↠ one of her deepest secrets is that she’s afraid of things, everything. she doesn’t like to talk about it, the fact that she’s scared. because on the outside she’s a princess, and princesses don’t get scared, and on the inside she’s a beast, and beasts are what people are scared of. but there are parts of herself, that she lies to herself about. and one of those parts is her fear. she’s afraid to fail, and afraid to be less. she once said that she would never lie to herself. but even that was a lie to herself. because this fear? that consumes her and eats at her. makes her afraid to talk some days, or even strive for better? she let that show. because that just doesn’t belong.
↠ emily’s never been a princess inside. she’s a child made of stars and fur. emily roswell, while beautiful and dangerous and the sort of girl that can kill, was never a princess inside, no matter how much she wanted to be. she was the sort of girl with a book in hand and a pencil in the other. some may call her a nerd for her love in all things sci-fi and everything to do with the stars. for her utter fascination with book and learning and knowledge. but she’s never called herself that. although she may love books and movies and star wars, that’s not anyone's business in her mind. she can love those things, and those things can be hers, and no one else. she doesn’t speak of this love because she believes that if she were to, she’d lose almost all honorability within pax aurea. so mouth shut and heads up.
↠ one time, a long time ago. emily was in a fight. it was the only fight she ever properly fought in. her head beating and blood her legs. 16 new york city at a party. you can guess what happend. emily roswell. beautiful and godlike. for one night was ruined. it was a night time thing. the party had beautiful everything's, and loud music downstairs. and no one could hear her. emily fought, her fists hit, they hit hard. her head spun and she yelled. she’d always been a fighter. and she lost. three hours later she picked herself up off the bed with sheets covered in things she didn’t want to think about. she vomited in the toilet out of disgust with herself. and went to work cleaning herself up. she never told anyone. she just wiped off and reapplied her makeup. she grabbed her clothes and cleaned out the stains and made an excuse about a friend spilling champagne on her and told it to harper when she made it to her house. she picked clothing off of harper and laughed and smiled. and her walls went up a little bit higher.
↠ emily used to fantasize about her mother as a child. wondering what the woman would be like. would she be a queen? a princess? something in between? she’d always hoped for royalty. that she could save her and her dads from poverty. it was the wish of a child. and when emily first met her mom, first discovered that they were mother and child, she was pleased. more than pleased. she was elated. emily was happier than happy at first thought. her mother was like her. never satisfied. and then the aftermath came. she didn’t want a mother like her. she wanted a mother better than her. someone to be better than her, to be kinder and everything she couldn’t ever be. and instead she’d ended up with a monster like her. after that emily was a lot less pleased. but she said she would never tell anyone about her initial happiness over the woman.
her laughter’s like honey as she twirls a strand of her stick straight hair between her fingertips, and her smile stretches across her lips. “between the two? and if i’m being a liar today, i would choose happiness. i like to think i would choose the healthier option after all. no one likes think that they would hurt themselves.” she continues to offer that saccharine sweet smile. it’s almost not a smile though. her teeth are a little bit too clenched and she’s just a little bit too bright with it. “but i think we fool ourselves into thinking that we would choose to be happy with ourselves and the world.” she laughs. god only knows how long she’s tried for the same for so long. how she’s tried to be happy, tried to be content with that happiness, tried not to lust after the spotlight which she loved. but that sort of satisfaction wasn’t for her of all people. “i think everyone tries to put their happiness before everything else. it’s what we’re told to do from the moment we’re born.” she gives another honey coloured laugh, and then drops her hair between her fingers, just like she drops the pretty coloured smile. changing to an expression that showed nothing on her face. the smile change into one that’s more impassive, more sneaky, and she leans forward on the desk, white and golden fingers splayed out.
“but let’s be real here. when has anyone ever wished to just be happy. at the end of the day we look in the mirror, no matter how happy we are, and crave for more.” at this point she’s not smiling, but simply just speaking. the words are coming quick now. she’s racing after thoughts and letting them spill out in whatever way she wishes. “we want to be more, to be better. to be gods. good things come out of ambition and a lust for glory. i don’t prize a smile in the mornings and waking up alongside whomever i’ve decided to tie myself to. happiness only lasts as long as we’re alive. but glory will last forever. glory, is like godhood, you will never die as long as they remember your name. and the only way to get them to remember it is to be glorious.” she laughs. before leaning back in her chair again. “i like to think that i would prize my happiness over being remembered after i die… but that’s a stupid foolish dream. and i would have to be stupid foolish girl to believe i do. i would be lying to more than you. i would being lying to myself. so, yes. i prize glory more than i prize happiness. but i fought for my position. i scraped my knees and bled and begged like a dog. i ruined a couple lives even. i live to be more than what i am. and i may seem vicious for what i’ve done, but at the end of the day i’m no different than you or the mailman or anyone else. anyone, if given the chance, would take glory over happiness. i’m just more honest about it.”
how far would you go to protect your friends or those you loved?
“too far possibly.” she muses. the edges of her lips quirk up and she laughs a little, rolling her head around as if trying to stretch her neck. it’s the best she can manage to win herself time to think of a way out this question. “but wouldn’t we all? they’re our family, our loved ones. if you aren’t willing to die for them, then do you really love them? of course i’d die for the people i love, i’d die for my friends. they’d have to be special people of course. but isn’t that implied? i may have many many friends, but i’m not going to go die for some random child in college who isn’t even apart of pax aurea. Those who i take classes with, laughing and dancing all the time because they have the money too? I don’t owe them a damn thing, and i wouldn’t give them a thing.” She laughs again and sits up straight, adjusting the flowing legs of her pants and folding her hands over one another, then placing themon the table in front of the two of them. She gives the interviewer a smile, it’s soft and pretty and the sort that she gives to those who she hates the most. “But for pax aurea? I’d be damned if i didn’t fight for them. I fought to be their leader, i fought to become a queen and to make sure that they were mine. And i would be damned if i did nothing for them. I could burn down this world and it wouldn’t be enough. Fuck, i would commit a genocide.” She brushes a wild hair to the side and offers up a wild look in a her eyes with a click of her tongue and a bitter smile. “For my dad? I would do anything, if he asked it, i would do it. Even if he didn’t? I would do it. It matters to me, keeping those i love safe. They matter to me. If i refused to do anything for those i truly care of? Who would i be. You should be willing to do anything for those who love, anything at all. If you aren’t, then you should doubt if they really do matter to you. Do you really love them. In my opinion i don’t think you can love, really truly love a person unless you’re willing to give them the world, and then give them your world.”
which mythological god do you identify with?
laughter bubbles up like champagne, and she’s almost kneeling over in laughter, a hand to her chest covered in a sleek white shirt. her laughter is like a bubbling contagion, and her red mouth is twisted up into a smile. “oh christ. do i now have to take one of those awful quizzes?” she grins, it’s almost real this time too. “i never was a fan of those.” her hand lowers, and her head tilts a little in thought as she runs her teeth on the undersides of her mouth. she has a goddess in mind. of course she does. but her thought isn’t her trying to think of one, it’s her trying to decide if she should tell or not. she stops like a thought strikes her, and her lips are twisting into another smile as she begins to talk somewhat inconsequentially. “but i do like the star wars buzzfeed quizzes. especially that one about judging how hot the different actors were?” she’d thought adam driver was rather attractive to be honest. “i kept waiting for the ladies to show up. Imagine my disappointment when none did.” a sigh and a hand full of painted nails to her chest. “practically wanted to cry. i almost did cry in the last star wars movie by the way.” her head shakes, and her eyes turn sad. “oh… it was… just everything. I mean… carrie fishers death hit me so hard.” her words are now coloured blue in truth. once upon a time she’d been a little girl with two side buns shaped in the same formation as of a space princesses. a little girl who could rule the galaxy. she’d always wanted to be her. both of them to be honest. the woman who had the world in one hand and a cigarette in the other, and the princess who saved the galaxy. “i’ll miss her.” she muses, closing her eyes for a second, before popping them open and saying, “but back to goddesses. there are plenty i could name. i could call me an aphrodite for my flirtatious manners and ways.i could also say persephone because i seem to love the feeling of death and destruction and rebirth… i might even say isis because of her ambition. freya for her clever beauty and ability to wage war. maybe eriss because i’m spiteful. maybe hera even. she’s dangerously close to the sort of person i am… but i’ll go with the morrigan. i haven’t a need to be angry over some silly man. and i haven’t a need to be trapped to being a singular person stuck in a thousand year cycle of spite for a man i could kill.”
are you more optimistic or pessimistic?
“once more i think this is like asking me to choose happiness or glory.” she begins, her eyes roll in reply, and she smiles.. “i want to believe that i am an optimistic person, just like i want to believe that i would want happiness.” she starts, before laughing a little. “but honestly, do i look like one to you? Do i look like someone who would be so childish as to believe that things would always go right?” she shrugs. wishing for something to drink. this was getting boring to be honest. or at least in her opinion it was boring. “i’m more pessimistic than anything else. But pessimism is realism. I’m not simply sitting there hoping for a falsity that will never arrive.” a wave of a hand and now the smile’s gone. “it’s a habit built into me. if you assume the worst for every scenario then you’re always either right, or pleasantly surprised. and i like being pleasantly surprised. and i very very much like being right. optimissm is a tool for children, fools, and the religious. I’m none of those. The universe is random, there’s npothing looking out for us. And it just so happens that the good things rarely are what do occur. Pessism is the natural response to a world that’s neither for or against us.”
which of the seven deadly sins appeals to you most?
“asking me to pick a sin like some judeo-christian child.” she raises and eyebrow and smirks. “i thought we were beyond this simple worldview presented by religons that should be dead by now.” she sighs and replies. “anyways, what do you mean appeals to me? that suggests that i’m tugged towards these acts, acts of gluttony and pride and vainity. that susggests the devil might exist, that he might be tempting me one way or another. but that, once more, is silly. religon is an organised way of people banding together looking for more in the world because they’re unsatisfied with their very own lives. saying that one might appeal to me more than the others says that people are naturally faulty, and that these things are necessarily bad. but there are plenty of cultures out there which exalt these qualities and have yet to fall. for one, america is quite gluttonous. and i donm’t mean in the way of food. that’s a topic for another time. no. i mean in the way of money, greed, want. america is a capitalist society in which we exalt the so called ‘american dream’ which is just fancy words for being greedy and wanting enough that you will chase after what you want and do what’s required of you to get it. and yet, while here in america, it’s a fine fine things to have. you’re living up to what’s expected to you while here, and america, for all it’s faults, doesn’t fall. we may need to change things, but that greed? that greed is what allows people to rise to the top. so this idea of sin and appealing to me, is silly. it’s outdated. it simply doesn’t belong.”
do you think that people are basically good or basically evil?
“that suggests that i believe that people have an inclination one way or another and that i believe in the binary ideals of good and evil.” she scoffs and rolls her eyes. hadn’t they just heard her not seconds before. “one person’s good is another man evil. a good example of this is dexter. he’s a serial killer. automatically bad, but he only kills other serial killers who aren’t caught. now is that bad? your perception changes. now let’s look at someone like… oh… i don’t know… harvey weinstein.” she yawns and mocks, waving a hand around in thought “as a democrat myself, i liked him when he raised money for obama and clinton. the man pushed for universal health care, spoke out against a lack of gun control, spoke for aids. and all of this is good, it is almost undeniably good. but he sexually assaulted women. now you can’t say he’s good. but if you go and say he’s evil you’re forgetting all the good he’s done. granted, i still think he’s still a shit piece of humanity. but that’s how it works. we aren’t good or bad or inbetween. no one is. that’s not how the world works. that’s not how it’s ever going to work, and that’s not how it was made to work. you asking me if i believe if people are good or bad is like saying the world is black and white. and it’s not. cruelty comes from kindness and kindness from cruelty, we have no explanation for it, we just know that in the worst conditions people can beautiful and forgiving, and in the best we still have people like harvey weinstein and trump. and we have no explanation for this. for why people behave like this. if people were innately good then in good times we wouldn’t have people killing others, and if they were innately evil then people who were starving wouldn’t give food to other. people aren’t good or bad, at the end of the day they just are. they do some good, they do some bad, and they make their bed, and we should look at them like that. people who do things, some aborrant and some not, but never as a binary. good and bad always have circumstances surrounding them. and it’s silly to act as if they don’t. good and evil. black and white. it’s all false. none of it’s real. it’s just shades of grey.”
do you believe in self sacrifice for the greater good?
yes. i’m known to be quite machiavellian in that way. i believe that sometimes you have to give yourself up, totally and completely for a cause. for the betterment of the human race. i think that we can’t achieve a total good, the best good, without death. you’ll notice that every peace treaty that comes, comes after a large loss of life. now, i would say that it’s stupid that we fight for peace, it’s a paradoxical statement, and i know all about those, but we’re human. we’ve always fought for peace. according the human race, peace can only be achieved when people are homogenous. so peace will always be fought for. we’ve been doing it for millions of years. animals do it even. but back to sacrifice, i don’t think peace can happen unless death happens. and for all my love of drama and winning and everything in between, i do believe in peace. i don’t enjoy fighting, i don’t enjoy war. i don’t enjoy any of that. and while the human race is bad and awful and all of that. i would give myself up for the greater good. whether that be peace or something else. it would have to be a cause i believe in of course. but i would give myself up gladly for a greater good that i believe in. to give yourself up for something more than you, is great way to go. as much as i lust to be a god, i do realise that there are somethings, some causes, greater than myself, and i could give myself up for them, hand my soul and life over to it. and tying that back to the peace treaties, the men on the field who die? they know what they’re dying for. they’re dying for peace, where they think that’s a heterogenous or homogenous culture. they’re dying for whatever they think peace is. each and every single one of them. they know that peace is the greater good, and they are dying for their version of it. they themselves commit self sacrifice for the greater good. and for something as beautiful, as lovely as peace. i would too.
how honest are you about your thoughts or feelings?
“with myself? i’m painfully honest. i don’t believe in lying to myself. if i lie to myself what am i? i feel that if i lie to myself i’m a blind fool who cannot accept reality for what it is and for what i am. i’d be a child stuck in her fantasy world. the best way to describe it is that it’s like a singularity. you’re always headed towards the bottom, always about to rip the universe a new one, except you can’t, and you never know when. it’s an infinite hole. i don’t like to, and i don’t believe in, lying to myself because if i’m lying to myself god knows how far i’ve fallen? i’m heading towards an infinite bottom, but i can’t ever get out because this is a black hole. it’s the worst sort of threat to one's identity. gobbles it right up. and i, personally, very much like my identity. it’s a nice one too. as for other people? i lie to the plenty. people are…. people. they say you should always tell the truth to other people because then they can help you out of whatever hell you’re in. but i call bullshit. everyone is in their very own hell. they can’t me get out of mine because they can’t get out of their own hell to come over to my hell to help me out. lying, more than that, is useful. information, knowledge, is a very precious thing to hold in your hands, and if i give people my truths? they have apart of my identity. now, maybe it’s just me? but i don’t enjoy whoring myself out by selling some of who i am just to make somebody feel more comfortable around me. if they feel uncomfortable? well, they should. i’m not looking to be buddy-buddies with some vapid first year who thinks that if only i told them the truth they could fix me. i’m not some doll for anyone to pick up and fix. i’m myself. strong and true until the very end. and if someone thinks that me telling the true will alleviate my invisible guilt, or perhaps make me feel safer, then they’re wrong. once upon i told the truth, and it didn’t make me feel safer. the truth can set you free, but there’s a sort of comfort and freedom in being able to sneak around in the shadows.”
are you a listener or a talker?
“Both. Neither. I may be talking quite a lot right now, but normally i’m quiet. i think…. talking too much is a waste of words. it’s like the boy cried wolf, talk too much and people begin to block you out because you never stop. and people should always be listening when i’m talking. or at least that’s the plan. if people listen, then they hear, and then they know. i like it when people know who i am, what i like… all of the inbetween.” a snakish smile skirts across her lips. “but i do enjoy gossip with thomas or freddy, perhaps even imogen, on a day to day business. talking’s a past time in a lot of ways. i also just don’t enjoy talking, it’s… obnoxious almost ?? i’m not so narcissistic that i enjoy the sound of my own voice.” she says, before giving another bright and colourful laugh. “but in terms of listening, i am always listening. if you never listen you never learn. and when you learn you gain knowledge and knowledge is a very powerful commodity. but i try not to act like i’m listening. listening says i have respect for you, and i have respect for very few people at this school. so both and neither.”
↠ of course she knew of the gravemakers and pax aura. well…. perhaps not of course. but whispers of secret organizations on campus are much too juicy for her to avoid. so she works to learn everything and anything about the places on campus who she’s not supposed to know anything about. she can’t learn everything. but she grasps, gleam and fights for the glimmers of things that she can use to learn about them. knowledge, after all, is power. she learnt that at the hands of willow parker. and emily wants all the power.
↠ emily is a self made girl at the end of the day. she knows that no matter what she does, no matter how hard she tries. pushing to get tapped? it cannot happen unless they make the decision. but emily’s not a passive child. she sits in the corners of the libraries, and at the brightest table in the cafeteria. she listens for what she can, and makes friends with everyone. a smiling god in the presence of mere mortals. it’s hard to not see a girl like her. and she's made sure of it. one issue stands throughout all of this. the one piece of information that emily can’t seem to ever get her hands on. who leads the gravemakers and pax aurea? and perhaps, just perhaps…. that’s why it takes so long for her to be tapped.
↠ in the end she finds one them. the bottom of a library, something she’s only ever heard whispers about. the grandiose. the beautiful. the perfect. pax aurea. they are gods among mortals. they are beasts, beautiful and kind. and even to emily, it’s almost too much. but here and now and there is where she falls in love. she knows that, no matter what, this glittering world, she has to be apart of it. it’s her future, her fate, her destiny. the one she chose as a child. her blood may be dirt, but she knows that this, right here and now, will be how it becomes ichor. she’s found down there, and pushed out of the room. a tall boy with the same name as her dead dad. anger and glares and cruel mocking words. but the next day she’s been tapped.
↠ in the end though, she’s tapped by two people. two kings high and mighty. and for a moment she’s torn. the gravemakers and their glory seeking ways… they call to her. yes. she’s a self made girl with blood made of dirt. and pax aurea is full of those who born with ichor. she knows why she’s been tapped. to pax auera they see her illusion. golden glorious perfect. they see her lies and what she’s been trying to be her entire life. and the gravemakers. they just see… her. a liar. a beast. and the devil in heels. they see for what she is and the sort of things she’s done and will do to protect her walls. at the end of the day that’s what makes her choice for her. emily is a liar. and the worst sort. she wishes she could lie to herself. the gravemakers will ask her to let go of her beautiful pretend and love the dark. and emily will be damned before she does that.
↠ so she joins pax aurea and holds her head up high. even as they try to get her to bow. there are so many times where she almost gets thrown out. for her petulance. her rebellion. her refusal to bow to someone lower than her. michael recognises her for that. and then pushes her down. they push her down until she breaks again and again. and then she’s up. they’re extending her hand to her. and she knows. that one day, somehow. this will all be hers. that one day she’ll be queen.
↠ she is theirs. and they are hers. and this is how things work. it’s how they’ve always worked. she will be one of them, a pax auera, until the day she dies. glittering golden perfection. placed in a pedestal. a beautiful monster and the best and the worst of them. so fuck god. because she can tell, she’s actually going to be one.
↠ emily is born unwanted and not named emily. instead she’s born as isabella parker, a beautiful thing. born to a woman who never wanted children. a prideful woman who, like her, will push people out of the way to climb her way up in the world. if traits like ambition could be passed down, then they’re certainly in her blood. she’s first found in a beautiful pink blanket, placed on a carton by a woman who’s long since left. her mother. the original, the extravagant woman she is, never planned for children, and will continue to rise in her world. but children aren’t meant in her world. so she’s left on the corner of a world that becomes her skin, and becomes a thing she hates.
↠ emily’s second important event in her life is when she’s found. not in the biblical sense or anything, but literally found. two men find her on the corner of a street. their names are michael and david, and neither of them are religious, despite having religous names, just like her. this memory is one of the many she has no clue of. but it’s one that defines her. that day on the street an infant of two weeks old doesn’t die, isn’t put in foster care, and isn’t adopted by some matilda like family. instead she’s taken into a home. beautiful and perfect and loving. and yet… she’s not. but that’s a story for another time.
↠ the best years of emily’s lives are the ones where she is still young and blind. this is before she realises that the world is made of lies. before she begins to learn how to weave her own. the first family that roswell ever knows lives in an apartment. two dad. and her. she’s a pretty little girl. built out of fairy dust and the same stuff as queen. it’s here she learns how to be a daughter, a princess and a liar all at once. the first games are played by her, the first hints of her manipulation. the first games are games of pretend however. ones filled with pink costumes, pink childrens makeup, and everything else. her favourite game back then isn’t one of lies and manipulation, but one where a princess becomes the general and saves everyone. all while looking perfect. costumes, not clothes, clutter her bedroom floor. she is a child here. the earliest years of her life are the only years where she really is a child. they shape the world where she grows.
↠ however, her world, for all it’s beautifulness, all it’s prettiness, is a dark one. poverty nips at their tails, and eventually swallows them whole. and there’s crying and tears, and none of it is she allowed to be privy to. but even at 6 she’s a clever girl. smart enough to know that Money is important. that people need it. and that they never have enough of it. poverty is what nips at her stomach, leaving her hungry, and lunch becoming her favourite meal. her childhood is spent in want and hunger and hurt. and although some days it can be ignored, it’s never really ignored after the first taste she has of it. it hurts and robs and steals, and everything afterwards if coloured by it. she’s happy, but poverty is what makes her hunger. and the hunger, once it come, never seems to disappear. the hunger changes from a hunger for food to a hunger for other to be better. but it never leaves her. not once.
↠ her first memory's built not of hurt, but of happiness and cooing noises from two men who care too much about a child that’s not even theirs. she’s built of pretty dresses, and a backpack that’s a lovely pink. everything is given her to the best they can. money is always tight, but they find happiness in making her happy. she’s a selfish child here, but she’s also a selfless. she knows money is tight, and it’s here she learns to give up things in order to gain things. gain smiles from her dads and sighs of relief during the night where she’s wrapped up tight. her childhood continues on though. full of beautiful colours and happiness. she isn’t satisfied. she’ll never be satisfied. but perhaps she can live with that. until… of course… she can’t.
↠ this world, with two men that have named to do with worshipping a god… it’s the first time, the first world, where she realises she can be a god. it’s here, at the temple called home, that she’s first worshipped. words of love and acclimation. cries of how adorable she is and how darling she looks. she’s their beautiful, perfect little princess, and it’s an illusion that she loves. except back then, of course, it’s not an illusion. it’s perhaps the most truthful thing she ever knows as a child. love. true pure and perfect. how to live happy, and how to live well, even when you have nothing. these two men. her dads. are the perfect things in her life, and for so long they are. always there. always wanting to be there. piano lessons, and model rockets, pink clothes even when her hands are stained with grease. they’re her cheerleaders, and her role models, and her calvary all at once. they raise her up from nothing, teach her how to make something out of nothing. and from there, that’s where she learns to become better, to become more. more than they could imagine and more than anyone else could as well. because once upon a time, there were two men deeply in love, and they found a princess on a street corner, and the world, for a couple of years, lived happily ever after.
↠ now back to poverty. she grows up in poverty. in the parts of the world where people look at where you live and scoff in disdain at you. where they pity you. and give you money because of where you live. dirt under her fingers and blood. the first time she learns that she’s not actually a princess, not actually iridescent like she’s always aimed to be. she comes home with the truth in her eyes and her heart in her hands and her blood on her knees. and everything about it hurts. there’s mollycoddling and crying. because this truth is the most hurtful one out of all perhaps. for her, childhood doesn’t end at 10 when she learns santa isn’t real and she just gives this knowing look to her dads saying ‘i know.’ no. instead it ends at 7. almost 8. when a boy looks at her. and pushes her to the ground. telling her that she isn’t a princess. she isn’t special. she’s just made out of dirt like the rest of them. and in her heart it rings true. her knees bleed from the asphalt, and dirt is stuck onto the pink. her first piece of true advice comes here and now. ‘beautiful girls don’t cry.’ it’s a consolation of sorts. she doesn’t need to be pretty like a princess. she can be beautiful like a goddess. they teach her how to fight here and now. they tell her a story of a woman made from dirt. they call her diana, they tell her of what diana does, how, despite the fact that she is dirt made flesh she enamours the world. and just because you’re made of dirt doesn’t mean that you can’t one day be made of gold. she takes that literally as a child. thinking the dirt is her blood, and wondering how you can make that into gold. this day. this period of five hours, full of storytelling, crying, the colour pink, and blood, are what shape her life for years afterwards.
↠ emily, from here on out, begins to grow to love her middle name. elizabeth is the name of a ruler. not some biblical fantasy. she enters middle school, holding onto the colour pink. until it becomes too much like a little girl’s colour, after a bought of yelling and teasing, she let’s it go for black and white with hints of colour. she’s bright and colourful and explosive. and the princess stories, the ones she was told to discontinue? well she just clings to them all the harder. she goes from a tomboy who’s secretly a princess to a princess who’s secretly a tomboy. the outside picks meld into her skin, and her hair grows long and she grows beautiful. it’s like extremis from iron man. her suit is this facade, and it’s built right into her skin. here is where she becomes a legend. in middle school, stuck between childishness and the beginning reaches of adulthood. it’s a peculiar time for her. but it’s also a good time for her. here is where she hones the lies that she melts into too easily. a love of clothes and fashion and beauty, a girl with beautiful eyes and beautiful hair and laughs like champagne. it’s the best of lies. this beautiful kind girl. and it’s the best of times.
↠ inbetween the games of pretend that become her, she’s in love with something. not someone. she doesn’t know if love will come easily to her with her soul that begs for more. like hamilton, she doesn’t think she’ll ever be satisfied. but she’s in love. science is something that finds her, from a comment by her dads that dirt can become gold. she wants to make her dirt blood into gold, and as a child who thinks that dirt is actually her blood, she doesn’t know any better. so she plunges in, headfirst, thinking there must be something out there that can help her to learn to change her blood into beauty. by 6th grade she discovers, no matter how you reorder carbon you can’t make gold from dirt. although, you can make a diamond from a human… but that includes a body and dying, and she’s got too much to do before that. so she turns her face away from chemistry and begins to learn the stars. what no one knows about the pretty girl in their grade, is that she’s still hungry. and as a middle school she doesn’t know how to sate her thirst for whatever it is she’s still looking for. so she looks through everything and anything, learning what she can, doing what she can, to try to get rid of the want. back then it feels like it’s evil. if she doesn’t do something it just might consume her. so she learns, and somehow, to some small bit, it works. her want for something is sated a bit by learning, and she begins to fall in love with the stars. it’s not enough later on. but her love for knowledge, and for the stars are what characterise her for years. beautiful, brilliant, and one day she’ll take those stars and become one of them.
↠ she chooses to try to fly for the first time in eighth grade. it’s a begging smile on her face, the prettiest kindest one she can muster. a love to know more, and a love to become golden. she pushes and smiles and doesn’t even need to lie. before they allow her to apply to a private school. of course she gets accepted. a child like her. aiming to be perfect, has already done everything she can to be so. and people look at her and see nothing but her constructed and beautiful lies. there are still holes back then, back now. but no one needs to know. her dads believe her to be that same daughter they consoled once upon a time, and so does everyone else. it’s hard to believe her as anything otherwise.
↠ the day she gets her acceptance letter she sits on a fire escape with a girl who one day she will barely remember, but right now they’re best friends. and like everyone the girl thinks she’s the perfect little darling of her dads. it’s a funny game to play as they sit there. the other trying to convince emily to have fun. emily saying she does. that day, is the last time they see each other. because it’s that day, for the first time in a very long time that emily tells the truth. she drops her smiles and lays on the grated fire escape. and she scares the other. with her talks of dreams and lies and all the more. emily learns that lies are the only way to be truthful. the only way to have friends. things aren’t the same after that. and the illusion she thought that one day she might not need anymore, but so wished to be, becomes her. and she becomes it. the acceptance letter she gets is almost symbolic of that if they’re honest. she lets go of her middle school, telling them the truth, and learns that the truth hurts, and never helps. that the truth fails. not an hour later she gets the acceptance letter. it’s like a confirmation to emily. this school, the possibility of this school, is part of her carefully constructed outerself. and this letter is a confirmation of that. that her lies will always be better than her truths. they will never fail her. so she accepts. and so begins more lies.
↠ but before she totally gives up on the truth there’s one point in her life where she doesn’t wear any makeup, where she is herself. a period of three weeks where she tries to be herself. she lives throughout the city for a summer that lasts three weeks. she wears jeans and t-shirts, and, for once, is herself. she curses like a sailor, and spends all her time at museums, trying to memorise whatever she can. those three weeks are the worst of her life. it’s three weeks where people look at her like dirt. like she’s not what she’s supposed to be. she makes no friends that summer, and after her acceptance to high school her very own want nothing to do with her. after that summer she returns to her home and places on her makeup once more, and goes back to her princess lies and spends the summer trying to learn how to blend in at a school full of children she was never apart of to begin with.
↠ the day she starts school she’s wrapped up in a beautiful blue uniform. the photos of her say just as much. her long hair and perfect smiles. pink lipstick smeared across her lips. this is before the era of red lipstick. before the lies become more deadly. the first day of school everyone seems to know each other, and yet she knows no one. so she walks through the school, knowing less than she thought she’d known. before coming upon one girl in the bathroom. one lovely girl, face red. and emily begins her lessons on how to play with people right then and there. it’s a wet towel and a beautiful smile that doesn’t show what sort of cold maliciousness that one day will grow to be her. a short laugh, a warm smile, and mascara out of her backpack to lend to the other girl. helping her to recreate her face. she gains a friend that day. a girl with the name louise harper. and to some extent she loves this. loves helping this girl. and to some extent she hates it, hates helping a girl who cries so easily. so pathetically. but those feelings are pushed aside as harper tugs her along and into a world of beauty. they are outliers on a world of perfection. but emily is good at change, and she shifts the orbit of the galaxy that was made before she even knew about this world, to make her the sun. she gains friends, and keeps harper. it wouldn’t do well to betray the other girl, the girl that was her first in, into this world. emily is loyal. she likes to believe that. before they know it though, they’re the stars in the center of the solar system, and everyone orbits them. it’s a beautiful ploy, and emily knows that it will serve her well from there on out.
↠ but she hates them. she knows for the first time that she hates so many of these people on the day she’s in the restroom, behind a door to a stall and hears the whispers about herself. they still call her blood dirt. like that little boy so long ago. they gossip, claim how she will never become more. how this is a waste. and her blood curdles. they gossip about how she has no right being here. and everything about her screams and boils. she’s a vengeful witch on a hunt for blood now. she’ll destroy them if she has to. in her mind, they are ones that don’t belong. complacent and silly and stupid. they claim that their right to this world is one forged of blood. she claims her right to this world is one made of herself. one made of actual ability. she’s not a classist. she could never be. her head spins and she plans to destroy them. pulling herself out of that stall and re-applying her makeup. making herself a little bit better, a little bit more. a little bit kinder. and yet…. she’s a little bit crueler.
↠ the day one of her dads dies is an ordinary day. it’s a school day. it’s a beautiful day. and he is hit by a car. no one knows by who. but she’s pulled out of school for a week afterwards. left to cry in her room, cry with david because micheal is dead. micheal. micheal who taught her star wars is always good and how to love the stars. who encouraged her love of science and all things unknown and weird and unnatural. micheal. who hugged better than anyone else she knew. it’s a hurt that hits her hard. because in her perfect, and yet completely broken life, tragedy is not commonplace. in poverty you have time for a pet. no space for a sibling. and no room for a tragedy. so when this one forces her way into her life she sits there and cries. cries tears of blood and dirt. she never sees his body. it’s a blessing in a very small way. but her heart breaks. and life becomes a little bit harder. paying for school, which they’ve never had free, hurts them more now than ever. and being able to stay becomes a threat that hangs over her head like a guillotine. and in between perfect grades, asb president, there are jobs at a rice pudding place near her house in the village. life is hard, it’s almost too hard then. and yet, somehow, with the loss of her dad, and the hardship of money hanging over them, they continue. she continues. and they try to build themselves up again. the best they can.
↠ after that. after the death and the cruel words. she reinforces the illusion that day. she makes them fall in love with her so much that she knows that they might not ever say something like that ever again. she becomes their princess. beautiful and graceful and beloved by all. she makes it so that she knows that they would give her anything and everything. she hides herself behind walls higher and better and thicker than anything anyone could ever make. makes them hard enough to carry her through the death of micheal. her dad. she makes them perfect enough that no one knows that any day now she might be put in public school. she makes it a beautiful perfect thing to hide behind. and once more, they begin to fall in love with her, harder than before. there are words of condolences. dishes made by maids, and hugs and a bag from coach ( oh how she hates that bag too ). and soon it’s like it never happened at her school. she tries her best to recolour her world at school out of tragedy. and recolor herself pink, and rosy and perfect. and it works. she doesn’t feel like a princess. but to everyone else? she might as well be.
↠ eventually there does come the day where she tears down those girls. casting them to the side and making them social pariah. but that’s a story that doesn’t ever need to be told. it’s insignificant in her life. but it does teach her how to tear people down like the beast she is. in the end people learn here that emily should not be touched. and that wherever she goes she leaves a trail of bodies in her wake. broken, sad people, who were once kings and queens.
↠ the first time she hears of her mother it is in the bright daytime. she didn’t have any love for the woman who had reportedly left her on the street, on a corner. They meet because one woman looks at her, a teacher in her high palace of a school where everything about her is either a loan or a scholarship, and makes a throwaway comment about her likeness to willow parker. It’s a glance from a parent who sees her one day. pulled back hair and pretty eyes, a smile to the mother of the harper. The woman who sees her thinks she looks too much like another woman she knows, she thinks nothing of it at all to be honest. except. there’s always that hint that this child looks a bit too much like willow parker for her very own good.
↠ Emily meets her mother peculiarly. it’s at a party. roswell is there for her friend, and another woman is there for the champagne and business deals. harper’s tugging her along. a want to run away from this world of champagne. and it’s the sight of harpers only slightly tipsy mother, who pulls her into a conversation, handing her a flute of something she’s too young to drink, and points out the beautiful woman who stands across from her and looks too much like her. a woman who extends her hand in polite surprise and introduces herself as willow parker. her older doppelganger. and emily extends her own, saying emily roswell. and for some odd reason a friendship is made. instead of ignoring each other, like normal people might, the two of them strike up a friendship. the 16 year old and the 36 year old. perhaps it’s because they’re too much alike, but in the end the answer about why people become friends are never clear. but emily’s first interactions with a mother she never wanted, are over cups of tea at 10 in the morning in saturdays, and plans of taking over the world. it’s only when the woman deposts a dna test ( stolen from the lips of emily’s cup ). that emily stops meeting with the woman. she doesn’t want to know her. and she doesn’t want to have to do anything with her. but it’s hard to avoid the woman when she fights her way into emily’s life. her dad and her mom, not in the conventional manner of course, sitting together having tea at a table. emily tries everything to scorn the woman. she tries forging her grades so they’re worse. laughing off the earlier words. everything. but none it works. the woman is too much like her to not see who she is for what she is. emily thinks she might now know what it’s like to hate your parent.
↠ emily applies to college in ohio. the middle of nowhere. of course she applies to other places, but something about roswell catches her eye. their astrophysics program, is beautiful, and they have an open sky for seeing the stars. and the halls. when she visits them the halls, oh how they beckon and call to her. the psuedo-mother accompanies her on these trips. saying she’ll pay for everything, and emily, once more, doesn’t know how to feel about this. this woman. this more than a woman, makes her feel so small, and she hates it. hates that trapped, cold, small feeling that she’s so used to giving others, and yet willow parker gives her. this campus though, she knows that if she went here she could be set free. there’re hints of mystery, and secrets. and they tug at something inside emily so hard, that she doesn’t think she’s ever wanted anything more than to unwrap the package which is lovell. it’s almost an obsession on her part. this world with it’s beautiful colours and ivy walls and stories of death in the background. she knows not five minutes in that she wants nothing more than to be their princess. to be their queen. to be their GOD.
↠ so emily, being emily, applies. she pulls out all her lies, all her beautiful smiles and perfect grades, her happy looks on her face. and makes them hers. and just like high school. emily gets accepted. so she packs up her books and her heart, and her room, and moves herself to lovell. her dad cries and they hug. it’s warm. she promises to visit. and she and willow shake hands. emily doesn’t promise to visit willow. But she knows that willow will visit her. she’s just that sort of person. and so begins emily’s life once more. brand new, and very different that the life she knew before. because, for once, emily’s illusions, and lies, and walls are impenetrable. and she plans to keep it that way.
↠ so emily comes into the school and learns the game. this is the era of red lipstick after all. red lipstick and stilettos. a sweeping presence down the halls and the flash of white, black and red, and all know that it’s emily. the queen of the castle, impossible to avoid, impossible to not have heard of. what she majors in no one really knows. how she became the queen? well…. that’s a mystery too. but all that anyone knows is that she’ll tear your throat out if your dare touch the kingdom that she’s fought her way up. if you dare touch her throne, her crown, her beauty. pax aurea is hers. lovell will be to. this world is hers. and god help anyone that disrespects the queen.
BEAUTIFUL girls don’t cry. this is the first piece of advice she’s given. eight years old and her white clothes are tattered and her elbows are covered in dirt and blood. the blood’s her own, the dirts not. but her blood feels like it might as well be dirt. it’s been the worst day of her life. the first time she learns that GRACEFUL, PLAYFUL little girls don’t always get a happily ever after. in fact, they never do. if you want your happily ever after you have to FIGHT for it. this day her hair is wound up into two small buns. space buns. and hot tears fall down her face like how her blood trickles down her elbow. she doesn’t have a mom back then, there are no moms to wipe her tears and to teach her how to be STRONG, how to be a real girl. but her dads can try their best. they wipe her tears, and teach her how to wipe her own. they mend her dress, and teach her how to fix it herself. and they show her how to get back up and punch back. she learns how to fight like no one else can. this is where she learns to be a WARRIOR and how to bow to no one, especially those who do not deserve it.
she continues to grow of course. but unlike the other little girls, she can’t let go of those fairytales from before. just because she can fight, doesn’t mean she wants to. she would like to stay the PRINCESS in the castle. but this world’s not going to let you hold onto your dreams like that. a child can’t cling to the past, they’ve got to look to the future. but she’s always been CLINGY, so instead she finds new ways to stay that princess. as a child, who wants to stay a princess. so sure, she may be sixteen. but why can’t she continue to be a princess? hm? so it’s at sixteen that she learns to fight in a whole new way. instead of playing their games, she’ll just change the game. the games of pretend with a space mom become a MANIPULATED reality she makes for herself. of course she knows they’re LIES, and that she’s not a damsel in distress waiting for any old luke skywalker to come along and pull out a lightsaber. she’s got a blaster after all.
she gets older, and this is how she begins to hear the names they call her behind her back. a VAIN, PETTY girl is what they say. because her face is covered in makeup, and her smiles never seem quite REAL. there are whispers behind her back. ICARUS they call her. flying too close to the sun for her own good. does she really think she’ll ever be more than she is now? NARCISSIST, they tack on, she’s gonna die from her vanity and PRIDE. they claim her belief that she is better than what she is will kill her. that one day, they’ll find her body, broken and bleeding. and she laughs in their faces. she knows she’s no better than then. she’s EGOTISTICAL and all too FAKE. but as heather chandler said… “You want to fuck with the eagles, you have to learn to fly." so every morning she spends her time in front of the vanity, with that red shade of lipstick that’s no longer around. and everyday, she puts herself together like a puzzle. her shoes are one piece and her lipstick is another. everything about her is so carefully PUT-TOGETHER, all to fuck with others minds, and to only allow them the glimpse of who she is. she’s handed out her puzzle pieces onto the ground, to let others run after her and try to assemble who she is from them. all while making sure that what they never realise, is that they’re looking on the wrong side of the puzzle. everything about her is a beautiful, PURPOSEFUL facade. not meant to let you know anything she doesn’t want you to. but to let you think you know everything.
of course with her beautiful lie, comes people who can see through it at first. as time goes it becomes tighter and tighter, but before then, before it’s a facade with holes. not many, and not very big, but enough that a clever person can peak through. they call her a LIAR back then, because half the words that fall out of her lips are lies. of course, they’re not always. not really. they’re just her MACHINATIONS and MANIPULATIONS. and perhaps she’s not all she claims to be back then. standing in the halls of a private school which breaks her dads backs to put her into. but they should know better. she’s not all that she claims to be, sure, but can’t they tell? she’s just claiming her future before the world decides her future for herself. she might be a DECEIVER and a LIAR, a person who twists reality to be however she wants. but there are worse things she could be than a girl who plays with the world like some play with barbies. maybe she’s fake. but in some ways? she’s the most HONEST person in the world. she may make her personalities off of lies but at least she doesn’t lie about her lies. she hates those who pretend that they aren’t lying. then they lie to themselves in the same sort of way they lie to others. in her mind there’s nothing worse. in so many ways she’s a PARADOX, a contradiction unto itself. DISHONEST and yet HONEST, at the very same time. she’s just the girl with the SACCHARINE SWEET SMILE, covered in the colour red.
her lies are their own form of AMBITION though. she wants to be that princess she was as a child, but not the pretend sort, a real sort. the lies have alway served a purpose in her own mind. a way for her to aim for the stars. perhaps, yes she has to twist a couple of arms to get there. break a couple of toes. but it’s worth it in the end…. right? she’ll aim to become to the princess, because one day princesses become QUEENS. in the end though, she knows that she deserves this. her FIXATION and singular focus on being something better. she knows that she deserves better than the lot she’s been given in life. she, in her manner of speaking, is iridescent, a queen in her very own right. in a manner of speaking, she might just be an ADDICT, well… in some ways that are more than just a manner of speaking, her want for power is almost outweigh by her adoration for red wine, and a cigarette on the balcony of her house. a bad habit picked up to ease the nerves of an overly ambitious girl. these two addictions are approached with the continuously commonplace drive that she uses to approach everything in life. after all, those with PASSION will always triumph over those who believe that they can sit back and claim their throne just because of their blood right. they are foolish. a thing she’s not. because it takes a special sort of ignorant fool to presume that there aren’t those who deserve, who will fight for it, more than they ever will. strong ARROGANCE on her part says that she believes that she can fight better than them. but in a way, it’s not just arrogance, it’s truthfulness. children who grow up with nothing are always better FIGHTERS than those who are born with everything. that, to her, is just the truth of how the world works. it’s because of these ADDICTIVE PASSIONS to the golden world that those at pax aurea have, that people call her FANATICAL, like she’s some sort of obsessive fangirl that would beg for even a scrap. they’re right of course. about the obsessive fangirl bit. she’ll do whatever she can to get her foot in the door. she won’t beg though. she’s not pathetic. or at least she prizes her dignity more than that. she likes to call herself ASPIRING however. she’s just aiming for something better. something that glitters and shines in the light. she’s not above HARD WORK, but she’s also not above pushing people out of the way. that’s how things work after all. or at least in her very own mind that’s how they work. she will dirty her hands with whatever the fuck it takes to make it to the top. she’s DETERMINED in the way. the same way she got into this college. the same way she got into to a private high school. the same way she’s done so fucking much. shear determination, and an ability to push people to the right and to the left and out of her goddamned way. in these ways she also calls herself BRAVE, going where she was told she could never go. touching and seeing what she was never supposed to touch and see. in her story, she’s no hero, but she sure as hell, ain’t a villain, she’s something much more complex and something much more beautiful. but she’s ultimately good in her mind. ultimately beautiful and glorious and HOLY like a goddamned fucking god.
her godliness isn’t a christian sort of god though. more hera when you think about it. beautiful, perfection, immortal, and untouchable as fuck. her childhood, beautiful, peculiar, and horrific in some manners, are what sketch the patterns onto her soul that guide her to here and today. there are somethings, no matter how hard parents try to be the best they can, that just can’t be avoided. and her childhood is littered with examples. perhaps though, the BROKEN, tattooed soul, begins before that. perhaps it begins with her mother and abandonment on a street corner which no one sees. at the end of the day, her soul is BLACK and GOLD. the perfect combination of death and divinity that defines her. she’s the sort of broken that doesn’t hurt, that doesn’t leave her crying in the corner, but instead leads to lies that slip out easier than her tongue when she’s frustrated with her math. she’s a TOUGH girl in many unseeable ways, because while she’s been working to look a fragile as glass, no one’s come to realise that she’s as hard as rock. she’s a diamond girl in that manner of speaking. HARD as hell, but looking so fragile you think that touching it might break it. it’s another paradox about her. there are tons if one looks for a little bit too long, a little bit too hard, and tilts their head just the right way. but no one’s noticed yet. in the end, all her machinations lead to a sort of DISTRUSTFUL girl. liars always think other people are always lying after all, and emily is no exception to that. she’s CLOSED OFF and has the highest walls out of anyone you’ve ever met. to some extent it’s because she doesn’t know how to be anything else. after all, just because your world is rose coloured, doesn’t mean your blind, and she certainly isn’t.
in the end, it’s her CALLOUSNESS that prevents her from truly having friends. sure…. she has tons. but she doesn’t know if they’re friends in the way that people mean for them to be. look at her one wrong way, and you might just get a knife in the back. she’s always been that sort of girl after all, harsh words, harsher stares. she rules with an iron first because she fears that no one will listen any other way. she’s a queen without a king. she doesn’t need one anyways. an INDEPENDENT ruler, and there’s only room for one ruler on the throne of the glittering pax auera. other people, while perhaps they make good friend, pets and toys, are needed when it comes to ruling. she can do that herself. she’s never needed someone to do that for her, because she learnt very early on. that if you don’t rule yourself, then someone will take the throne from you. so this is why she rarely relies on others except for her select few. her precious generals in the queen’s army. it’s because of this that she is, in her own mind, UNEMPHATIC, beauty is good, perfection is better, but empathy, to care for another is weak. and you cannot let weakness show when you’re trying to win a war. and to her, life is a war, so here she is, trying to cut her ties, and aiming to be a queen who doesn’t rely on other people and doesn’t feel for other people. of course though, this is a recipe for disaster, but don’t tell her that. she knows that at any moment she might just SELF-DESTRUCT, but fuck that noise. she’ll hold it together until the end.
People like to call her a PETTY BITCH some days, because of her willingness to push and shove and brawl in her court. it’s like the night court from a court of thorns and roses, and she’s like rhysand. they’re all a bunch of lords and ladies who were born with the world in their hands, and she’s a half breed that will murder her way to the top. except there’s a problem with that, of course. at home’s she’s a SOFT child, a SCARED one too. who will give the world to the first beauty to show her kindness. because in this story, her story, you know how we said she’s not the hero but she’s not the villain? that’s because she’s the BEAST. and to so many they thing her the BEAUTY, pretty and perfect and precious. a lovely little doll her to save the day. but she’s never been very good at being belle. or being feyre. or being whoever the BEAUTY is today. in a way she does suppose it’s true. she’s a pretty girl, a pretty thing, who one day will have it all. or so she plans. but that’s never the full story. some days, though, the crowds see her as the VENGEFUL WITCH, the mara or the sorceress. a lady who cursed you all to hell, who would curse you all to hell, because she’s that sort of woman. and while it’s not true, she’s not that cruel, in so many ways she is, she’s pretty and cruel and MEAN AS HELL, and she’s ready to curse you all to save herself. at the end of the day, she thinks she just might be some sort of beauty-beast though. VICIOUS and PERFECT on the outside. a smiling good person, but something there to tell you that she would tear your throat out, and on the inside? someone more dangerous than that. because she won’t tear your throat out. she’ll toss you to the beasts if that’s where she thinks you belong.
there are parts, perhaps, that just might be good. even if most of them are lies. parts of her, some of her, has to be GOOD, and untouched by her BROKENNESS. and perhaps that goodness isn’t inside her, perhaps it’s the facade she puts on like foundation. it’s not her, perhaps it was her a long long time ago, but that was so long ago that she’s forgotten now. but the facade, her facade, is something that says that this is what she strives to be. it’s a dream, one she might not ever be able to reach. but the KIND goddess that she pretends to be, the good girl, and the leader the leads by being the best at being the best person she can, is who she wants to be at the end of the day. she knows she’s a SARCASTIC bitch, but a girl can dream to be better. she wants to be better. she wants to be the one who leads them to victory. to be an aphrodite, not a hera. she wants, so badly, to see the world through the rose coloured glasses she pretends affect her. she wants to be pretty, and king and aspire to bring hope into the world like so many can. but she’s still not a belle, she’s still not a cosette. she’s a fucking natasha rostava. a cheater. a betrayer. a less than perfect perfection that tries top hard to be good. she’s trying to be LOYAL but at any moment she might slip and fall and betray all that she’s been working to her entire life. she knows that failure is a possibility. one she hates. she’ll aim to be loyal until the end of her days after all. she’ll die for these people, or so she tells herself. she won’t be natasha. she can’t be natasha. she may be a FLIRT she may be run over by PASSION trampled by her wants, but she will keep to her people for as long as she lives. she will be as ARROGANT as she wants, be a HEADSTRONG fucker. but she will not be natasha rostava. she will not fall to her whims, because something pretty comes along. unlike natasha, her first love, her first want, and the thing that’s gotten her this far, will lead her the rest of the way. she’s sure of it. she has to be.
but she’s also SCARED. too scared. so scared. she’s just a SCARED girl with a SOFT heart. it beats and gives her a headache, and she only really just wants to sleep. she’s still that little girl playing princess. but now she’s a little girl, playing adult, playing princess, and the lies, the truths, and her head, are beginning to get too tangled up. she’s selfish, but COMPASSIONATE in the way she’d give a little girl like her the world. wrapped up in pink paper and tied up with a golden bow. children deserve the world like that. they deserve it given to them, in her mind, not in a hole in the ground where you have to fall like alice in wonderland to ever reach it. she’s far from HUMBLE, and yet you never hear her boast about the glory that she’s achieved, and one day will achieve. but the humbleness doesn’t come from a place of good will in her case. she likes to laugh about it whenever people call her humble. she’s not humble, she just doesn't want to show her cards. but she’s still good, she believes she can still be good. a veronica sawyer in the making maybe. BRILLIANT and never afraid to be anything less than that. her brilliance, is what will get her through this. it’s what’s gotten her through this, and in some ways created this. an ADVENTUROUS child who always loved the taste of the wind on her lips and the feeling of a new story coming on, and the sensation of imagination taking over her legs until she leaps off a cliff and into the sky. she’s REBELLIOUS in the best and worst of ways, never having liked authority to begin with, so instead she became the authority. a child who figured if she could recode the world, that maybe she could become the princess she wanted to be, and maybe other children like her could too. at the end of the day, though, she’s just confused. she feels like something LESS so that’s, perhaps, that’s why she’s always trying to be MORE.
derived from aemilia. meaning rival. rival. def: compete for superiority with; be or seem to be equal or comparable to.
she is born to fight. to be the best. from the moment she is born she knows she is meant for something more than the dirty alleyway where she’s found. wrapped up in a barely pink blanket. crying for more. more than abandonment. more than the lot that she was given at birth. she doesn’t know what sort of greatness she wants to achieve. how much better will be enough for her. but she knows she must be better.
the one time she looks up the meaning of her name she laughs at the meaning of it. rival? she doesn’t want to be a rival to anyone. that implies that they can beat her. that they’re on a level that’s the same. she knows then what better means then. it means iridescence. it means that she will be a goddess. so much more than them. so much more than anyone else could ever be. she won’t be their rival… she will be their god.
↠ elizabeth
derived from elishaba. def: god is satisfaction
her middle name is one of irony. she doesn’t believe in god. an atheist through and through. because god has no place in her life. god is a fairytale to her, like the makeup she wears. or the stories she’s weaved into her very appearance. god. a made up faith, has no place in her made up world. while she does love a good game of pretend, she certainly wants to know her very own truths. and at the end of the day, what satisfaction is there in a man in the sky? she doesn’t need a god when she is one.
↠ roswell
def: horse spring.
to her, roswell means almost nothing. it’s the name of those who pulled her out of death. but it’s not the name that’ll deliver her to anything greater. people hear the name roswell and they think of a small town and an incident involving aliens. it’s only irony that she majors in astrophysics of course. but a part of her wants to scoff at them and their stupidity. roswell. it’s not the name of two good, but unknown men. it’s not the name of a stupid town with a stupid myth. it’s the name of their future queen.
AGE AND BIRTHDAY. 22; 3 march
PRONOUNS AND GENDER IDENTITY. she/her, cisfemale
YEAR AND COURSE OF STUDY. senior. astrophysics major with a minor in russian literature.
Location: The Domus Aurea
Time: Late night, Post vigil.
Status: Closed ( @emilyroswell )
The Domus felt like home, familiar, just the right amount of extravagant. Sure, it also felt like he’d gone back in time three years, but it still made being in Lovell a tad more tolerable than it might have been if he’d been doomed to whatever sorry excuse for a hotel the town had. He was just thankful that the drinks cabinet was still well stocked – leave it to rich teenagers to know how to party.
He mixes himself a drink, and one for Emily as well. She was as gorgeous as he remembers, and seems to have found her feet in the few years he’s been away. They’d kept in touch, but not overly so. He was mainly troubled by some of the impressions he’d gotten about her leadership. He would just have to see for himself how she was doing, and in the meantime try and enjoy her company as he had used to. She was always one of his favourites, after all.
“Drink up. sweetie.” He says, approaching her and handing her the drink. “I demand not to be allowed to drink alone for even a moment while I’m here.” He dropped himself down on to an armchair, his old favourite, the most comfortable one.
there was something nice about seeing logan again, something comforting in seeing the person that’d put her on her path to this. to pax. she lifted her chin and laughed, accepting her alcohol with a gracious smile on her face.
seeing logan after all these years, there was something refreshing about it. something that put her at better peace with the messy world she was currently trying to get through. and yet there was something there that made her feel more like a child than a person who knew what she was doing. more lie a freshman new to pax and new to a world that she’d never really fit in to until very very recently.
“ how’ve you been ?? ” she asked, giving her head the curious affliction of a tilting question and a half formed smile on her face. emily took a sip of the oddly coloured drink with a laugh. life was wearing down on her bones as she struggled to keep her head above ground, trying to figure out how much love for the rest of pax was too much love, and how much was too little. she knew that in the past years pax had been... coloured with a crayon she’d never had access to, and now when they’d asked her to create the picture, she’d been trying to make her due without the coloured they wanted. with the colour she didn’t want. “ you mentioned a niece last time we talked. i hope you have pictures. ”
— “so, memorial defacement. tres uncool.” words slip out of soft lips, jennifer shakes her head as her heels click against the stone paths of lovell. she’s cold and calm but still
s h a k e n underneath it all. anyone who knew her would be able to tell, warning signs sparking off as she plays with the ends of her blonde hair. she may be a bitch, but even bitches can be shocked by something. “just, ugh. i don’t get any of this.” it had been a nice enough night before everybody had seen the writing, the candlelight had been pretty and it had been nice to hear everybody saying good things about marcus – she hadn’t known him, but she was sorry he was dead. he had been in pax, after all, and they were brothers and sisters until the very end. “its cold. and this sucks now. i want to go home.”
“ we’re staying. “ emily held her chin up, hands in the pocket of the understated jacket which she wore for warmth. “ you walk back to that house and i SWEAR i will never support your bid for president. “ she gave a short tempered look at the blonde girl next to her, watching her fiddle with her hair. she’d never actually cared too much for marcus. she hadn’t seen a reason to really. he’d been just another frat boy in pax, the sort of legacy kid that was valuable as money and resources and not much else. they’d rarely, barely, talked before he’d been killed, and after ?? well, she certainly talk to him after, now could she ?? “ give it a bit more and then you can leave. alright ?? “ she took another glance at jennifer, searching for confirmation that she heard and would obey her word while there, before giving a small smile and asking, “ how was your day ?? “
👀who do you think is the weakest member of pax aurea?
“they’ve all got their issues. thomas is too nice, and that’s going to get him killed. jennifer is too vain, she cares more about her looks than what she’s actually doing, and she’s so awfully arrogant it hurts even me. matias is somewhat uncooth and in love with the colour of blood, and he seems to care more about his honor than his actual goals in life. rachel, once more, a sweetheart, and once more? that’s not going to fly at the end of the day. and imogen? the newest darling on the scene can’t quite figure out what she wants from the world, how to get there, or even how to keep her promises, and if you can’t claim loyalty how can you even claim yourself? she’s going to fall like icarus. i can’t pick just one person. they all need to pull it together and stop expecting me to hold their hands and guide them to the castle before they get themselves barred from even the possibility of success.”
“i like to do math, or watch television, sometimes i drink coffee, it depends on what i need to relax for.”
LOGAN; what is your biggest regret in life?
“i have a lot of regrets in life, asking me my biggest one is silly because i have so many, but one of them would be that i should’ve stayed in contact with harper after high school.”
MARGO HANSON || THE MAGICIANS~『 ❀ 1/100 aesthetics』
“I’m not strong like the rest of you. I’m weak. I’m a delicate flower.”
“Don’t worry, delicate flower,” Janet said. She made her shot without dropping her gaze, no-look. “Suffering will make you strong.”
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