"Well. I have never before eaten fresher salad," I told the walls of the small cabin/hut/shed. There was a narrow bed and a small wooden shelf, and little else in the tight space. A simple reading light had been nailed to the wall. A small window behind my back gave hardly any illumination. I had known a worse shed.

"What do you say, Stump? Have you had fresher salad?"

The ghostly presence didn't answer. I wasn't sure it had heard.

It was dark inside, and dark outside. Clouds covered the skies. And the world seemed small. Heavy rain hit the roof and the sound was deafening. Trees swooshed. A storm had gathered.

My hand throbbed where Plume had sunk in his talons at the beginning of the train journey. It wasn't bleeding anymore though and Rose had given me fresh bandages for it. It would heal.

And Plume had flown back to the city. I hoped before the storm. He had come to see where I lived, and then he had returned, with a promise to visit.

"Just between the two of us, I miss him a bit, my nephew. I miss the vampire."

No answer.

I lay still, listening to the storm raging outside.

I wished I had taken a book with me. I had tried watching YouTube earlier, but apparently the internet connection wasn't strong enough for streaming. I hadn't been prepared for that.

Or for the snail.

Or to the fact that the shower took its time to warm up.

Or that the toilet was well aired.

I hadn't been prepared.

At all.

I knew how to study for an oncoming exam. I knew how to navigate the metro tunnels to the other side of the city for a specific shopping center. I knew how to talk to vampires, and how to get what I wanted from a witch town. I could survive an explosion and drink tea with a peculiar queen.

But I didn't have a clue as to how I was to pass the time in a small storm sieged shack.

Staring at the ceiling became slightly boring after a few hours. Even as the paint was peeling and there were the oddest stains included.

And I wasn't used to the company either.

Apart from being haunted by the presence of the man I had killed some years ago, there were spirits. Lots of them. If I concentrated on the shifting shapes, more a mass than individual beings, I would get seasick.. And I could feel there was life just outside the window. Birds, small rodents. I could feel it all just outside the simple small window.

I was used to sensing people. And of course there were many of them in a city, forming their own kind of shifting mass, a white noise of auras.

But the forest around me was different. Animal presences were different. Of course I had met a squirrel before. But the absence of the human din magnified them. They felt brighter, more intelligent. I could almost, just almost, distinguish something very much like feelings from the small mouse or vole that had crawled under the shed for shelter. I didn't know what it was. But I did know it felt. It thought.

Plus, there was something in the storm. Something big. As if the downpour had been alive as well, but distant in the far away skies.

Lightning cracked suddenly open the firmament and the tight space became illuminated by the flash. The rain seemed to gain even more vitality, beating the roof.

No one could sleep in a weather like this. Not here at least. Back in the city, it hadn't felt so... real.

So alive.

I hesitated yet a moment on my bed, then decided my host was probably up as well and possibly welcomed company.

I got up to get my jacket, a second-hand wind-proof coat that would get me inside almost dry. I had to put on trousers as well. I didn't own pajamas. It had seemed like a luxury item back in the city where every room was warm, dry and close to a private toilet.

My shoes were already drenched through, so I went out barefoot. It wasn't by any means a cold night. Just a little moist.

Outside the yard seemed dark, wet and pitiful. I had to use my phone's flashlight to reach the back porch of the house. There was a flickering light in a window. Rose, the old lady, had lit a candle.

Suddenly, I became aware of a presence. Like a pack of animals surrounding me, hidden by the rain and woody shadows.

"What do you do here!?" Someone said, seemingly just by my ear.

I dropped the phone. My new, shining phone hit the wooden step and landed face down onto the ground, leaving me in the light of the automatic lamplight tracking my movement on the porch.

I froze. I saw no one with my eyes, only felt an immense presence. And that feeling wasn't quite human either. And where had Stump's everpresent aura gone? Why was I suddenly left alone with this other? Where was my own familiar haunter?

"No. What are you? What have you done to yourself? What do you want from here?"

I still saw no one, just heard a voice that seemingly came from my left.

I licked my lips. What are you? Indeed. If only I knew the answer to that.

I drew in a breath. Sighed it out. Then bent my own consciousness into a meditative state that had been hammered into me some years back. No help panicking. I needed to see this being, understand what it wanted. Mo, the queen of vampires, might have been proud, had she heard me answer this invisible being with perfectly polite tone of voice:

"My name is Timothy. I am here to figure out what I am indeed. I don't know myself. What are you?"

A woman appeared in my view so suddenly I almost shrieked, meditative or not.

No. Actually, it didn't seem to be a woman, after all.

I squinted in the rain.

The being looked humanoid. But it was so clearly not human I found myself utterly stunned. I was used to beings who looked human-ish. Why, I had spent the night train journey with Plume, my vampire nephew. But vampires passed for humans if you didn't stay to stare. And if they had dark contact lenses on to cover the red eyes.

But if this being could pass for a human, it clearly wasn't willing to put in the effort just then.

It had light hair that fell far to its back. Some leaves had tangled themselves in it. Its skin was vividly moss green. Its eyes shining deep blue. There were no whites, just immense gemstones of vivid midnight blue, inset with black slits. And it stood naked, seemingly not minding my wandering gaze that found no indications of any sex. It didn't seem to mind the weather either but approached confidently, until it stood only inches from me. I still felt its presence around me, as if there were a dozen of its kind spread out evenly around me, and not this one individual standing where I could have touched its rain washed skin.

"I am the guardian of this place. Begone, monster," it declared. Its face expressed a very human emotion of rage.

I lifted both of my hands in the air in the international sign of surrender and peace.

"I wish you no harm. Why do you call me a monster? What have I done to offend you? Elf?" The last I said only as a guess.

The being neither confirmed, nor denied my suspicions.

"You are lacking. Rootless. Groundless. The vampire that was with you was more human than you are."

I concentrated. Its face was angry. Its tone offended and furious. But the too big presence around me was something else as well.

It was hard to read an aura like its. I had never felt anything like it before. But I could guess.

"Are you, for some reason, afraid of me?" I asked, my hands still visible and held above my head.

"I am afraid of nothing, you foul being. But you are lacking. I don't welcome you in my home."

"I don't understand," I said. "Your home? I thought this was Rose's home?"

It opened its mouth to continue our conversation, but the door behind me opened. I turned my head.

Rose put her red head through.

"Are you standing in the rain talking to yourself?" the lady of the house asked.

I glanced back to the yard. Empty. I could still feel the presence, but the sensation felt now more distant than before. And my eyes found nothing human-shaped in the darkness.

"My phone fell."

I crouched to lift it from the ground, sighing a secret sigh of relief as I saw the unscathed screen. The flashlight was still on. I switched it off.

"You were coming in?"

I nodded. "I couldn't sleep and thought that maybe you couldn't either."

"You thought right. Come in. Let's have tea."

Soon we were sitting in the wooden chamber where she had offered me both a lunch and a dinner. (My evening soup had been snail free.) We sat in candle light. Rose claimed it was a bad idea to light electrical lamps in a thunderstorm. The elf's presence was gone. We had been left alone in the storm. Rain still fell like as many hammers onto the roof, but now there was an attic between us and the droplets.

"Don't you plug anything in when the weather is like this," Rose said, pouring slightly reddish and misting liquid into my cup. "Might lose your life. Do you take honey?"

I very much doubted a small electricity could kill me if a full blown explosion hadn't. I was personally many times more worried about the elf. Aloud I said:

"No, thank you, I am good. I like my teas fairly plain, herbal or otherwise."

"You drink a lot of tea in the city?"

I smiled, thinking of the simple earthen ware of the vampire queen and of the varied cups and mugs of Hellebore's tearoom.

"I drink a lot of tea. I'll ask my nephew to bring some quality leaves when he visits."

"And how is your nephew? What's his name?"

"Plume. His name is Plume. And while we have our differences, we are also very close. He is the only person who knows all of my secrets."

"Not so young then, for a nephew. Is he?"

I shook my head. "No. Not young at all."

"Do you have other family, besides a nephew?"

"I used to have a sister, but with her we drifted off."

"How sad. But life can be sad, now can't it? I used to have a sister as well."

"What happened to her?"

"She went into the woods."

She looked through the window and by her tone I could tell the sister wasn't coming back.

She sighed heavily.

"But I have so much more family," she smiled sadly. "You met my son. Bramble can be... I love him. That's really all. Without him, and my garden, and sweet Fig..." She didn't finish the thought.

I looked at my host, as she looked for words.

"Must be the weather," she said at last. "Damps the mood. And it was an absolutely stunning morning. I didn't believe it when Moth called and told me to get the patio chairs inside. Moth is Bramble's father. He always knows if it rains."

It seemed like she was about to say something else, but then thought better of it. Instead she shook her head to clear it and asked:

"So, if you have lived all your life in the capital, have you ever weeded a garden? Because mine is overgrown with weeds and the earth is now going to be soft again, the roots won't break. Timothy? Are you well?"

Broken roots?

I shook my own head. The elf had said I was rootless. But it had nothing to do with weeding a flower bed.

"No, I have never weeded anything. My parents have a small greenhouse, but they got it after I grew up. And when I was little they didn't really have the time to keep a garden."

"Oh, dear! Then you are going to learn a new skill tomorrow, or the day after. Isn't that exciting?"

She winked. And smiled almost wickedly.

I wondered suddenly what I had gotten myself into. Apart from sleeping in a shack, I would work for my keeping. And I had really no idea how much work all this would entail.

"Don't look so worried. I had a small french girl last time. She survived. You will too."

I laughed.

Then I looked out the window into the dark strom. Into the woods. I saw us reflected in the glass. Candles casting their brightness around us. An aging lady and her young tenant who would learn to weed tomorrow or the day after that.

"I hope you are right. I am very attached to my life."