She had come home from school that day with a rather thoughtful look upon her face, perhaps a bit sad as well. He noticed as he always did. His unblinking gaze that only the undead possessed never missing even the most subtle clues.
"Your days lessons sit not well with you my daughter?" he asked in a dusty whisper, the wisps of eldrich smoke drifting from his burning eye sockets swirling lazily around his head as he turned his fleshless skull to face her.
"No uncle." she said with a sigh, "My lessons were fine."
"But?" he asked simply, his voice like winds stirring the dusty graves of long dead battles. The bloody glow emanating from the center of his skull flashing dimly between his fangs as he spoke.
"Everybody at school says that undead people scare away animals, kill plants just by walking next to them and every living thing fears them!" she said in a rush. Her eyes shining on the verge of tears. "Especially that meany Morious and all his friends!"
"Children can be cruel my dear." He replied with an age old dusty sigh. "It is only because they know not what harm they do with there words and know so very little."
"Does everything fear you uncle?" she asked.
"Let us find out." he said, and offered her a long bony claw.
She took his fleshless bony finger in her warm furry ones and let him lead her outside into the woods beyond the bastion. They came into a clearing among the trees and all around them was the sound of many birds and other animals, for these woods were protected by the grim shadow of the Draculitch and none came here to hunt nor to fell the ancient trees for fear of his wrath.
She stood by his side and looked in all directions and saw that the birds that surrounded them all stayed far away, sitting on the branches of the great trees and watching them intently.
"The birds don't seem to like us very much." she said softly, fearing that indeed it was her uncles undead presence that was frightening them all.
"Is that so?' he said, lifting his skull to peer into the trees with the burning eyes of the dead. "Go then my daughter." he said, lifing a bony claw to point at a great oak many paces away. "Go to that tree and abide and we shall see what we shall see..." he said with a dusty laugh.
She could not see what was so funny, certainly it appeared to her that he seemed to be frightening the birds away and what all the mean boys at school had said was true...
She reached the tree and turned around to look back at him, standing there in his black robes, a grim and terrible figure if ever there was one, his long bloody hued mane blowing in the wind as he stood still... as still as death.
But then a bird flew down from its branch and circled the grim specter, once, twice and then landed on his head with a flutter of wings and began without so much as a by your leave to rummage in the Draculitch's mane.
He laughed a dusty laugh. "I fear you shall find no vermin upon me to make a meal of, My lady. My flesh and i have parted company centuries hence. Not but dry bones shall you find now."
As she watched, amazed. another bird and then another came down to land upon the Draculitch's grim body and poking around him, seemingly out of curiosity more than anything else.
He turned his fleshless gaze upon her. "Now come, my daughter." he said.
She came forward only to stop as the birds froze and stared at her, there wings half furled, ready to fly away.
She realized suddenly it was not the Draculitch but her that the birds feared!
"Why do they fear me?" she asked, stomping her foot in childish annoyance at the unfairness of it all!
"And why do they not fear me?" he asked with a burning gleam in his empty eye socket.
"Yes! I want to pet the birdies too!"
"It is because unlike the people of this world... the animals do not fear death. They fear pain or suffering or hardship or the lack of food, or the winters cold... but not death. For death is something that comes for all one day and it cannot be helped. The dead are but dead, no more, no less. They who have gone have no malice towards them, for the dead do not feel malice as the living do. When i was alive the needs and drives of my body were something these small ones would fear, for perhaps i would have need of a meal and one of thease would have made a adiquate snack. But now i do not hunger nor thirst, i am dead and therefore they need not fear me."
"But they fear me because i could hurt them?" she asked, sounding hurt herself.
"Indeed." he said solemly. "For do you not have fangs? do you not hunger? could not one of these small beings make a nice morsel?" he said pointedly.
"But i wouldn't!" she cried! "Nevernevernever ever!"
"Then..." he said gently. "All that is left is trust." and he beckoned her to him slowly, ever so slowly and then held out a finger where upon a young little puffball of a bird perched unsteadily. With the greatest of care she took the tiny bird from his bony claw and held that tiny life against her breast.
"Fear not the dead, child." he said. "The living are trouble enough for any one life..."

The next day she went back to class and bit that big bully Morious right on the ear and made him cry in front of the whole school.

`V*