fandomhigh | Paranormal Activity 101, Tuesday, January 11th

When the students came into the room on Tuesday they might have noticed that it smelled strongly of old lady (or like a bunch of dried out flowers, rather), but Alaric was acting like he didn't notice anything. If you thought it smelled like old lady now, just wait until later.

"Okay, guys, today we're going to be covering vampires. I'm sure you all know what vampires are, but we're gonna go over the basics anyway for sake of easy test questions when the final comes," Alaric said with a smile. "I realize there are a few vampires in the room, but I promise to be as unbiased as possible. I know you're good people."

You know, when you're not killing innocent carnival workers or biting your golden retriever-like boyfriend, Caroline.

"Right, so, the word vampire usually refers to anything that gains it's life essence through the drinking of blood," Alaric said. "The word vampire wasn't really used until the early 18th century, but many cultures have had myths referring to human-like creatures that drank blood to live for hundreds of years before that. It's a popular myth to fall back on when you want to scare your kids, I think."

Now that the lame attempt of humor was done, Alaric quickly launched into a lecture about vampires, first going over the historical background of vampires in popular culture and then ditching the whole "myth" aspect and talking about the more scientific facts. What they looked like, where you're most likely to find them and the special abilities some of them possessed, such as mind control and (at least from what his research in Fandom's library told him) flying. When he got to weaknesses and how to kill a vampire he tried to cover all the ways you could kill a vampire in every universe he researched, making a point to tell everyone that your mileage may vary depending on what universe's vampire you were dealing with. But chopping off someone's head is usually a sure thing.

Then, yes, he talked about how some vampires were good and you should make sure that they were really trying to kill you and not just getting fuzz out of your hair before throwing holy water on them.

"Sorry if your wrists hurt from all that writing," Alaric said when he was finally finished. "The activity today will be relaxing. Or you'll burn yourself. Then you can relax after class."

He pointed to the tables in the back where there were tea kettles, hot plates, cups and that dried out purple flowers spread out among them. "Today we're all going to be making tea out of vervain. If you were paying attention in lecture you'll recall that where I'm from vervain and vampires don't mix well. Their skin'll start burning off if they touch it and if they ingest it they get quite sick. Humans that ingest vervain will be protected from vampires since one sip of your blood will have them on the ground wishing they were dead in the more traditional sense. If you choose to wear vervain on you, you'll also be protected from vampiric mind control."

"So today we're going to be making tea from vervain. It's not the tastiest thing in the world, but it's better than dying, right? I recommend you add a lot of sugar," Alaric said. "And, of course, vampires are exempt from the activity. Or if you just don't like tea. Then you don't have to do it either."

[OCD up]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Maybe with some honey? Or lemon? Unless that would deactivate the vervain..." Scully took a sip and then tried not to gag. "Or in coffee. I wonder if that would work."

"I dunno, I think coffee would just make it worse."

Scully scraped the underside of her tongue against her teeth, and gave the drink a cock-eyed look. "Somehow I doubt this works on vampires in my world. Or I would have heard about it before. Or Mulder would have, given his OCD."

"I thought you weren't sure there actually were vampires in your world."

"I'm not. The ones we encountered, if they were vampires, disappeared. They made claims, but there was no definitive." She paused. "Aside from the one who revived after a stake was removed from his heart on the autopsy table. And his body is MIA as well."

"Dude, sometimes I forget how creepy your job apparently was."

Scully sighed, unthinkingly took another sip of tea, and made a face like a very disgusted Persian cat. "It really was. We had to do a lot of tapdancing about everyone getting away on that one, too. Mostly claiming to be drugged." She sighed. "Mulder said he met other vampires who could only be killed by one of their own in L.A., but I'm still not convinced by his notes on that case. He was very, very sleep deprived."

"I'm not sure I'd be totally convinced by much of what he says. He's fun, but kinda . . . wacky."

Scully's face lit up in a grin of understanding. "He wants to believe. So sometimes he ignores evidence for a while if it doesn't fit his theory. He dragged me on a case to a migrant workers camp that he was sure was a Mexican goatsucker. It turned out to be a very hazardous fungus." She sighed. "Then he insisted it was an outer space fungus."

"Well, I guess he's never boring."

Paranormal Activity 101, Tuesday, January 11th

Re: Make Tea

Re: Make Tea

Re: Make Tea

Re: Make Tea

Re: Make Tea

Re: Make Tea

Re: Make Tea

Re: Make Tea

Re: Make Tea

Re: Make Tea