Fledgling

by Octavia E. Butler

“I don’t know enough about myself to say what my

age might be or even whether I’m human.

Reminds me of some Heinlein

It was as though the people in each of these houses were pretending they lived alone in the woods.

Haha simile

Best to let these people alone, at least until they slept.

Haha

I could hear the soft, even breathing of two of them upstairs in a front bedroom.

I recalled being shot once before—perhaps more than once.

slivers of memory, tormenting me.

I must grasp the somehow familiar wrought iron, hold it,

I got the impression that no one had touched her in a long while.

Being shot had apparently done me more harm than I realized. It had left me an irrational fear to deal with.

after I had fed for a few seconds, she stopped struggling.

Now I was only making certain of her,

“Theodora Harden.”

One by one, I collected them.

I could at least help the people who helped me. That felt important.

I was capable of that. I had done that.

his scent should have told me what he was. How was it that he had smelled only like food to me and not like a person at all?

Maybe there are bits of truth mixed into the movies and folktales.”

“I think your trouble would be shorter-lived than mine,”

Haha

It seems that I have a very good memory for the little I’ve done and sensed in the past few days.”

“It’s not dawn yet.” “Yeah, how about that?

Haha

Let’s get you online, and you can gather some information yourself.”

Haha

I didn’t want him to ask me questions I couldn’t answer—like what other changes might be in store for him.

I had been about to protest that I was brown, not black, but before I could speak, I understood what he meant.

Haha

It’s a good thing you don’t eat.”

Haha

porphyria.

The worst of the porphyriac diseases made people so vulnerable to light that they developed huge sores as parts of their flesh eroded away. They might lose their noses or their lips or patches of their cheeks. They would look grotesque.

I had already proved that if I were badly burned or wounded, I would heal.

Haha

Perhaps my kind did not want to be written about.

The houses had not been abandoned. I was not wrong about the scents of burned flesh that I had found here and there in them.

there had definitely been other people around at the time of the fire. Why would the articles deny this?

her

“I’m lean,” I said. “I feed on blood most of the time. I don’t think I could get fat.”

I thought about it and then realized that I did know.

“It isn’t nearly as much fun as what you do.”

Haha

in - editor

Why should an abandoned house have piles of clean, folded clothing in it?”

Haha

Haha

Why kill a person who would willingly feed you again and again if you handled them carefully?

I ate a man without ever recognizing him as a man.

vampires and other people living and dying together. What did that mean?

“It doesn’t pay very well, but I enjoy it.”

Haha

“It was easier than running down a deer.”

Haha

The word helicopter occurred to me suddenly,

Haha

The gunman would awaken thirsty and weak, maybe feeling sick. And how did I know that? It was one more sliver of memory,

Haha

Ha - she can’t recall doing much of anything