Where have all the … zombies… gone?

For Meeksp‘s prompt.

Dragons Next Door Verse. DND has a landing page – here.

This was in part prompted by this story, where the elkin first appear, from the Gender-Funky Call for Prompts.

Commenters: 6

“Ever find it weird that we don’t have vampires?”

This, I reminded myself, was what happened when Jin helped in the kitchen. But making tomato sauce was a long and tedious process, and the garden had been very prosperous this year, my younger two were still too small to be much help, and Sage had a bad habit of opening up the black jars into the sauce, Rule Two or not (It makes very good sauce, I’ll admit, but what it did to my mother-in-law that one time, I’ll be making up to her for decades).

Vampires. “Or zombies,” I agreed, “in the classic horror-movie sense of the word. But why ‘weird?'”

“Well, look at it, really. We’re out of their fairy tale books, even if we live in the ‘burbs with them now. Wizards. Witches. We have dragons next door, and brownies. And yet – no vampires. No zombies. I thought the old knock-down place a block over was haunted, but that turned out to be two boggarts and a goblin. And it’s not like we talk about heaven.”

No, although that wasn’t a “we” matter the way he meant it in that sentence – the not-quite-human humans. That was a “we” matter in our household. And that was a matter for another day.

“Hrmm,” I said instead, and tasted the sauce. “Needs more basil, and a pinch of – the medium-large black jar? The tiniest pinch, mind you. Well,” I continued, before Jin got irritated – he was at that irritable stage. I hoped it was a stage, at least. “I’ve never met a vampire, but I’ve seen ghosts. Well, one human ghost. If you’re looking for undead, though, you might go talk to the Elkin.

“The Elkin?” Now he perked up, and I wondered if I’d done the wrong things. The darkest parts of the Black Tower… no. He was my son, and he would not be going White Ops.

“The Elkin,” I agreed. “My sister, your Aunt [*], is dating one. But they have an entire priest class devoted to their undead.” Such as it was.

“Do you think she could help me out, then?” He definitely had that look in his eye.

“I’ll see if I can talk her into it,” I assured him, “If – and only if – you finish that history paper and help me clean up after the sauce.”

I should probably have been more worried at how enthusiastic he was about cleaning, shouldn’t I have?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/148145.html. You can comment here or there.

14 thoughts on “Where have all the … zombies… gone?

  1. “I’m curious” turns into “help me out”, and I wonder what Jin has gotten into or is trying to get into … ETA: “my younger two were still too small to be much help” — Juniper is old enough to babysit for an acid-belching baby dragon, but too young to help out in the kitchen? Or is this story set earlier?

  2. I wonder, is he being haunted, or trying to pick a career path? And I do think this is at the current timeline, as Aud is thinking of the Black Tower. I think you could change it to the youngest was too young and Juniper was babysitting. Also, yay for a sock hop and Rule One. Looking forward to it.

Leave a Reply to rix_scaedu Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *