al-majus

1620

⁣My name is Annika, but it was not always so. I was born in Safavid Persia in the Gregorian year 1620, and was made vampyr some twenty years after that. In those days they called me Anna Khanum. As you can see, I was a great and very dangerous beauty. That is why Mother chose me for what we call in Persian, hediyeh siah, the Black Gift. 

1640

Soon after I was made vampyr, Mother moved us to The Holy Roman Empire. I spent the first fifty years of my tender vampling life there, running with the wolves in the forest and hunting teeny tiny Germans along the River Rhine. From the very beginning, it was clear I was a natural huntress, with a sharp nose for human blood and a mean Parthian shot. I earned the illustrious epithet, Annika die Persische Große-Nase, Annika the Persian Big-Nose. Even my castle was built in the shape of my glorious nose. Eventually the village I so graciously lorded over came to be known as the village of Langenase, hence my legal name today: Annika von Langenase.

written & illustrated by Alaleh Mohajerani

first published on Instagram in December, 2019