Arran had successfully avoided his mother for another night after returning from dropping James off, but now that he had spent an entire night staring at the ceiling, imagining every single way that he could try to explain everything to Naomi he really needed some guidance.

Arran knocked on the door of Celyn's attic apartment and entered into the large office-cum-living area. His mother's rooms were more old-fashioned than the rest of the house, though still light and airy. A cream chesterfield sofa sat facing a large, abstract watercolour of the view from the back of Rose House out onto the Lancashire countryside. The painting itself hung on the partial wall that blocked Celyn's bed from sight and at the other end, on the far side of the room, was Celyn sitting at her workspace. 

The ceiling tapered at either side with a large window set in the middle with the desk pushed up against it, every other inch of the wall was dedicated to book space. Arran knew that this was only a fraction of his mother's collection, with the eaves of her room housing several thousands of scientific journals and non-fiction books, but even so, the large wall of literature was an impressive sight.

Celyn herself sat looking up at the massive, dual screen set up in front of her, a wall of dense, plain text on one and what looked like a newsfeed on the other. She was paying attention to the former, scrolling through the information far faster than Arran could ever possibly read. She motioned for him to sit down in the reading chair in the corner so he sank into it, knees up at his chest, watching her scribble down bits of information in a notebook without ever once looking away from the racing text on the screen.

Without any indication of slowing down or nearing an end, she snapped her journal closed and pushed the screens back away from her.

"Sorry," she said, turning her chair to face him, "didn't want to lose my train of thought."

"Looked intense," he replied, wondering what sort of potentially classified information he had been privy to without even realising it.

"That was just hobby stuff, you're uncle has a very specific theory about embryogenesis, which of course means that I have to become an expert in the physics behind glass to even understand what he means."

"Ok at the start of that sentence I thought that I could maybe guess at what embryogenesis means but you really, really lost me there because my best guess had nothing to do with glass."

"I could explain the link to you, or we could talk about what you want to talk about."

Arran took a deep breath and genuinely considered taking the physics lesson, for no other reason than to have a distraction.

"My girlfriend is dying and-" he drew a breath to continue the sentence and it felt like broken glass in his throat. Saying it out loud brought back everything that he had felt in the last few days at once. He couldn't bring himself to say anything else, he just rested his head on his knees and sobbed. The change was so sudden and intense but there was a sense of relief behind it all.

He didn't even notice Celyn stand up, but her arms were around him seemingly instantly. He stood up in desire to get closer into the embrace, he wanted to be a child again, not yet knowing how it felt to be this hopeless. When he was young there was nothing that Celyn couldn't figure out or fix but he highly doubted that she had the cure for an obscure, usually benign disease stashed away in her research.

Eventually, after a few false starts, he sat back down and told her everything about Naomi and his promise to tell her about himself. Celyn sank into a crouch and held his hands, looking up at him wordlessly as the ball of white-hot, complicated pain poured out of him in no particular order. He didn't realise until he said it out loud, that he was so scared of not knowing what was going on in the obviously tumultuous politics of the paranormal world, but that came out after admitting to the overwhelming guilt that he felt for opening James' eyes to the dangerous world of the supernatural. On top of, throughout and underlying everything was Naomi. How much he'd changed as a person while being with her, how scared he was to lose her once he told her that he was a vampire and the fact that she, despite being one of the most amazing people he had ever met, was going to have her life cut so short.

When he had finished, he felt light, like he had actually unburdened himself, but instead of being more at ease, there was a hollowness where the pain had sat. He could feel his heart thudding fast in his own chest but the rest of him felt absent.

Celyn stood and took a deep breath, part of Arran was still willing her to produce some sort of magic cure-all amulet out of her pocket, or a long forgotten file of haematological research from her computer but all she did was swear quietly and sit back down into her desk chair.

"I can look into what's wrong with her, see how it'd interact with vampirism but just because I haven't heard of it being an issue, doesn't mean it won't be, especially since it's a blood disease." She said, rocking her chair back slightly.

It took Arran a second to work out what she meant. Ever pragmatic, Celyn had identified the issue being Naomi's impending death and was proffering a potential solution: immortality.

"That's not really an option-"

"It is though, potentially at least. I'm not saying it's a good option, or the right one for her or even that in her opinion it'd be better than death. I just think that, given how frankly shitty this all is, it's best to look at what limited choices you have."

Arran swallowed and nodded, unsure of what to say. He was honestly surprised that Celyn had even offered to research it when in all reality she had probably had headaches that lasted as long as his and Naomi's relationship.

"I love her, mum."

"I know you do." Celyn smiled slightly at him. "You really know how to pick them, don't you? It's a talent for someone as young as you are to fall in love with such darkly complicated women."

"She's on her way over in about half an hour and I have absolutely no idea how to explain any of this to her."

"Let her take a look at these," replied Celyn, who opened one of the panels hiding the files she kept in the eaves. She took out a portfolio and handed it to him. "Of course she'll probably think it's all fake but it's every bit of proof that I have of my age. If she doesn't believe you, she can go to the historical records society in town and look me up, my marriage certificate, the announcement in the local paper, my husband's obituary, it's all there."

Arran flicked through the folder and sure enough, found Celyn's marriage announcement on an extract of a newspaper from August 1870. He felt slightly in awe to be holding such a direct link to his mother's past.

"How come I've never seen this stuff before?"

Celyn shrugged, slightly uncomfortable and looked away from the page. "I don't like to think that far back, there aren't many happy memories for me. But be careful with that stuff, I like to have it on hand just in case."

Arran nodded and closed the folder carefully. He thanked his mother for listening and declined her offer to stay and help him explain. Despite feeling that Celyn made a more believable immortal, Arran was of the opinion that she made for a much more terrifying introduction to his world.

Celyn departed, promising to be back later in the day once he'd explained everything to Naomi. He saw her out of the house and sat on the sofa, staring at the front door and clutching the plastic folder. After a while he got up and fetched a knife from the kitchen, his specific gifts might not be much of a demonstration but there was still one thing that he could do that Naomi wouldn't be able to deny. 

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Well it's Friday morning and I'm up early before work to post this, it's almost like I have my life together. Thanks so much for sticking with me <3