Literally thousands of years.
I've seen empires rise and fall. Drank the blood of Julius Caesar after Brutus and the rest of the Roman Senate sank their daggers in. I moved to the New World and witnessed revolution, as thousands of "Americans" sank metaphorical daggers into the English rulers. You mortals always find a reason to kill your rulers in the hope of a new and better world.
And don't misunderstand me. I've made companions before. You cannot be alive as long as I and not seek to slake the loneliness somehow. Peasant girls who wanted to avoid the plague, French aristocratic brats who wanted to stay young and beautiful forever, to vampire fan girls from 20 years ago (seriously, Anne Rice, you couldn't just leave me to be the terror behind the shadows? You HAD to give us FEELINGS...yuck).
But this one. She was special. I didn't know why. I didn't understand why I wanted her. I'm too old to even remember when the night took me forever, and SHE-SHE HAD to make me FEEL (Seriously, I usually try to avoid the base vernacular, but fuck you, Anne Rice, you started this shit...sparkly, day-walking, VEGETARIAN vampires all started with you).
Okay. Tamping that back down now. Weird how suddenly not only am I overcome with-ugh-feelings, but i'm more angry about the representation of my kind than I ever have been. Not sure what that's about. She begged me to write my thoughts, and so I am. What has become of me.
I blame her. It's all her fault. I may finally understand why all of the companions I have made before didn't work. She...adapted so well to the change. It was almost as if she had been waiting for me. She's...more predatory than me, more able to blend with them, more of everything than I have ever seen. And she's making me adapt to keep up with her. And I *want* to...what is that about? She was supposed to help me with my desires of the flesh for as long as she could stay sane. But I don't think she'll go crazy. She may stay with me in the night forever.
I've never loved another until now.
What would she want me to say? She'd want me to write why I feel for her, what about her was different than the others. At first, she wasn't. She was collected to help me deal with a decade-long case of, what she would call, blue-balls(?). Weird that out of all the things that change about you physically when you turn, the need to fuck is never completely removed. It's always second to the need to feed, but it's there. Sometimes it's fun to play with your food, but sometimes you need something more...tender. She was brought before me, and I pleased her until she wanted to be taken, though it's hard to know how much of that was from my touching her body and how much is the aura that I've developed over the years. When she awoke, turned...she didn't cry. She didn't thank me until I was disgusted with myself and her. She...gazed at the world with amazement and asked questions I never thought to ask.
"How much do we need to drink every night?"
"How dark can it be until we cannot see?"
"When will my aura be as strong as yours?"