[ The next night, the cave is not as Alucard left it. The books are there, yes, but so are a selection of other things. Products of hunts, mostly, furs and bottles of blood and jars of bonemeal.
The next attempt to pay the dowry comes a few weeks later, and the bats of the cave fly to alert Alucard and his father that the horned hunter returned to their cave. This time, when Dracula investigates, there are more books. Or attempts at book-like things. There are shopping lists, letters, a few actual books, a rectangular piece of wood that maybe kind of looks like a book if one squints and a wooden carved printing block. The cave is warded against the fairy, using the blood he left on Alucard's coat, after that, and the next set of gifts comes around yule and is left at the very edge of the wards, more desperate this time. More furs, from larger and fiercer creatures. Bottles of things that should not be in bottles, one containing one of those clumps of memory and another letting out birdsong when opened. Medicinal plants. Antlers that, if Alucard sees them, look uncomfortably similar to Trevor's own.
And then the gifts stop, and they do not resume. It's spring by the time a speaker comes to Lisa's clinic by cover of darkness. Their caravan is unwelcome even on the outskirts of the village proper, so they cannot bring their injured member to the clinic. They ask that medicine be brought to them and promise to pay as best they can. ]
no subject
The next attempt to pay the dowry comes a few weeks later, and the bats of the cave fly to alert Alucard and his father that the horned hunter returned to their cave. This time, when Dracula investigates, there are more books. Or attempts at book-like things. There are shopping lists, letters, a few actual books, a rectangular piece of wood that maybe kind of looks like a book if one squints and a wooden carved printing block. The cave is warded against the fairy, using the blood he left on Alucard's coat, after that, and the next set of gifts comes around yule and is left at the very edge of the wards, more desperate this time. More furs, from larger and fiercer creatures. Bottles of things that should not be in bottles, one containing one of those clumps of memory and another letting out birdsong when opened. Medicinal plants. Antlers that, if Alucard sees them, look uncomfortably similar to Trevor's own.
And then the gifts stop, and they do not resume. It's spring by the time a speaker comes to Lisa's clinic by cover of darkness. Their caravan is unwelcome even on the outskirts of the village proper, so they cannot bring their injured member to the clinic. They ask that medicine be brought to them and promise to pay as best they can. ]