The vampire who had named himself Chris T'andy an hour ago, who had no identification, bank account, or possessions beyond the shirt on his back and the tablet he'd dug out of the trash, couldn't help smiling.

It wasn't just his friend Mac that made him feel like he'd returned home. It was probably strange for a creature to whom alcohol was a poison to feel at home in an establishment that served it, but he'd spent plenty of time on both sides of the counter. Despite the cuts and dents in the heavily polished surface he was currently leaning on, he was fairly certain that it hadn't been this same counter back then, but he had once stood behind the one that had stood in this spot.

When the band tucked their instruments into their cases, with the same care that a first-time mother would use to wrap her baby, Bobby told him, "You're up."

"What's your favorite song?" he asked cheekily.

"Old Dun Cow," she replied without batting an eye.

He blinked and looked back at Mac, who raised his glass and said serenely, "She's a good kid, impeccable taste in music."

He looked at the little stage and pointed out, "There's a certain lack of piano about the establishment."

"Psh," Mac scoffed. "Like you need somethin' to lean on."

There was a different kind of energy found in performing than the kind that food could give, something intangible, something that couldn't keep a person alive, but something that could give them a reason to live. At the same time, it sucked the life energy out of you, burning through hours worth of energy in minutes. He was going to be hungry when he finished, even though he'd already eaten two full plates.

Every eye in the place was on him after he sang the first line of the old drinking ballad.

--

He came to a halt, and the grubby representative of mankind who had been patiently identifying everything he pointed at while he ate the tiny bag of fruits that only made him hungrier, almost ran into him. It was almost comical the way it hurriedly backed up four paces.

His hearing was muffled in this form, but something familiar tickled his ears, and he turned his head, trying to pinpoint its direction. He followed the sound toward the edge of the market, and the helpful mankind said something sharp and mocking. He turned to look at it.

He wanted to follow the sound before it stopped. He wanted to listen with better ears. But even though this one wasn't a dragon, it rankled to leave after accepting its teaching without gifting knowledge of his own in return. The mankind had often valued shiny metals more than knowledge in the past, but he had not collected any to bring down the mountain with him, and there was already a lot more metal in this hivelike city than in any cities he remembered.

The sound that he wanted to follow faded away, and he glared in the direction he thought it had originated from. After a minute the sound returned, but it was softer. What was the grateful sounding word? "Thanks," he said to the grubby little mankind who had freely shared its words.

He reached into the fold of his skin that mimicked the outer covering of cloth, and let one of his scales decompress, and then winced as he plucked it. He held it between his fingers and hummed to it for a moment. The sound was a deep rich tone that one of the mankind could not make with just their voices, and it carried a fragment of his almost non-existent energy reserve into the pattern of his own scale until it hummed with it like a tiny string.

--

Old Jose stared after the stranger for a while after he left. He looked down at the large rounded shell balanced on his wrinkled old hand. It was oddly warm, but then the man had pulled it out of his oddly shaped coat like he had carried it in his breast pocket.

The way the stranger had suddenly walked toward the edge of the market, given an abrupt thanks, and then flinched before handing it over, made it seem like it must be valuable to him. Jose had tried to refuse it, but the man had insisted. Other than its size, it didn't seem like it was anything terribly unusual.

It had a slightly pearlescent sheen to its deep yellowish color, and a slightly dished shape. The faint grooves were rounded like a clam's shell. After a moment he tucked it into one of his own large pockets. He didn't really have anything to do, and had seriously considered following the dangerous stranger who had proven to be as polite as he was curious. But the shell in his pocket had obviously been meant as a parting gift.

--

Away from the market and its tempting fruits that he couldn't take without causing a ruckus, he let himself decompress into his own form, although he kept himself small enough to maneuver easily between the buildings.

He swiveled his ears until he had the sound's origin pinpointed. Music had been playing in the market, but there had been no musicians. It had hummed from boxes on poles that had more of those cables that carried the lighting like little ducts, and he suspected that the sounds were being carried somehow like the powerful light had been.

Even more interesting, most of the merchants had carried small devices that held more lightning in their bellies, and many of those had also been emitting music, without any cables or strings attached to them. Details about the inn where the carts had been stopped above the city, that he hadn't paid attention to at the time, made him think that these devices were common.

A dog dashed out of an alley that ran perpendicular to his course and started shouting at him. The language of dogs had not changed as much as that of the mankind. He was tempted to eat the rude little animal's heart, he was so hungry, but he was sure that it would leave an unpleasant echo.

The noise of an entry opening above, in the building that loomed over him, made him compress himself back into the shape he had used in the market. The dog shouted in fear and surprise, and then backed away while growling. He huffed in amusement, and told it, "It would take me much more effort to eat you in this shape."

The dog turned and ran.