Laurel Elizabeth Avington
Twenty-one
She/Her
Reincarnation of Apollo
Skyler Samuels
Trigger Warnings: arson and mentions of homicide
By definition a ‘golden child’ is a person amongst a populace who everyone seems to love no matter what. Every family has one whether they want the position or not, and Laurel Avington claimed that title the moment she was born. She was born on August 21st of the year 1993 as the sun first rose to kiss the horizon. Her cries heralded the new morning, and she screamed and wailed for everything she was worth. Her parents already had another child, another daughter, but she never seemed to be able to hold a candle to her baby sister. To say that Laurel was the light of her parent’s life appeared to be an understatement. She was just a light in general, at least, outwardly. Once her newborn cries were sated she gave ways to musical coos, and she the child that all the neighbors wished they had. If everyone else in the small town of Jefferson, Texas was living in black and white then she was in blaring color.
Sweet smiles and perfect yes mams were only a disguise however, and from the moment she discovered her free will Laurel realized just how much hate she was capable of feeling. She did the pageants her mother entered her in when she was younger and smiled during church on Sunday, but it all was a façade. Inside, she didn’t feel the warm glow that she let off. Inside she was brittle like the harsh rays of the sun that evade all and leave no stone unturned. She was unrelenting and unforgiving and no one had a clue. Jefferson was a small town, and everyone did the same things again and again. No one wanted more, and they seemed content with teen pregnancies and lukewarm beer being chugged in the back of a pickup.
Laurel had potential though, everyone told her so. She could sing and was seemingly a natural at picking up musical instruments. Her older sister, Carline, wasn’t much of anything and never had been. She was just like the others and every night Laurel would sit through an insufferable family dinner and wonder why they were all so content leading lives that would never amount to anything. Didn’t they want more for themselves? Didn’t they want their lives to matter? It felt like Laurel was the only one who felt that way though, and as she continued to age she kept up her shining exterior.
The only one of them Laurel could even tolerate was her father. He was nothing like her mother, who was all Southern Hospitality and sugary smiles. He wasn’t useless like Carline or judgmental like her grandmother. He was different, and Laurel clung to him like a lifeline. The two would sit in the sun, toes buried in the grass while he strummed on his guitar. He told Laurel to take her potential and channel it into something, and for that she was grateful. He got sick when she was thirteen, and a year later he was gone. Just like that. One day he was there and the next the only thing that was left of him was his coat draped over a chair and the fading scent of his aftershave. Something in her hardened after that. The sun will always rise in the morning and Laurel pushed on, ignoring her mother and counting the days until she could break free.
People loved her warm and bubbly personality, and she learned how to wield it like a weapon. She would shine a little light on those who didn’t bother her, but she’d burn any who stood in her way. She was known for being independent and strong, and even when she was meaning it was pegged as her being ‘feisty’. They laughed at what they didn’t understand, never knowing that with every laugh and trivial conversation a small part of her was burning up inside. The day she turned eighteen was the happiest day in her life, because she was sick of being the Laurel that everyone knew and loved. If they knew what really went on in her blonde head they’d find it wasn’t half as blissful as it seemed.
The day after graduation, Laurel packed up her guitar, her notebook and a few pieces of clothing. She wrote down her words and her feelings about her hometown and left them in a pile on the kitchen table. Slowly and methodically she traced a path around her house with gasoline and watched the liquid hit the hardwood. Her mother was asleep in her bed, Carline in her room doing nothing with her life. She drenched the notes last and watched the paper dampen and bend, as it got wet. She took all eighteen years of pent up diary entries and emotions and dropped a match onto them. Heat had never bothered her. In fact, kids at school used to have joked that she was coldblooded and always seeking the heat, as she’d crave warmth. She could touch matches and not feel the burn, and she stood in her house for as long as she could before grabbing her bag and running out the back door.
Laurel stood and watched the smoke stretch into the sky. She heard the snaps of the fire and felt the heat bite at her skin. Embers settled in her hair and for the first time in her life she felt the warmth. What was left of her father was gone. She had set him free from his prison and sacrificed what had been left. She was a phoenix, reborn from the ashes. Laurel Avington died in the fire with the rest of her pathetic family and an entirely new being composed not on sunshine and laughter but of piercing light walked until Jefferson was nothing more but a glow behind her. It wasn’t hard to get around. She was a pretty girl, and even though she was alone she wasn’t afraid. She’d hop rides from strangers until one day Savannah entered her view. She felt warmer when she entered it, and so she stayed. She’d been on the move for years, but this was the first place that seemed to feel right.
It didn’t take long after her arrival that her powers began to manifest themselves. It started with a man in a bar. He kissed her with lips tinted of alcohol. She felt that familiar warm flash wash over her, and right before her eyes he paled. Everything about her was on fire from her toes to the blood that boiled in her veins, and he looked like his life force had been sucked right from him. She took the opportunity to run, and three days later read his obituary in the news. He had died of an illness, one he had never had before. Laurel’s powers only seemed to strengthen after that. It always brought that warm feeling over her, and it always turned out the same. It was as if her touch was poison, each brush of skin on skin contacting transmitting a new virus. She was Typhoid Mary, and it was uncontrollable. Much to her great annoyance, it soon became apparent that she could see the diseases in people, even the ones that she did not create. A part of Laurel knew that there’s a reverse side to her power, and she took to exploring the depths of her abilities.
For someone who never really thought much of her character, it became apparent that Laurel was a judge of character. She loved the feeling of the sun on her skin, yet she often had to conceal herself, as she never knew what her touch would bring. To the innocent she brought healing, and to those who deserved it disease. The complex that had been growing in her since she was a child led her to get a job volunteering at the hospital, and all she had to do was brush her hand over a patient’s face in an apparent gesture of comfort. If they deserved it, they were healed. If they didn’t they would soon pass. She was known as a bit of a miracle worker, but Laurel always brushed it off. People were still looking for the good, unable to see that the sun was just as dangerous as it was beautiful.
Laurel’s power manifested itself rather quickly. At first, she thought she was only a harbinger of death as disease flowed from her fingertips. Over time she realized that she only could infect those who deserved it, and her touch could bring about healing to those who were innocent or didn’t deserve it. She remains covered for the most part as she doesn’t wish to randomly brush into people and infect them, and she’ll always notice the illnesses that a person carries as she sees it flows through their veins. I’d like to develop her to the point where she can cure and infect who she pleases, but it would take a while. She’d also be working on how strong her diseases were that she could infect people with. Giving someone arthritis is different than giving them something deadly.
LAUREL IS TAKEN AND PLAYED BY BLUE IN EST
izzy806
ellievsbear
areudirty
stormborns
kaledo-art