Shortly after reaching the colony, I fell fatally in love with Louis, a young dark-haired bourgeois planter, graceful of speech and fastidious of manner, who seemed in his cynicism and self-destructiveness the very twin of Nicolas.
He had Nicki's grim intensity, his rebelliousness, his tortured capacity to believe and not to believe, and finally to despair.
Yet Louis gained a hold over me far more powerful than Nicolas had ever had.
(...)
And I wonder sometimes if I didn't look to Louis to punish me for what had happened to Nicki, if I didn't create Louis to be my conscience and to mete out year in and year out the penance I felt I deserved.
But I loved him, plain and simple.
To anyone paying attention, it was impossible not to notice how fragile he was, but I was the one who also saw a tenacious strength underneath, a stubborn tendency to cling to his misery. He didn’t want to die, as much as he didn’t want to keep living as he was. He simply refused to see other options, and I was desperate enough that I couldn’t wait to introduce him to the intoxicating pleasures of the blood and the flesh. The wine and the bread of communion twisted into a raw feast of desires neither of us could – or wanted to – control.
He roamed the streets of New Orleans as if he didn’t know what to do with himself, new to losing in a world that had always given him everything... at least on a surface level, if one ignored what he truly longed for. Louis would never have been able to carry on with the life of lies he expected for himself, a meek little wife on his arm, kids he would never love, a lifetime of sorrow to cater to the part he believed he had to play.
What Louis won't tell you was that Paul's death was a stepping stone towards freedom. He was finally free to waste himself in sin, he found a reason to crumble as he was always bound to have done. My beautiful martyr, longing to be sacrificed at the altar and worshipped in burial clothes.
Perhaps in another life, there would have been time for us to become friends. Instead, I had him blooming under my lips, the rosiness on his cheeks fighting the indigo blue of his melancholy. We crashed into each other, Louis looking for damnation, and me for a home I could bury myself in. In the absence of the devil, I gave him what he wanted and took what was my share, a deal sealed with a kiss.
---
Of cinnamon and sugar cane
The ship took me to Saint Louis. Not the city, no, although that was to be my destination on paper. It was along the riverfront in New Orleans that my heart found a suitable home. Shortly after reaching the colony, I fell fatally in love with Louis, a young Creole business owner, graceful of speech but strong of posture, capable of pulling a knife on his brother to establish himself at the eyes of a society that would never truly respect him for who he was.
In his demeanor I saw Nicki’s ferocity as well as his agony and that was how I knew that underneath all that razzle-dazzle there was a never-ending well of sorrow. I feared that it wouldn’t take much time until that fire consumed him and burned him down to ashes, as it had once consumed my Nicki.
Yet Louis gained a hold over me far more powerful than Nicolas had ever had.
And I wonder sometimes if I didn’t look to Louis to prove that I could do better than I had with Nicki, if I didn’t start a friendship with Louis to measure him out and make sure that he would be able to prevail where I had first failed.
But I loved him, plain and simple.
He was tortured and it seemed that no one but me could see it. He was utterly beautiful and yet people looked at him as if he was only worth as much as he served their purposes. It’s no surprise that a man in his position refused to show any vulnerability to the world at large, refused to let anyone see the sensitive soul underneath. How he bled under all that strength, how I wanted to pump him with enough powerful blood that he would never feel as if he had to hide again.
What Louis won't tell you was that Paul's death was a stepping stone towards freedom. He could finally walk away from the responsibilities that shackled him, and I knew he would be delivered right to me. Yet it's Louis we're talking about, Saint Louis, making everybody's problems his own even as he raged at God and the world for forsaking him.
He spoke to me as a friend and I heard the pleas to give him the means to transcend the life he knew. Under my lips, he melted like sugar and tasted like cinnamon, sweetest of spices. He needed a home where he could be himself, I had an empty nest to offer. In the absence of the devil, I gave him what he wanted and took what was my share, a deal sealed with a kiss.
hello, this is me currently enraged by rumors of how the TVC tv show might change the whole narrative of IWTV, so i’m once again reviving my even MORE enraged vampire (: plotting is welcome but i might just throw around some starters, thank you for your attention
In his heart weighed a certain envy of the ladies his age, the blossoming beauties that started attending soirées to be introduced properly and paraded around to the court. How much easier it seemed for them to play coquettish games and earn the attention of lovesick fools, exchanging innocent – or not so much – little notes with pressed flowers or a lock of someone’s hair to keep, love as sweet and fresh as the first days of spring.
Philippe had known, ever since discovering that he was on the wrong side of the equation, that love as he wanted it to be wouldn’t come easily for him. There were names for his preferences, likened to a deviation of the natural order and therefore unsuitable for pure sentiments; even if the ancient Greeks used to say differently, or so he’d heard. It led some suitors to unsavory notions – not that he was a prude or had anything against being out for a good time, but sometimes he simply... sometimes he just wanted—
“I’ll never love again!” He wailed, throwing himself across the couch in his mother’s outer chamber, completely mindless of the handmaids witnessing such scene. His hair was in disarray and his pouting lips still flushed and swollen from the failed rendezvous he’d just escaped from. “He does not care for me, I’m no more than a toy to be discarded by a cruel child!”
Surrounded by a dozen of the highest ranked women of Sparta, Leda was seated at the heart of her private chambers, focused on her weaving, when a guard came in and stood at her side. The man said nothing, conscious that his mere presence informed her that something required her attention. The interruption irritated her, who had been leaning over her loom like a statue for several hours, composing an intricate work of golden threads upon purple cloth which depicted the goddess Artemis, to be draped over her statue in the coming celebrations in her honor. Despite that, she showed no signs of annoyance, refraining herself even from breathing an impatient sigh before a soldier in the fulfillment of his duties. “Speak”, she murmured the command without lifting her head, her face hidden underneath a diaphanous, shining veil.
“A citizen requests an audience”, he told her, and suddenly her stance changed. The words incited her curiosity, thus shifting her attention quite abruptly: lifting her chin to inquisitively look at the guard, though no questions were asked. Instead, Leda simply nodded and stood solemnly from her seat. Throughout this short dialogue, her guests carried on with their weaving, completely undisturbed. “I’ll receive them at the central temple”, she declared, before leaving the room with no further words.
It was rather an odd request, as these duties had been passed over to Helen along with the crown. The meeting should be held with an inevitable air of informality, given that Leda, no longer queen, could not seat herself at the throne in the megaroom where such conversations were meant to happen, let alone to hold an audience with a Spartan as if she still reigned over the place, lest her daughter needed to be elsewhere. The temple was as close to the real thing as she could muster. It had an ornate chair at the center, large enough to impose a sense of regality, surrounded by walls decorated with frescoes bearing the images of their favored gods and goddesses. “Hyacinthus”, she called once he entered, before his name was announced. “What brings you to me that cannot be dealt with by our queen?”
Inebriated with the favor of the gods, a man could believe he didn’t have anything else to learn from mortals. Hyacinthus, however confident, couldn’t turn away from his people without looking back, nor did he consider himself to be above the rest of them. Yet at the same time he had to admit that his experiences set him apart from the crowd – and on that matter, he allowed himself to be rightfully vain, as he was aware of the many eyes on him ever since the vigor of manhood appeared to sharpen the last traces of the boy he used to be.
It left him feeling giddy, having two immortals vying for his attention, the weight of the choice falling to him. There was something frightening in it, like all things that transcended human nature and entered the divine realm, but instead of deterring the youth it only served to instigate his curiosity. Between both of his suitors, Hyacinthus had to admit he was leaning more towards the company and affection of the bright, golden Apollo, who could devastate entire cities with the same ease and precision of playing the lyre or hunting a wild boar.
Oh, the power, the bliss! How could another mortal understand what it was like to feel the sparks underneath blessed fingers? And even as he asked himself the question, the answer came quickly, for he knew the story of Sparta and could pick out at least one person who could claim a similar – if not greater – experience. The fact that the former queen decided to receive him at the temple sounded almost prophetic in itself and Hyacinthus felt a shiver running up his spine when she greeted him.
“Graceful Leda, wife of Tyndareus, thank you for attending to my request,” he said as he approached, standing at a respectful distance from the tall chair. “I mean no disregard to the queen by coming to you, and in fact it’s a matter close to her by blood, yet I believe that you, as her mother and a favorite of the gods, could offer me the best counsel.” He smiled, shoulders square and hands behind his back. “The situation is that, as of late, I have been courted by both the master of the west wind, Zephyrus, and far-shooter Apollo.”
Odysseus, on his journey home to Ithaca, was visited by a ghost. The ghost tells him that once he reaches his home, once he slays all his enemies and sets his house in order, he must do one last thing before he can rest. The ghost tells him to pick up an oar and walk inland. And keep walking until somebody mistakes that oar for a shovel. For that would be the place that no man had ever been troubled by the sea. And that’s where he’d find peace.
In the end, that’s all I want. To walk away from the sea and find some peace.
Whatever anger she harbored towards the blameless infant was quickly, sharply aimed towards Philippe with twice the strength. Of course this was easy for him. If anything, the tranquility of his demeanor only added fuel to the fire and deepened her irritation, which at this point overwhelmed her to an extent that, having not been confined to bed, Minette might have easily lost all sense and jumped at him to yank off his hair instead of her own. With all her limitations, she could only sit up and snarl at him, cross-armed and sulking.
Her eyes pierced him like arrows when he walked, infuriated that the perpetrator of her punishment still moved about freely whilst she remained tied to her spot, inside the perfectly decorated prison which her apartments had become - sore, bleeding and enduring the hellish noise of a weeping newborn. How triumphant for him, thought Madame. Henriette could not have thought of a more perfect way to avenge himself for her flirtations with his brother and De Guiche, along with the consequential rumors which attributed the paternity of this child to either one or the other. Granted, it was an admirable checkmate.
“You’re enjoying this too much”, Minette spat accusingly. It was clear from the tone of her voice that this referred not to the baby but rather to her own acute suffering, which was written all over her face despite the lofty way she lifted her chin and her lower lip protruded with disdain. Something was wrong with her, she knew it. Some sort of deficiency in that mechanism ingrained in the female spirit that made them so adequate for motherhood. For her, it happened in reverse. Sometimes she got as far as wanting to hurt the girl, and her mind was filled with thoughts which horrified even herself, such as the image of her own hands choking the child with a pillow. “All this effort for a girl!”, she lamented, on the verge of tears, burying her face in her hands.
At first, Philippe was mindless of the daggers in his wife’s eyes, focused only on the baby cradled in his arms. The friendly intimacy he was allowed with the women of the court had given him some experience in holding children, but it was inevitably a new feeling with his firstborn. He looked down fondly, reaching into the blanket to hold a tiny hand that curled around his finger and put a besotted smile on his lips.
It was strange to see all this uproar over a delicate little thing, used as he was to his mother’s open wish of rearing a girl, albeit it was understandable that the situation differed between a second child and the presumed heir. Still, the feminine world cast such a spell on his mind that it spun with thoughts of how to best raise Marie-Louise. Philippe didn’t have to make any effort to imagine her presented to court in exquisite dresses and jewelry, picture perfect of a life denied to him by nature.
“This girl may yet be queen, my dear,” he said, adoration dripping in his tone before he turned to look at Minette once more. A flash of understanding lit up in his blue eyes, smile becoming a clever smirk. “It’s a lot more than what could be said about you, considering that our place in court will never change. Is that what bothers you? Confronting your unlucky fate of being married to the king’s brother and never having the crown to yourself? Or is it that in spite of all your lies and disrespect of our vows, you’ve given me a daughter to dot on, not a son that he could claim?”
Achilles;
he would have given you
the world with a smile
if only you’d laid down
your glory
Patroclus;
the way he says your name
is divine, but power corrupts
and precious vowels
grant no armor
i think this is love but it is broken // l.s (via poemsforpersephone)
The last thing he could have asked of her was to not worry about him. She observed him in somber silence as Orestes sunk his back into a pile of cushions, confident and open-chested as if he had not a care in the world. As expected, her warning had fallen upon deaf ears. Quiet in her seat, Electra’s stance conflicted with his, with her shoulders rolled back and her eyes always attentive and wary - an expression that had been ingrained upon her features from the moment their horses crossed the border into Laconian lands. For her, it did not matter that he was there to settle an alliance. Whatever purpose was behind this journey, in her mind they had entered the enemy’s territory - where her brother seemed to make himself quite at ease, unsettling her further.
It might have been the wisest course of action to look forward to a long awaited future as he suggested. Still, as hard as Electra had yearned for the day that she would reclaim the status and dignity of which Clytemnestra and Aegisthus had robbed her, now that it was all within her reach she found no more than an empty space where her enthusiasm should have been. It was not only Orestes’ fate to ascend into a throne. She was a child of the great king Agamemnon, same as him - no other fate made sense for her if not one where she too would be queen, and yet whenever she made an effort to envision her life in Phocis her thoughts did not linger there for long, often turning back to the past instead. The death of their mother had left a vivid, powerful image in her memory. Days of servitude, of chaste wedlock to a peasant man, of ragged clothes and labor-hardened hands had shaped an intricate maze in her brain so that the past remained as a shadow always right behind, and the coming times became a misty road where she trode aimlessly with her eyes closed.
Electra stood up suddenly, prompted by her anxieties. The guest room which the Spartan queen had reserved for her was the farthest from the megaron, neither small nor extensive and moderately furnished. The apartments were not humble enough as to provoke humiliation, but strategically excludent due to its distance from the heart of the palace. It was clear on sight that no one of importance had ever been hosted there. Electra walked towards a window, her arm leaning against it as her heavy gaze followed the twists and turns of the Taygetan foothills. “You ask me the impossible”, she told him. “I watched as our father left us to go to war because of a Spartan woman’s deeds, and I was right there to witness as another one put an usurper on his throne”. Her voice carried an ominous tone, deepened with the sense of impending doom. Each word was scrupulously picked: she could have conjured many words to slander their cousin, but with Orestes’ determination to take possession of this kingdom she resentfully refrained from disrespecting him by insulting the woman who would be his wife - so instead she aimed right into the most pivotal problem at hand, as a last resource. “Besides”, she added, with a touch of poison, “it may seem fortunate now that you have found her childless despite wedded - yet it does not look like you have considered that this will become your problem as soon as you exchange vows”.
How curious that she would not preen at the idea of sitting upon a throne! Orestes frowned in confusion as his older sister walked around the room, as if the safety of her future couldn’t bring her any peace. He was torn between enjoying her concern, so much like the deep motherly love he had never truly received, and feeling a slow-burning bitterness that she could be disregarding a place he had known as home in his exile. A part of him wished he had never left Phocis, forever blessed with familiar smiles, kept away from the sin of matricide that turned out to be his welcoming gift back home.
He could have stayed, but then who would he be? Certainly not Agamemnon’s son, heir to lands that stretched far beyond what the eye could see. That was his destiny, reclaiming what the usurpers had deprived him of, and he wished that Electra understood that the same logic applied to his marriage to Hermione. He wouldn’t rest until he had the Spartans under his rule as well, until they were required to bow to him and fight in his name instead of an adulterous queen – and Orestes would ensure that they wouldn’t get a repetition of Helen’s dangerously fickle desires.
He was about to tell his sister that the girl he was set to marry seemed weaker compared to her mother – and theirs – and therefore easier to control, but the words never left his lips, for Electra finally found a crack in his plan that she could slither through to plant a seed of doubt in his mind. Had it been any other woman, he would have taken her intentions to be malicious, but as it was he understood the fierce sense of protectiveness she felt over him, as well as the hatred towards the Spartan lineage.
“I’ll admit it should become an annoyance if I have to bind myself to this girl and not get an heir out of it,” he huffed, childishly moody. It would have been the perfect plan, but only if these previous conditions were established. Orestes considered it for a moment, before releasing a deep breath and tilting his head back. “Well, there can be other women to carry a child. It should be hers, of course, an heir with joint claim to a kingdom larger than any of our ancestors ever had, but I’m set to inherit by blood and by marriage, a child that’s mine alone will do just fine.”
She has devoted every breath she has taken since the birth of her son to protect him and raise him into the great ruler that she knew he could be and his refusal to appoint her as regent stings. Has she not proved herself as his most loyal ally time and time again? ❝ My son, Antipater is a snake. you cannot trust him with such an important role. To your face, he will speak to you what he knows you wish to hear but he will scheme the moment that you turn your back and not even i will be able to protect you and you rule if he should gain a foothold. ❞
she ignores what she deigns to be an insult and instead reasserts her position as she folds her arms in front of her. ❝ you approach the matter from a perspective that holds no truth to it. why should a son not trust his mother with a position? it is only natural to desire to keep power within the family. ❞
Hearing the repetitions about trust and scheming almost led him to a fit of nervous laughter, barely contained by his already frayed disposition on the wake of his father’s death. Was it childish to long for comfort instead of getting into another argument over the people he chose to surround himself with? Should he be a son or a king, if he couldn’t find the balance between both?
“Not if insisting upon this suggestion could cost me the power you wish to protect,” Alexander cautioned, holding her gaze. “Do not make me repeat what the Macedonian elite thinks of our Epirote queen. Did I not defend our honor when that dog-faced Attalus insulted us? When he implied that I’m not Macedonian enough for the throne?”
He sighed, trying to blow off the steam that threatened to make his temper explode. “Antipater stays as regent, it’s non-negotiable. Besides, that should be enough to keep Cassander here as well, I have no interest in taking him with me.”
@philtatoshetairos: a starter I said I’d write a while ago
Early in the morning, a series of screams burst from Madame’s private chambers and echoed through the corridors. Any passerby, having overhead them, would have found some difficulty discerning which of those belonged to the mother and which came from the infant. Henriette, more confused than all, felt much like a toddler herself. In despair, the nursemaid attempted vainly to comfort the child, bouncing her gently on her arms, whispering sweet nothings into her little ear, but the crying just went on and on, driving her to madness.
With that came the unfortunate suggestion, gently offered by the maid, which prompted Minette’s ear-piercing shriek.
“Sometimes they call for the mother’s arms”, she said, naively. “Would Madame like to hold her?”
What followed was a loud, acute and whiny NO, in which the O’s were prolonged and sharply exclaimed: NOOOOOOO!!!
“No!”, she yelled a second time. “I don’t want to hold her!”
It was the last thing she wanted to do. She had tried holding the girl before, once or twice, but whenever she tried to look at the child, Henriette was shaken by a dreadful shock. It was the farthest experience from what she’d expected. Instead of lighting her with maternal glow, motherhood had made her angry and easily irritable, and the sight of her daughter was the same as a mirror reflecting her hopelessness and her inadequacy for the new role she’d have to assume.
Frustrated to the point that she could hardly realize her actions, her fingers clutched tightly onto her curly golden locks and to pull violently at them, as if she wanted to pluck them out of the scalp. Childishly, she looked at Philippe, teary-eyed, as if seeking rescue. “You do it!”, she shouted desperately, “you hold her! I won’t do it!”
The commotion in his wife’s chambers was loud enough that Philippe ended up meeting the lady-in-waiting sent to look for him halfway across the corridor, hurrying up his step at the sight of the girl’s concerned face. He was about to shout at them that if there was something wrong they were meant to ask for a doctor first, but as soon as he walked through the door he saw that the medical arts wouldn’t be of much help there.
Perhaps a priest would be a better choice, for the way Minette pulled at her hair and deprived their daughter of a comforting touch certainly painted her as more of a wild demon than a loving mother. The young Monsieur startled at the scene, blinking owlishly once Henriette turned to him – until the baby girl’s crying took him out of his stupor. Something had to be done to stop that, for God’s sake!
“At once, my dear,” he replied easily, somewhere between disapproving and confused. He strode forward, jaw clenched and brows furrowed, but as soon as he set his eyes upon the little infant’s round ruddy cheeks, his air of annoyance melted away into absolute adoration. His little Marie Louise, his perfect girl, born to be a queen – preferably in their homeland, if he had any say in it, and he had already made Louis promise that she would marry the dauphin.
“Shhh, my precious one, don’t cry,” Philippe soothed while taking her from the nurse maid’s arms, so careful and gentle in his fear of doing anything that could hurt his beautiful girl. Most men tended to prefer a son for a firstborn, but he couldn’t be happier, used as he was to the salon talks with the ladies of their court. “What’s the meaning of this madness?” He questioned in a hushed, urgent tone. “The poor child will think she has an old hag for a mother.”
God help him; he feels thrown two centuries into the past, stove by the pointed devil’s grin, haloed by a golden corona. It was frighteningly easy to fall into the temptation of belief; he had thought Lestat a saviour once, come to lead them as the Hebrews dancing from the Red Sea, their Miriam and their Moses, in liberation from the dark. And again, Lestat, transfigured and transfiguring; an electric scream shivering through all the video channels and crackling over the radio, somewhere between prince and pied piper.
He wants to believe. Oh, God, but he wants to believe.
He resents the smile coaxed from him, the way Lestat fills his vision, arresting and full of effortless charm. When had he seen him last, face to face? In the depths of Renaud’s old théâtre, when Laurent had found a new cause to worship out of the embers of the last. Lestat still seems so young, so full of a fledgling’s vitality. And yet so powerful enough to kill with a thought. So full of awful, infinite power and the seat of life for them all.
“And is it what you wanted it to be?” He asks with a strange and demanding intensity. And underneath it all, the thrum of need, need, need. “Is it true?”
In the play of emotion on Laurent’s face, the lightness of a smile against the fervor that always coursed deep within undead veins, Lestat saw his opportunity. Once upon a time he had turned away from that boyish face and thrown upon those slender shoulders the weight of searching for a new meaning on his own, unable to accept the position they asked of him. It sounded like madness, leading any kind of group, being stared at with wide eyes that would take his every word as truth, as dogma.
The lights of the stage came back to him. At Renauld’s. In San Francisco. A flash of divine light blinding the rest of the world. The Morningstar also used to shine bright until his fall.
“It’s a process,” the proclaimed prince replied, shaking his head. He could recognize how loaded the question was and if he let himself think too much about it, his doubts would get the best of him before he could his old friend’s trust. “I don’t think I’ll be content with it until we have reached every corner of the world and every single vampire, ancient or fledgling, comes to commune with us at least for one visit.” Passion in his voice, a confidence that made it sound like he was sure they would all come eventually. “What do you want it to be, Laurent? I can make it so for you, if only you ask.”
The spontaneity of her son’s affections was the sort of indulgence in which the queen was more than happy to partake, for it was precisely the kind of liberty of which she had been deprived her entire life, allowing one arm to lift and respond to his hug with a half-embrace. That was one of the many reasons why she had prayed so fervently for a daughter. Having denied such request, God nonetheless granted her a perfect replacement in the figure of her youngest, as dandy and girlish as she could have wished. Anne remembered the smile on the late king’s face when he was told he had fathered another boy: the widest he had ever displayed, brighter still than when his firstborn came into the world, for after a lifetime of enduring the frustrations of a fruitless marriage he had sired not one, but two male heirs. The proudest day of his life, she recalled. Even then, a part of her had known that Philippe would be her own, all hers, the companion that she needed at her side whilst his brother carried forward the legacy of the Bourbon line.
Very rarely, thus, did she reprimand him when he broke the etiquette of her chambers in such manners. Once or twice, if he overstepped. This time it had been harmless, Anne decided as her eyes turned back to the golden braids reflected on her mirror, finding them undisturbed. “Not without your opinion, certainly”, she answered. The queen called for her servant, who brought her a gilded jewelry casket, decorated with silver arabesques and the images of neatly carved angels guarding the lock. She opened it, removed a set of round blue diamonds and exposed them to Philippe on her palm. “I’d like to wear those today, but I can’t decide which of my silks would be the best match for the occasion”.
.
With no memories of his father and few chances of becoming king himself, Philippe would have been lost without his mother’s love. All his life, he had watched her as a role model of grace and held her to the same regard as the heroes of the epic stories they were told in their childhood – no, that couldn’t be right, for the Queen Mother should be placed above, amidst the pantheon of immortal goddesses. Sometimes, she was just as unreachable, and then in moments like these she blessed him with her light and the wait for his turn was worth it.
Smiling brightly for being included in something as important as her choice of garments, the boy straightened up when a servant came closer to present his mother’s jewelry, glittering in all directions upon being moved. As a child accustomed to wealth, there shouldn’t be much that could impress him, but those radiant diamonds were surely a cause for envy on a heart that longed for the finest things – that wanted to be as pretty as the splendor of their family demanded.
“Maman, those are splendid,” His fingers itched to touch the piece, an impulse he quickly reprimanded by clasping his hands together on his lap. “A good match for blue should be a warmer tone, a dark bronze could work perfectly,” he replied without having to think too much about it. “Cream or ivory for an inner layer… oh, I would look good in pale gold!”
