The story of my people is told often as a legend, a campfire story. A gypsy woman begged the Moon to send her a husband, one whose skin was tanned and taut over sinuous muscle. The Moon replied to her request, assuring her that she would find her perfect man. In return for this miracle she asked for another. She wanted only her firstborn of this perfect man. The woman agreed hastily, as the moon had expected.
From a cinnamon-skinned father a son was born, "white like an ermine's belly," with gray eyes in lieu of brown. Truly the Moon's albino son.
The father damned the babe's appearance. Surely his new wife had dishonored him. He confronted her, demanding she tell him who her side lover was. He did not heed her protestation, nor her pleas. He stabbed her to death.
The babe, he abandoned high in the mountains, for he could not bring himself to harm the child.
It is said that the Moon saved the infant, taking him to her pale breast. When the moon is full, she is feeding her child. When the child cries, the Moon wanes to a crescent so as to make the babe a cradle.
As charming as this little bedtime story is, it is not entirely true. The woman was of the Cattraighe: an early Celtic tribe. The Moon is actually the Cat Goddess Reanddemal. The son was actually a daughter, born to pale-skinned parents... But her skin was completely devoid of pigment... and her eyes bore vertical slits in the center of large, orange irises.
The father believed the woman had lain with an incubus, and killed her in superstitious fright. He deposited both mother and daughter on the alter to Raenddemal, at the summit of a mountain. The child, he was unable to harm. The knife quaked in his hand, and fell uselessly to the ground. He fled, living to tell the tale that would evolve into the popular folk song.
The truth, though, is known only to that infant's descendants.
The baby's first meal was not suckled from a great, lunar mammary. She drank, instead, from the deep laceration in her mortal mother's neck. She was what the common mortal being might mistakenly call a vampire. The first, in fact.
We don't like to be called vampires. Vampires are the invention of overactive human minds. Things that turn into bats and wolves and speak with silly accents. Things with weaknesses to holy objects and silver, and can be killed as simply as having a stick implanted in their hearts.
I actually love garlic. I don't see how they think it's a repellant.
In truth, we have more in common with cats than with bats or canines. Our fangs resemble our feline sister's. We share similar tongues and eyes. We are nocturnal.
That is one of the only similarities I can find between our race and the mythical nosferatu. Our weakness to sunlight. It disorients us, and we are highly photosensitive. We burn easily. We do NOT burst into flames or fall to ashes in prolonged solar exposure. It's more extreme dehydration, skin damage, and accidental death. I've heard of Children falling down wells or over cliffs, walking into traffic due to daylight poisoning. Darwinism, really.
While we need to ingest blood to survive, it's not our only vice. I'll not muss the beginning of my story with crude explicit detail, but suffice to say we're somewhat... flesh-oriented. And while I may refer to humans as mortals, Moon Children do not live indefinitely. We just live... extendedly. We are not "undead." We are living, respiring beings.
To my knowledge, it is impossible to "create" a Moon Child simply by biting a mortal and allowing it to live, or by killing it in a certain way. We are born. That is all.
And, most important, we are not essentially evil. We merely have a different set of morals. One may mourn the death of a mouse under the paw of a cat, but the cat sees only food. The cat may learn to prey upon only specific mice, or perhaps grow a taste for birds... but the fact remains: prey is prey.
