Rock Gnome Blood Hunter
Sitting by the fireside, Brock Cavalcante bit the end off his cigar and carefully examined the end before neatly tucking it away in a silver case filled with previous cigar nubs. His compadre Carlos Young watched from across the smoke, glowing slightly orange from the dying fire below. "Brock, you ever think that means something?"
"What's that, Carlos?"
"The way you so neatly take care of your waste. Other folks'll just throw those away, or feed them to their dogs or children. You study them, you keep them. It's not common, you know. I reckon it's the manifestation of latent desire for order in world beset by chaos and vampires. Each nub, you see, must be a recollection of a time when you had what you wanted, and had it under control. Was your childhood strict? Some gnomish parents can be that way."
Brock nodded slightly and chuckled, the firelight duskily friscilating against the weather-worn creases of his face. "Sometimes Carlos, a cigar is just a cigar. And sometimes, if you stick the nubs together, well, that's a new cigar, ain't it?"
The sudden soft wind of a raven's wings quickly drew both their attention. The raven landed and hopped toward Brock, unceremoniously threw up a small, silver capsule, continued on over to Carlos and snatched a sausage before fluttering away. But Carlos was too interested in Brock's reaction to care about his pilfered glizzy, and watched Brock's face as Brock took a tiny key with an even tinier sigil-- prosaically called The Sigil of the Order, as Brock always liked to remind Carlos-- and opened the capsule.
Brock delicated tapped out a very small letter into his small grey hand. He unfolded it again and again and again until it assumed its final form: a normal sized fucking letter. Brock put on his glasses.
"What do you read, friend?" asked Carlos.
You'll need to watch the flock for a fortnight, friend. Remember, Betsy is the neediest sheep. She needs scratches every twelve hours on the dot or she starts to make noises like James the goat, and then you can't hardly tell them apart. And she also needs her glass eye washed weekly or else it'll get it infected."
"Yes, yes. Is it vampires, Brock?"
"Sure is, buddy." Brock refolded the tiny letter, placed it back in the capsule, and placed the capsule in a silver container not unlike the one for his nubs.
"You know, the way I see it, every letter is like a cigar nub. Just part of a bigger story you get to write later."
Brock leaned back, pulled his hat over his eyes, smiled, and went to sleep. In the morn he'd kiss Carlos' sleeping forehead, clamber up his trusty steed, Mr Falk, and ride off into the rising dawn. It wouldn't be the first time Carlos would wake to see his friend gone, but, just like every other time, he'd pray with a tear in his eye that it wouldn't be the last.