🪐 — gabrielle starter for @divineviclinist ;
THE CEMETERY REEKS. in recent decades, humans had taken to draining their corpses of blood & refilling them with formaldehyde before burial, presumably so they would continue to poison their planet even after they were dead. now, the sharply sweet smell of natural decay that gabrielle had come to know so well has been replaced by a sickening chemical cocktail, death itself obsessively sanitized to the point of putrescence. but gabrielle is undaunted, moving in a straight line through rows of headstones bearing mortal names without sparing a glance at any of them.
now that she is close enough, she doesn't need to listen for his thoughts — she can just hear him. at the farthest edge of the graveyard there is a sluggish but determined stirring in the earth as something roils & rises from the soil. gabrielle had come the moment she'd heard him begin to awaken & realize that he was alone. where lestat had gone, why he had left him behind, gabrielle didn't know. but nicki's hurt & confusion had been sharp enough to pierce the cacophony of immortal babble, a familiar voice within the many.
it seems she has arrived just in time. even as she watches, fingers pierce the dirt from below, push away clumps of grass & sod, grasping blindly toward the stars that glitter indifferently overhead. & gabrielle falls to a knee, her hands helping to part the soil until a face — gaunt & covered in dirt & wearing a horrified expression — emerges. only then, when he can see her, does she grasp his hand in her own. ❝ bonsoir, nicki. you've found your way back. ❞