Leah had been getting ready for school, when she glanced over at the paper she had gotten from the cult and noticed that there were words on it.
Your time has come, Evelynn Rousseau. Thus far you’ve proved a valuable asset to us, but we need to know if you’re ready for bigger and better things. There is an artifact held in the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology of which the mortals have no clue of the true powers it holds. Retrieve it. And bring it back to us by the time the sun rises on the first of November. Then we will truly know your worth.
And below that was a sketch of the item she needed to take. This was going to be interesting. Eve wasn’t the best at actually going on missions, she was more a behind the scenes kind of gal. But this wasn’t going to be hard, sneaking into places was something that she was good it. It was just a simple use of her powers to change the chance of her getting spotted to close to nothing. She couldn’t completely negate the risk as she couldn’t control people just make it so they were less likely to want to investigate.
She would have to go tonight as tonight her whole family was going to be over so she would have an alibi if she needed one. Plus when one had a huge family slipping away unnoticed was easy.
Eve waited till after dinner before slipping out of the house and to the bus stop. She caught the next on that would take her to the Museum. However she got off a stop before so that this couldn’t be connected back to her. Walking towards the museum, Eve focused on the chance that the alarm was already set and lowered it.
She would be able to get in now. Going over to the service entrance of the museum, Eve pulled open the door and smiled when no alarms started going off. Now all she had to was find the artifact. Slipping on some gloves, Eve walked through the hallways focusing on the probability that she would be spotted and made it as low as possible. She was used to raising probability so she wasn’t sure exactly how low it was as she hadn’t practiced as much.
Stopping at a map of the Museum, Eve found where she needed to go and slowly went in that direction. She was trying to avoid cameras but she wasn’t sure she was doing so well. It was a good thing she had a plan to deal with that.
Finally she had reached the wing that held item, she so desperately needed. There it was behind a velvet rope but not below a glass case. She approached and grabbed the item and let out a sigh of relief that no alarm went off. Though if like the cult said people didn’t know it’s true power than maybe it wasn’t that protected. She slipped the item into her bag before making her way towards the exit. She would just have to stop in the security office and destroy the tapes.
This was too easy and Eve hoped that what was on display was the real item and not a reproduction because doing this a second time, she was sure wouldn’t go as smoothly. But for now all she had to do was deliver the item and get back before anyone noticed it missing or noticed that she was missing.
Being back in the pristine high walls of the manor brings back much memories, ones which she shelved to keep and, in times she'd return or visit, reminisce and treasure such fancy times. The nostalgia had somehow crept in once again, like it used to, except that now it was more imminent more than ever. How long has she been out of this place? Those ten years seemed to lengthen along with the distance she took away from the capital, the distance she took away from the expectant eyes of people, especially that of her father. But now she is summoned back to Terminus, for one reason and this one.
It is the time they remember.
Chron trailed behind her, her week-long luggage carried along as they both strutted their way too the front hall, to the right stairway and then they lead themselves to the east wing. Perhaps it was lucky for her to have her room preserved there, away from his study at the west wing. The travel, although not entirely tiring, had seeped out a part of her energy and she wanted nothing but to rest first. But mostly she wanted to evade her father. For the same reasons as before.
Yet unlucky for her, the morning rays sliced through from the opened door of her room. It earned a sigh to escape from her tired lips.
There he goes again.
Lorraine enters, nonchalance she worn on her face as she went straight to her table, dropping her handbag (one which she designed, but he never notices) before dropping her body on the couch. She never uttered a word, not recognizing his presence but Chron, her android, was quick and mannered in giving out the first greeting, affirming of his presence that was seated at her bed. "A pleasure morning, Your highness Prince Charles. Miss Lorraine and I had just arrived."
Lorraine could tell that he nodded, and used his simple hand gesture (swaying two fingers up the the air) to keep the android out of the room for their privacy. Prince Charles had always been like that. He had little to no words to spare, and if ever he did, he talks so much. Too much, if she may add. That was what she was evading. The android buzzed in, waving first to his owner before walking out of the door, closing it tightly. Lorraine could feel the air thinning as it did.
"No welcome back?" Her eyes were shut closed, but her fist were clenched inside her coat's pocket. She kept her voice as stern as possible. No sweet endearment. She had tried that before, but did he care?
"I assume that's one of your pieces, that bag, those boots.."
It seemed nonsense but she knew the meaning behind his words. They were nothing but a prelude. His tactic had always been sarcasm, and his seemingly praising remarks which he easily manipulates to a point against you. And he is too good at that trick.
"We're here for the memorial. I went here for that, and only for that account." Lorraine easily cuts him off. Straightforward and no sugar coating. Unlike him.
By now she had her legs crossed, feeling the slight increase in her temper, but she kept her cool. This day is for the memorial, that she knew, but she also knew beforehand that there is another commemoration she is bound to appear, duties she must attend as one of the children of the princes. A festivity that would only turn into a political colloquy. That is why he's trying to bring it up again. But she won't let him.
Without looking, she could feel the lopsided grin in his mouth morphed in a frown. The drop in his voice gave him away.
"If Eleanor is just still here.."
Then maybe things have gotten a lot easier.
Then maybe she can bore another child, this time a male.
Then maybe if he is an alpha, then he'd have a right hand to train at take care of.
Then maybe he'd be more eligible to gain more power, in order to get the throne.
Stop.
Lorraine already knew his train of thoughts. She knew too much that she was starting to despise him little by little. At least every time he brings up this issue.
"I'm tired, Father." Lorraine closes her eyes once more. The last of her word bear such sarcasm that it bites, even her.
"Fine." It was a good thing he finally retired. "In two hours, be ready. We'll be waiting at the Monte Hall. Chron will be instructed for the preparations...."
The next of his words, she let it drown in the air, never registering to her.
Not until the end.
"...just hope that you'd be of help. It is a cause for your late mother, and..."
The haywire images blurred against consciousness, vision tainted with a different kind of darkness, smudging the beauty that once filled her eyes.
Fingers numbed, and they attempt to fight against the falling cognizance of the warmth that was just underneath her, the dampness made by both, mixed altogether in a frenzy mess.
She was trying to memorize the sensation, of thick arms on which she had desperately dug her nails upon..
and the ethereal beauty that hovered above her at this time.
There was calm. Serenity fluidly flows, and she felt nothing. All senses has escaped from perception, and there was only the mind and the mind to play along. Here she can think without needing to see, to hear, to feel, to sense. Here she quests the crevices of her mind, only of her thoughts, untainted by any factual or concrete things that could smear them. A fiction made by the mind for the mind.
There was not even a sensation of eyes being closed, but merely the fact that everything surrenders into a nothingness quite unrecognizable as black or white. But she floats within it, capturing every memory held to cherish.
The name that strike nearly everything at its sound.
The deep baritone voice that she could never not acknowledge.
And the eyes that bore irises spellbound, one that attacks through her and impels to every inch of her being to want him, to need him, in as much as he implores her attention.
And the night they shared.. the nights they shared....
The bouts of pain drowned in plain rapture... the incoherence it had brought, to literally push her to a world of unconsciousness.
It is insane. Unworldly.
She knew.
And she remembers.
All the thoughts void of feelings. All thoughts. Her mind indulges on it.
Thick, damp lashes slowly fluttered, opening to a darkness not akin to where she was previously on, but in some sense the same. There wasn't any second to spare and pain shoots up, in and about, from the very core to her surface and of the other way, pressing ever so savagely unto her. As though everything that has been void of her senses came throttling back in full force. The small screech of something amplified at the highest rate, the stench of the garbage where she unknowingly prostrated herself pricks at the innermost of her nostrils, sending a an riotous wave of headache that breaks her skull, and that wasn't the most painful of them all. Her hands, almost numb, but the damp crimson stains were not unrecognized, crawled its way to the crook of her neck, finding two fresh wounds and at the touch of it came a loud scream at the back of her mind at the realization of it all.
Where was wonderland suddenly gone?
There was no wonderland to begin with.
Pain swell at her very core, stomach twisting, turning, churning, as though storm had come through for devastation, or as cloud rains to water a dry river. Waves of nausea came, and her body now in turmoil of the pain and the brewing infliction at her gut - no, at her womb, and there was little to no energy to battle with it.
How does the excuse, ‘time will heal’ make any sense?
Time cannot fill your empty spot
Time trickles in the same way the blood slips from the rim of her wine glass, freshness expired but warm, edible, enough to quench the seeding hunger. And as if it was laced with alcohol, it renders her with something very far from an alcohol-induced euphoria, but at least one step close.
To subdue the potent emotion called grief whisked along in a rather joyous occasion, it was a tough task. The city lights glimmered from the huge glass window that secluded her from the world beyond her room, walls successfully barricading every laughter, every song sung, everything that reminds her of the occasion now hold no essence on her. She succumbs herself in silence, much like she always do, but she drowns herself in nothingness - black, empty, desultory.
A swig of the liquid traces on her tubes, achingly passing through her chest which pained as she closed her eyes on the action - a very wrong move. Because all at once, flashes of memories retaliated back at her, shooting one by one to extract melancholy from the guarded walls of her heart - walls exhaustively made over the past few weeks, to gnaw at her whole humanity.
Lorraine and Emily.
Lorraine, Emily and Samantha.
Lorraine, Emily, Samantha and John.
A painful reality strike through her, a pierce of the same intensity as that of steel slicing though her own flesh, or of a stake puncturing through her chest.
The first in her 29 years, Emily's gone.
The first Christmas without a small red box tied in a red ribbon delivered on her door, followed by a video greeting either through Skype or her phone.
The first after that fateful day when her remains permanently buried to the ground that one and only one tear was able to permeate.
Dampness lined over the pale skin.
Red lines attacked her irises, it stings as her lids protests from closing themselves yet again.
Lorraine stares at the nothingness.
Retiring from the emotional exhaustion, she lets all thoughts be erased in exchange of one deciding point that served as the only way to end all these.
It glowed from beneath her thoughts as though it is the light of hope.
