A small boy and a woman sat atop a small hill. From somewhere in the village, the sound of soft music could be heard. The child was curiously looking down at the village, trying to find the music’s source.
The woman smiled and reached over to softly ruffle the boy’s dark hair. “It’s coming from the choir,” she explained. “They gather every week to sing their praises to the gods. The songs are prayers, asking for protection and guidance for all of us.”
The boy turned a bit to her. “Why can’t we go there?” he asked with a tilt of his head.
“Because it takes a long time to become a member of the choir,” the woman explained as she stood. “Come now, Mare. Mitéra will be finishing dinner soon.”
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Late one evening, Mare snuck out of his bedroom window, his feet landing on the soft grass. He stepped out onto the dirt path and began walking toward the middle of the village.
The sound of the haunting music grew stronger as he continued down the path. He quickly turned a corner as he started running as fast as he could.
After a minute, he stopped in front of a small building. A curtain hung from the doorframe, and he carefully stepped toward it. There was no doubt, this was the source of the music. He could hear the haunting melody from inside, and if he could only-
A hand grabbed him and jerked him back, making him yelp. He turned around and saw his Mamá, a scowl on her face.
“Nathaniel Mare!” she hissed through her teeth, her eyebrows furrowed with frustration. “I thought I told you that you couldn’t go in there!”
“I just wanted a peek,” he mumbled, kicking a bit of dirt up with his foot.
The woman sighed and turned. “We are going home.” She pulled him away by the arm, and as he looked back to the building, a spark seemed to flicker to life in his chest. Music. That was what he had been missing, wasn’t it?
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A few years later, Mare sat on top of the roof of his home, looking out at the sky above him. Strapped to his chest was a small guitar, just the right size for him to play.
He sighed as he reached over his shoulder, taking the guitar off and holding it carefully. He plucked at the strings, tuning them a bit before he strummed the strings. He hummed along with his makeshift melody, his eyes closing as a soft breeze blew around him.
This was what felt right. Music. He yearned for it. He had long since made a name for himself in the village: after school, he often could be found in the village square, taking requests for small amounts of money. He played little nursery rhymes for children, older songs requested by elders.
It was days like these, however, that he felt the most peaceful. Playing for no one but himself. Just letting the melody flow from his mind to the air around him. He wouldn’t give it up for anything.
So in lore, vampires have this trait that I’ve almost never seen used, and that’s the fact that vampires are OBSESSED with counting things. Like, the Count on Sesame Street was almost certainly created specifically as a vampire because of this piece of lore.
Like, I read this vampire book years and years ago that explained that a surefire way to protect yourself from vampires getting into your house was to spread a ton of seeds on your doorstep–poppy and mustard seeds were particularly recommended for the purpose. Basically, if you suspected someone to be a vampire, all you had to do was drop a sackful of seeds on the ground in front of them.
If they didn’t immediately start counting them, they were not a vampire. However, if they WERE a vampire, they’d be seized with the urge to count all the seeds and they would not budge from that spot until they knew how many seeds there were in total. The point was to keep them there until the sun came up and killed them, because if they hadn’t counted all the seeds by sunrise they wouldn’t be able to leave. Presumably you could just go about the rest of your evening as normal, though no word on whether it’s possible to make them lose count and start over.
Having remembered this piece of lore, I want fewer stories about brooding tortured Edward Cullen-esque vampires. I want to start seeing more stories about math nerd vampires.
Vampire accountants who are an honest company’s best asset and a corrupt company’s bane because they are frighteningly accurate with the accounts and will not hesitate to blow the whistle on a CEO scamming money because fuck you for making the numbers wrong.
Vampire cashiers that don’t need to look at the register screen because they already mentally calculated your total. 10-items-or-less vampires who know goddamn well you have 20 items in that basket and NO, you cannot just slip in with the rest.
Vampire math tutors who are constantly in high demand and have to hold lotteries to see who gets to be tutored by them.
MATH NERD VAMPIRES
If anyone would like the term for this, it’s arithmomania.
“But sir, he’s a vampire!!!”
“Vampire or not, he’s the best damn accountant we have here, and i’d let him drink my blood before i fire him!”
“still less of a leech than Matt in legal. Fuck matt”
Okay but also, vampires as drug dealers- a profession that requires extremely quick, extremely accurate counting. “You’re 5 dollars short.” “There’s 50,000 dollars in there at least, how the fuck did you count that fast-” “Pay up or I will drink you like a slurpee.”
There’s this guy that sits in front of me who you would think is a conservative redneck bc his entire aesthetic is southern lumberjack w boots and denim and hats but he’s actually one of the most inclusive and anti trump guy I’ve ever met and today he wore this hat that sums up his entire personality and I’m screaming.
Don’t judge a book by its cover; make cornbread, not war.
Hey, this is the motto of the Southern Foodways Alliance, and among other things, they have an AMAZING podcast called Gravy, which ‘shares stories of the changing American South through the foods we eat’.
You like this hat. Listen to that podcast. You’ll be happy.
Y’all need to stop being surprised by the radicalism in The South. The idea that Southerners are inherently more backwards is steeped in classism and ableism and erases all the awesome work marginalized folks are doing out there
Small child full of Bees 
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