Vanessa had to blink several times to realize where he was. He could only remember everything fading to black when he saw Bonnie.
He tasted blood on his tongue. It was sweet enough to distract himself from what happened for a moment. It might be the fact that he had been starving for nearly a month, but he thought this was the best blood he had ever tasted. He saw a bite mark on Bonnie's arm and his mind went blank before stumbling into chaos.
He drank from her. Is she okay? She knows! Does she hate him now? Did he need to run? Her mother was going to kill him for sure. What if he couldn't get outside the fence? What if Bonnie dies? She's a child, and he didn't know much he drank.
Vanessa was only pulled from these thoughts when he felt something leave his mouth, belatedly realizing that her thumb had been pressing against the roof of his mouth. Vanessa blankly watched as Bonnie wiped her hand on her dress.
"Sit, Tiger." Her commanding tone made him flinch, but he sat down obediently anyway. Why does she keep calling him 'tiger'? He decided not to question someone who could put their thumb in a vampire's mouth without getting a single scrape on it.
Vanessa just watched Bonnie as she ripped a chunk out of her nice dress and used it to wrap the wound. He felt like most ten year old girls wouldn't think to do that, but that might just be him. The way she clenched her teeth around one end of the fabric and pulled like she was a wolf pulling off a chunk of meat definitely added to that theory. She looked more like a wild beast rather than a young lady, not that he would say that out loud. It would be a bit hypocritical at the moment.
When the young lady finished tying off the makeshift bandage, her gaze turned back to him, and he was prepared to get yelled at, and probably slapped, too. What he didn't expect was for Bonnie to walk towards him with an expressionless face, kneel down, and start examining his eyes. She used her thumb and pointer finger to force the eyelids open wider, and then mumbled something and moved onto his other eye, repeating the process.
She lifted his hair to look at his forehead and clicked her tongue while lightly shaking her head. She ran her fingers over the bumps that would someday become horns made of iron and mumbled something slightly different, although he still couldn't understand it.
Looking away from him, she moved to the makeshift bandage on her arm, and after more mumbling, it looked as though her arm was perfectly normal, like always. She repeated a similar process with the torn dress, making it look whole.
"W-what type of magic is that?" Bonnie turned to him with eyes that told him that that was a stupid question.
Before he could blink or even close his mouth, a ball of water burst across his face, covering his entire body, head to toe. He had his answer, it was quite clear. Startlingly so, since there wasn't a speck of dirt inside.
"Drenched Tiger. Follow." Bonnie began walking away towards the mansion.
Vanessa looked left and right hesitantly before following Bonnie. Wouldn't the people inside notice his eyes? He was sure they were red by now.
Nobody spared a second glance to the two as they walked to Bonnie's room. Once inside, he walked towards the mirror and looked at himself. Instead of red, his eyes were dark brown. Lifting up his hair, he saw that the horn bumps were gone as well.
Turning around, Vanessa looked at Bonnie. "H-how?"
"How what?"
Vanessa could see Bonnie preparing to shoot another water ball at him. If he got hit again, he would be a drowned tiger, not a drenched one.
"How are my eyes brown?" he finally asked hesitantly.
"Oh, it's a lot simpler than hiding the horns. Rather than creating a brown contact that has to follow the movement of your eye, I created a mist screen of sorts that converts the red lightwaves into brown ones as they bounce off your eye. Of course, if you had more red veins visible in your eyes, they would also appear, but you don't so it's fine. Then all you need is a mana battery to keep it running independently and you're done. Should last four or five days on its own." Bonnie seemed excited to spread her knowledge, as she talking quickly, barely making time to breath. "Of course, the horns, or stubs really, were much more problematic. I had to figure out what it would look like without them, and then know how to refract the light to reflect that. If I had needed to that last year, I would have failed. Unlike the eyes, they aren't constantly moving, though, so it was just manageable. Oh, and the mana battery in that one had to be bigger to last the same amount of time-"
"I-I think I get it." Vanessa couldn't understand how she went from being so straightforward to so talkative that quickly, but she needed to breathe. "Are you alright?"
Bonnie pouted from being interrupted during her rant, but nodded nonetheless. "I'm fine."
"So, why did you help me?" Vanessa asked the most burning question in his mind. "I hurt you."
"And? You obviously didn't want to, and anyone who claims that an entire race should die is either naive or blinded by their own emotions and memories. I can say all bodies of water should evaporate but that doesn't change anything."
"Are you sure you're a ten year old?"
"Does it matter that much?"
"...No, I'm just curious..."
"Anything else, Tiger?"
"W-would you tell me why you call me Tiger?"
Bonnie stormed up to him, glared into his eyes, grabbed him by his collar, and threw him out the door.
"Figure it out yourself!"
The door slammed shut. Vanessa was slumped down on the floor of the hallway. There was only thing he thought as he heard maniacal laughter arise from the other side of the door.
'How is a ten year old human so strong?'