There's a memory Armand has, one that's persisted. Like finding a notable, half-shattered shell on a beach, where the mollusk that slowly produced it is long dead, irrelevant. The sensation, more so than the vision, of dragging charcoal across a page. Of the immediate feeling of inadequacy, confronting the mark he has made.

Wishing he could start again, but unwilling to waste the paper.

And that's all. No looming presences at the periphery, no pain or pleasure, no sense of what was being drawn, just a surface at a hard tilt, and his hand, which was—small? The same size it is now? He's not even sure if he was a vampire or not. He feels he has always been a vampire.

"Some of them might have been artists, not just perverts. Stranger things have happened."

They turn a corner.

"You're hesitating over an earnest suggestion. Which suggests you're looking for parody after all."

Maybe there's a bridge nearby.