#acrowntask

[val-watson-3]

The End of a Childhood

Valandra Watson was so excited to get home from school.  She had gotten an A+ on her english paper and couldn’t wait to get home and show Meredith.  The 13 year old girl got off the school bus at the corner.  It was just a block away to get to her house.  But as the little girl moved, backpack bouncing against her lower back as she walked, she realized something was wrong.  There was an ambulance parked in front of the street.  Mrs. Potters was outside, her little yorkie on a pink leash.  Val wondered what was wrong, but dread started to fill her as she got closer and closer, realizing that the ambulance was in front of her house.  

Val ran past a policeman on her porch as he stood there jotting things in a notepad.  He cried out after her but she was already inside.  “Mom?” Val yelled out to Meredith.  Had she fallen?  Where was she?  Was she hurt?  “Mom!”  Val called out a little more panicked now when Meredith didn’t call out to her.  

The police officer’s hand landed on her shoulder to turn her towards him.  

“Where’s my mother?” Val asked, panic creeping into the young girl’s words.  

“I’m so sorry,” the officer said.  He started talking, but Val’s ears started to ring and she couldn’t hear anything.  Her hands went cold and numb and her head started to shake of its own accord.  

She shrugged off his hands, running to the kitchen.  Meredith had to be in the kitchen.  They were going to bake cookies tonight.  In the kitchen, Val’s legs went out from under her.  There was a black body bag on a stretcher.  She could make out the contours of a body.  No no no no no no no no no.

Val couldn’t believe this.  She had to see Mer.  She wouldn’t believe it unless she saw it.  So she strode to the black bag and unzipped it.  Val took in Meredith’s features in fractions.  A golden curl falling across Meredith’s forehead, and then another and another until Val recognized Meredith’s curly mane of hair.  Next there was an eyebrow, a couple of stray hairs were growing back and Val knew that Meredith would be plucking them soon to keep them in order.  There was a small crease between her eyebrows, a little frown line that only appeared when Val came home with a bad grade or she was worried about something.  Her skin was too pale, Val realized, but she followed the pale skin down the bridge of Meredith’s nose to her lips.  They were matte pink, just a shade darker than Mer’s lips.  An eye was next. Val gasped when she met Meredith’s blue eyes with her own.  Everything went blurry and a moment later a water drop landed on Meredith’s face and Val realized that it was her own tears falling onto her mother’s face.  

The sound suddenly turned back on for her.  The police officer was at her side trying to get her away from the both but seemingly afraid to touch her, not wanting to upset her more.  Val trailed her hand over Meredith’s eyes to close them.  Then she gripped Mer’s shoulders, laying her head on the woman’s chest.  She clung to her mother’s body crying for what seemed to be hours, but was likely only minutes. 

Then the police officer pulled her away, they zipped the body bag and took Meredith away.  A social worker came and took Val.  A heart attack they had said, she didn’t feel any pain, they had said, everything was going to be alright they had said.  But nothing would be alright again.  Because Meredith was dead and Val had never felt so alone in her life.  

[nyx-nolan-blog]

There always seemed to be tension in the house and there were a lot of fights, a lot of screaming matches only barely muffled by closed doors. A different kind of scream echoed through the hall early on Sunday morning, however, waking her from her sleep and making her run to her parents’ bedroom. What she saw there would be something that still haunts her to this day- her mother bruised and beaten, bleeding and screaming at her to run, but she was too scared to move, too frozen in fear and that only increased as her father walked slowly into the room. She could still remember the gun he had in his hand, one she didn’t know at the age of six but she knew now as an adult- A Colt 1911A1 U.S. Army, .45 caliber and gunmetal gray on the slide, a deep brown grip that she could barely see through his large hands. His eyes were off- his normally composed brown hue was wild and almost onyx, smirking at her as he moved toward her mother. His words were lost to her ears, only hearing her mother scream for her run again but that scream was cut off by a single gunshot, able to feel that sounds reverberate in her bones as her mother’s blood painted the walls and her own skin, as her body went limp. She didn’t even have time to react before another gunshot rang out and her father fell to the floor with a sickening thud.

With her mother’s screams and gunshots echoing in her ears, she could feel the energy surge through her body like a live wire. Her veins crackled and popped as a scream left her lips and the entire house was submerged in darkness, making the sight before her disappear into the abyss, though she knew it wasn’t really gone. The bodies of her parents lay just beyond the darkness but it shielded her eyes from the sight as she moved, able to move perfectly through the shadows and feeling her body disappear into them as she moved as far away as she could from that room. Even after the police arrived, the house stayed submerged in darkness, the cops unable to figure out why the lights wouldn’t come on when the house was still on the grid, when the clock on the oven still kept time and the refrigerator kicked on to keep its contents cool. The power wasn’t out but the light was gone, just like the light that was now gone from Nyx’s life, losing  the only things she had and leaving her all alone- without answers, without guidance, without love. The energy that’d came out of its dormancy that day never left her, able to feel the shadows biting at her veins and beckoning her to come play with every day that passed, making her always look over her shoulder from feeling like something was following her only to see her own shadow chasing her footsteps. The sound of her mother’s screams and the gunshots that followed haunted her almost every night, making her bolt upright in her bed only to find that sometimes…she wasn’t in her bed. Some nights, she’d wake in places she didn’t know, far away from the place she had to call home now and the sight of blood on her hands would drive her back into the shadows, running the same way she did the night she lost her parents until her body vaporized and disappeared among the darkness, allowing her to travel back to what she knew. As the years passed, those blackouts were her only constant, the world changing around her and leaving her more confused than when she was six years old, standing in the shadows with her parents before her, bleeding out and still, silent. Despite everything that happened, she tried to keep moving, always forward despite the shadowy hands that tried to pull her back. At sixteen, she graduated high school and ran to Chinatown, a place that brought comfort and reminded her of her mother, finding the scents that used to linger in their home around dinner time and finding her features in old Chinese women, soft brown eyes hardened by life and calloused hands that had labored for too little money. She put herself through school, working wherever she could for money, and upon graduating, she went to the New York Police Academy with the premise of protecting children like herself, with being something steady for those who’d just lost their entire worlds, remember the comforting arms of the officer who’d taken her from her home, the same officer who’d handed Nyx her badge on graduation day.  The power that’d once been a solace in emergency was now a tool in her work, able to surround suspects in shadows or create human silhouettes at the end of an alley to make them turn back, right into the sights of her gun. She could move through the deep shadows between New York alleyways, moving so much faster than her human legs could carry her, and just when she was getting some sense of her normalcy back, the Uprising of supernaturals shifted her whole world once again. There were people like her, people that had powers beyond any human capability and people who shifted with the phases of the moon, people who could only play in the shadows because the light burned their skin. There were people with magic in their veins and it was like every fairy tale- whether magical or kissed in darkness- had suddenly come true, drawing her to the city of the Alphas, the people like her with powers beyond all the humans now dead or trapped in chains. Once there, she sought refuge in the city, the home of shadows and plenty of people to hide among, though she’s not known for her social skills. Her years of solitude, or at least, her years of feeling completely alone have made her independent and distrusting of those around her, constantly testing others with her dark side. Even though she’s found some light, in the form of small orbs she can call into solid being, orbs that fizzle out after a few moments of dazzling light, she still feels like she can’t escape the shadows at her heels and this ride has just begun, so much of her own power left unknown and her deeper roots to the supernatural still unnoticed, both to herself and those around her.

[alphanolan-blog]

Nolan is a born werewolf who came into his powers at seventeen- considered a late bloomer by most, he worried that his powers taking longer and longer to manifest would mean he would be a weak wolf and that meant that he would be an omega, but luckily when he recieved his collar he broke it without any trouble and realized that he was an Alpha, he was relieved that he would have his freedom and immediately started looking forward to having an omega to take care of, although he stayed with his parents until he was nineteen due to the fact that they had only just moved to London and he wasn't familiar enough with the city to feel comfortable buying his own place

Currently he lives alone with his three dogs, Emma, Elsa, and Elphaba (and he swears those names weren't intentional but no one believes him) and owns Alpha Antiques And Artifacts (he was surprised to find that the name wasn't already trademarked)

Despite being excited about taking in an omega he hasn't until now due to wanting to have a stable home and work enviroment first so as not to disrupt them anymore than he has to, now that he has that accomplished he's ready to take one in and hopefully find his mate

His house is a simple townhouse with three bedrooms, a spare room, a basement, and a garage as well as the usual kitchen, dining room, living room, and two and a half bathrooms, he has a California King bed in his room, the spare room is a library/collection room and he renovated his basement into an extra living room, one of the spare bedrooms essentially belongs to the dogs and he keeps the other as a guest room, most of the house is carpeted with the exception of the kitchen, dining room, downstairs hallway, and bathrooms

[lorcanokiefe-blog]

Task #001: Positively Primeval: How did this happen?

     Lorcan had been fortunate enough to completely bypass the agony of being turned simply by being born. Of course, his family was not a simple one; no, his family was one of ancient power and prestige that went unmatched in 5th century Ireland. His parents were proud and pure-blooded witches and promised themselves that their son would be no different than them: mighty and dignified. Cináed and Brighid were obsessive over their son and made sure that he got the best of everything, including magickal instruction. Lorcan’s teaching began as soon as he was able to speak, ensuring that he would reach the peak of his power before he turned thirty. 

     Back in the day, omega collars were only a dream. Instead, they found out by presenting for the first time, often at the age of human puberty, though some took longer. Lorcan had always been sexually assertive and headstrong, making it no surprise to his family when his heat did not come and he reacted strongly to the omega presented to him as a test on his twentieth birthday. Afterwards, his family held an elaborate public ceremony to celebrate their darling son’s coming of age, and Lorcan was heralded as an alpha successor to the O’Kiefe family from then on.

     Lorcan had been to London a long time before it ever became the Alphas’ crown jewel and site of the Uprising, and he had seen potential in it even way back then. However, he didn’t stay long, and only returned upon being informed about the oncoming Uprising by a good friend. Some months before the event, Lorcan purchased two pieces of property; a ground-level building on the corner of a downtown street and a terraced home in Hillingdon. 

     His home is... strangely domestic and welcoming; its walls are painted in light colors and his rooms furnished in neutral leathers. It’s a fairly open space with herbs and flowers growing on every windowsill, modern decor, and a well-stocked kitchen. While his master bedroom is very lavish and his bed is big enough for four, he’s got a separate (though smaller) bedroom for any omegas staying in his home as well. Lorcan has a bad habit of leaving his books open and stacked higher than they should be.