The Man of No Aura

"I knew when you walked into my studio, the way you stared, what you are and what you were looking at. Your father didn't have to apologize or explain. You aren't the first visaurant to look at me like that, and you won't be the last. Usually I'm careful to avoid prolonged interaction with visaurants, but in your case. . .well, a young visaurant without someone guiding her in the aurant arts is far less of a threat to me. If I thought you were going to confront me, I wouldn't have agreed to work with your father."
Nelke frowned. "I didn't confront you," she said. "I asked if I could ask you something and you told me no."
"I told you not in the middle of the apothecary with your mother and a patient in the other room who might overhear."
"Well, we're not in the apothecary anymore," Nelke said, glancing around the park they were sitting in. It was a part of Harmonil she didn't frequent, but Master Perraroya had insisted they meet here. "So can I ask you now?"
"You want to know why you see no aura around me despite the fact I'm clearly not a descandnel."
Nelke nodded.
Perraroya sighed. "I wasn't always like this. I had a life and a family and an established workshop in the eastern Ganuiles. But I became ill with something they called Siempre's malediction. There was no known cure for what I had, but in my desperation I went to a sanosceane who lived at the edge of The Wasteland. He offered me something that he promised would prevent Siempre from taking my soul and scattering it across the universe. I didn't think twice about the way he spoke because I thought I had nothing to lose.
"What was to be my saving grace turned out to be nothing but a cursed illusion. Siempre took my life, but she left my soul connected to this body instead of spreading my essence across the universe. My heart doesn't beat. My hair doesn't grow. If you were to cut me, I wouldn't bleed and the wound wouldn't heal." He removed a glove to reveal a hand covered in scrapes and slices, the cuts stitched together in places and glued together in others. He quickly pulled the glove back on after the point had been made. "I don't even need to breathe, in all honesty, but after a lifetime of necessity I find the act somewhat comforting. Also people find it unsettling if I don't. And, as you have pieced together, I exhibit no aura.
"Visaurants are more common in the Ganuiles than they are in Harmonil. My wife and daughter were among them. Were they not, they might have been able to ignore my new state of being, but alas. My daughter was afraid of me and my wife couldn't even look at me. Everyone in town knew what had become of me, and eventually they ran me out of town out of fear. That was thirty years ago. I haven't returned since, though I send letters. I never receive a response."
A silence settled over them, interrupted only by the wind rustling the tree leaves above them.
Perraroya's story was a lot to take in, one that Nelke might not have believed if it weren't for his concern about secrecy and the cut of his hair being twenty years out of style. The idea that such a thing could be possible made her skin crawl, and if Perraroya hadn't proved himself to be a gentleman prior to revealing his undead status, she might have run away.
"Why did you tell me?" she asked eventually. "My father just told me to stop making up nonsense when I told him you didn't have an aura. Nobody would have believed me."
Perraroya sighed. "Because. . .you remind me of my daughter. She was about your age the last time I saw her. She would be much older now, probably with children of her own, but one way or another I was bound to miss out on that time with her. I think. . .part of me wanted a second chance to explain myself." He looked over at Nelke. "Hearing that with the death of your grandmother you had no one to teach you about Aura made me even more sympathetic. Some might say it was inappropriate for me to give you the money for all of those books, but being able to provide for you something I never could for my own daughter brought me a sense of joy that you'll never know. But now I have a question for you."
Nelke looked up.
"Can I count on you to keep my secret?"