If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
No one wanted to play with me as a little kid, so I've been scheming like a criminal ever since - to make them love me and make it seem effortless.
I'm only cryptic and Machiavellian because I care...
She takes in nearly every way after her father with her striking gunmetal blue eyes, her strong jaw, and her height.
Those dreamers’ eyes were the softest shades of blue circling one another, like the hypnosis of cerulean.
They were framed by long caramel blonde lashes. She had deep-set eyes, one would think they were unfocused and lethargic if not for her rehearsed icy glares shades of brandished steel striking through the blue.
Not to mention their shared standoffish demeanour, however, her father is chased and admired as the steadfast and mysterious Duke of Calabria. She is the self-centred, ice princess who thinks she is better than others.
Not to mention her monstrous fangs, it was the talk of society, an abnormality. Most vampiric women had lethal fangs but they were long, thin, and elegantly curled in.
Beatrix inherited her war hero father’s large fangs that would slice the flesh of her lips as a child if she wasn’t careful, they were thick and long, glistening with paralysing venom, one wrong move and she could rip one’s throat clean out. It was commanding and they were a clear symbol of an apex predator.
Some find it alluring as there are very few records of women having such ferocious teeth, some find it insulting, a ducal princess having such a feature is vulgar and unladylike.
Others are tempted to know how it feels, after all, vampires experience another’s bite under 2 conditions. When they’re locked in battle or a lover’s embrace. As a way of signifying belonging to another or dominance of the fiercer vampire, even among men such a fearsome trait was rare.
Her height was another factor that stood out; vampires were no dainty creatures, reaching up to 6’8 or 7' 0, but very few women, especially those of the aristocracy, were over 5 '11. Whereas Beatrix reached 6’3, dwarfing her brothers. Yet even as she stood out, heads turning to her approach, very little had seen hesitance in her footfalls.
Everything about her is purposeful.
The person you stare at in envy because she looks like a creation of Pygmalion comes alive. So utterly fantastic to look at with her fluid motions, and sharp angular features carved of marble creating a creature that invokes a sense of inferiority.
Do not be mistaken these circumstances do not mean she lacked the feminine allure, her mother Adelaide was infamous throughout high society for her beauty, to the extent many would whisper she had the blood of fæ. It was evident if the rumoured blood of fæ did exist, Beatrix had inherited it.
But she is sensible and self-deprecating, with a timid air around her, speaking when spoken to, centring herself as a wallflower.
With her mother’s flaxen blonde hair, with thick curls that glistened like Apollo’s. It was radiant, tousled naturally just so, curling around her pale face almost creating a halo-like barrier separating the veil of reality and the ethereal.
Her face was pale like milk, unblemished, with no unsightly blotchy flush, sheen like crushed pearls, a youthful inquisition imprinted upon such a face that it would not fade even as the years wore at her;. a philosophical beauty if one was ever made. The mathematicians would be driven mad by the perfect proportions of such a face.
The golden ratio as they said.
Aside from a triangle of moles on the side of her forehead. With dark arching brows and adorably feminine lips, no matter how hard she tried her poker face, they were set in a pout, a pale peach-pink that complimented her wintertime shades.
Her hands are thin and nimble from long hours of perfecting her letters for her household, they are pronounced at her knuckles, with rosy nails always kept small and tidy. The constellations of needle pricks along her arms were covered in the kingdom’s finest lace.
The face of regrets, she had this intense aura with her long straight nose that she would observe you from as well as her slender neck and collarbones like that of a swan, decorated by precious gems.
Women gripping their sanity when she speaks to them, looking down at them, her eyebrow arched and her lips pulled into this smirk, an amused yet indecipherable face, smarter, stronger, more chivalrous than their pathetic fiancés. Countless handkerchiefs dropped just to hold her attention, foolish excuses of tired legs as they occupy her table at banquets, brought along to dinner parties with picture-perfect poise as they take hidden glances at this dreamlike entity.
Her most appealing feature (to a man at least - to most her existence itself so paradoxical you could not look away) would be her legs, she had a dancer's poise. Her slender figure curved into wide-set hips, and strong legs with taut muscles.
To her it's all just a burden, her slim pear silhouette just means her corset has to be tighter to emphasise it.
All in all, she looked like the idealistic vampiric woman, with her inscrutable expression, practised politeness, and gentle voice with the sophistication that the affluent lorded over.
Her voice is quite a nasty thing, it’s quiet, throaty, and feminine. It’s commanding, a declaration of someone so obviously of the upper echelon, with her mixed accents of the knowledge of more languages - dead or alive- than one could even name.
It made you feel centred when she talked to you, concentrating only on you, her lips moving inpatient syllables, the attention was flustering, but it was flattering.
But when she smiled? Those rare unpractised uncertain smiles that came with the hesitance of one who wasn't used to joy? She was the most stunning woman in the eyes of the beholder.
She looked her best in her bruised colours. They complimented her golden blonde locks as they fell against bodices of the shades of twilight. Always neatly tied out of her face, even such untameable hair was placed with the purpose to enhance her face.
At her debutante, it was for the sake of her family flaunting their newest offer for the marriage market, or to showcase her dress from the seamstress sponsored by her family, or her earrings from her family's diamond mines.
A perfect political piece. One that raked in just the right amount of attraction without shoving herself out like a harlot, her audience’s shallow curiosity that could never uncover her swallowed secrets pushed down to the bottom of her stomach allowing her to put duty first, such a well-rehearsed puppet it was no wonder no one had ever cracked past her facade.
And I could recite about that beauty of hers for many more pages, but there lay such charm in her sardonic wit that I'd truly be doing her an injustice with just flattered vanity of her physical appearance.
When the water washes away the dark liner, power and rogue blush it reveals tired eyes tinged with lilacs from sleepless nights pouring attention over old, cracking books, possessed by a mind with far more ideas than her body could ever contain.
Her conversations with Mr Moon and the ceiling were never-ending, feet pacing back and forth, curls tugged in frustration, a pathetic figure curled in the warm water of the tub during the witching hour. Her matted hair is wet as she seeks warmth; a cigarette lit between her lips, already the third one. Evident by the other buds in the ashtray yet it is only a prelude to all the other substances she will smoke before attempting to bear with her stifling family at breakfast where her brother’s hateful stares and her father’s refusal to sit at the same table will erase her appetite so she fills herself with the dizzying smoke in preparation.
Rather than the princess in the glasshouses, she is the glasshouse.
Even though she is effortlessly beautiful, she is an absolute mess if left to her own accords.
Her hair was tossed together in a ridiculous excuse of an updo framing her face in the privacy of her attic regardless of whether it was wet or knotted, all alone slouched over the library chairs, hands turning pages of journals that should be falling apart.
Her tongue slips past her fangs, a teasing pink, as she concentrates—chapped lips and a dry throat, a hunger so desperate to fill the void.
So focused on the past not wanting to live in the present.
She spends her days cooped in the West Wing’s library long abandoned since Adelaide’s death, skipping the family dinner times and seeking refuge in a dusty salon sipping soup from her maids tin can, she blocks out the scornful looks - stealing the tiniest amounts of power hidden in her brother’s waistcoat, her sharp accent slurred into something softer and more compassionate - almost human on her fall from divinity.
Cautiously, weaving lies to hide the large secrets in her larger mansion.
Familiar with the dark attic where long hours are spent, the rusted phonogram has been playing the same tunes since she was a child. Long limbs glistened with sweat, stretching and bending. Twirling and twisting, the music slithering into her bones, guided by pure instinct and primal need to continue this solo piece for hours on end, surpassing perfection till her bloody feet, blue and black now dyed bloody red, had created her masterpiece on the floor.
At her core she was a dancer first, a slave to the muses, discarding all to glide in a castle of salt and sand made from soft notes to the tempestuous thundering of instruments. Only broken feet to prove it.
Yet she was sharper than she ever let on, books tucked under her arm snuck into her room, jam stains smeared on them as she carelessly turned pages, folded her pages as her attention is dragged away to another, ink-stained hands noting her discoveries cramming pages that had been filled when no other journals were found and she filled notebooks away with her thoughts only returning to write more about her mundane life, the lines squeezed with the pressure of recording her.
An attempt to immortalise herself, to prove her existence, to stop herself from becoming a nobody that nobody will remember.
They were stacked alongside the walls, making her protective fortress of loneliness, crates of chalk used up as she wrote up equations and erased them upon her walls, spewing the voices in her head across them.
Her inquisition continues. What was the point in starting something if she couldn’t see it through?
She was no lady, not here at least, they could herald her as their porcelain puppet out there but here. In the drab rooms, just past the insect-bitten velvet curtains, the light shone on a little dirty diamond. Unfortunately, her walls had ears.
Jars of stored specimens, dirt so deep under her nails from the dusks and dawns when her silent steps discovered what lay beyond her gilded castle, but her excuses were flimsy for all her intelligence the language of people came weak.
Her brothers raided her rooms of adventure, smashing bottles, tearing and burning pages of long nights, the tiniest mistakes led to unimaginable consequences.
Accusations hurled, the scorn and misplaced anger toppled its boiling cauldron.
God forbid anyone heard her pleas, her father who had long forsaken her too burdened with the sight of his wife’s killer. Her phonogram was in so many pieces, that even her skilled fingers rearranging the coils and metal pieces could not resurrect it.
So she escaped, for more and more days, the hours stretched until she escaped from her tower. Disguises and lies freely flowed and she perfected her art, but all her achievements outside her snowglobe led to harsher winters within.
Unfortunately, children who are starved accept all that is given, the warmth of the outside made her forget how filthy it was. It dragged her down, and the wrong people started seeking her, but it made her feel wanted so she followed the tune of the piper, it was a shelter of delusion and exploitation.
Till that too shattered and she transcended the basic wants and needs.
Perhaps that is where her loathing for the outside world came from, the poison far too deeply attached to her haemoglobin, flowing through her beating heart and corrupting all.
But every action has an opposite effect and consequence, and the cane, the choice of weapon her executioner had chosen, broke her apart further than she had ever been before.
As her facade came apart there was only one solution really, to send the doll shop back to the toy shop for parts to be switched out and replaced, once more winded to perfection till it fell apart again.
She arrived at her new home ‘ Grimhilde’s Academy for Noble Ladies’, on a drizzling January morning.
