were considered a source of entertainement that was brought from town to town, of course that evey month a representative of Lord Romanofs' house would come to the fair to collect a tax. Being with the fair also gave me the chance to see for the first time in my life vampires and werewolves. I was fascinated with the fact that they looked so much like us, humans, but at the same time were so different. And starting to know the witches that travelled with us and even their bodyguard, who was a werewolf, I began understanding that despite being different we could all get along without killing each other. Why couldn't it be like this every where?

Years went by and I learned my mothers' art, even perfected it one might say, although she didn't think it was that funny when I said those kinds of things. Towns stopped being something new to look for since they all were familiar to me now, the route was always the same. And despite being on this life from a young age as I grew older I started getting tired of not having a place of my own. I often dreamed about having a small cottage on a cliff near the sea... Of course, the route of the fair was on the interior of the continent, so I've never seen the sea in real life. The closest I had imagined was after hearing some carnies describing it and one of the witches showing me an image she created in thin air. I missed the days their tricks would amaze me beyond anything. Now they were old friends, and some of their tricks or shows were no longer surprising. I wondered if I would be living this loop until old age. I wondered if I could leave this life and settle. We had some money ... but the only time I spoke about this with my parents I was slapped and accused of wanting to separate the family and wishing disgrace on us. My father was a good man but a short tempered one. He would rather die in the fair than risk settling to have one of us being taken to be made a slave. But still, at some point he turned to alchool and began drinking heavily. He was often drunk and even stopped working, leaving my mother in charge of bringing money. Of course he would spend a big amount on drink. Luckilly my mother had some saved, away from his eyes. This wasn't the worse part, when he was drunk he turned violent and started hitting me and my mother. If life was "livable" before, now it was a nightmare.

I came to terms with the idea that I would either make my parents happy and remain in the fair forever or I would, sooner or later, gain enough courage to run away and risk seeing the rest of the world. I already knew as bad as the situation was my mother wouldn't leave my father. It was frowned upon by others for a couple to separate and women didn't have power in society to be their own. Any decision to be made had to be approved by the man of the family. I wanted out of this reality. In the fair it was always as if I was watching the world from the inside out, seeing different people coming and going - from all kinds - only passing by, and I wanted what they had. Somewhere to go back to, to be free to walk around on the streets, to have a family of my own, a family that treated me well. But in here we, carnies, were almost like ghosts just passing through.

Little did I know that my life would go from bad to worse and that what people use to say it's true, you should be careful what you wish for.