Jun 13
Imagine being fred vesti having to answer technical questions from toto wolff
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Imagine being fred vesti having to answer technical questions from toto wolff
Old Man on a Swing
Francisco de Goya
Etching, ca. 1826 /1828
A Thing Divine // Act One // Chapter Six: Surprise.
A/N: fun fact, I named Emma after Emma MacGill from ‘Murder, She Wrote’ as I was watching an episode she was in while writing this.
Pairing: Fred x Cordelia (OC).
Turning twenty years old was, according to her little sister, a big freaking deal.
Really big and really freaking.
Though Cordelia didn’t really agree that, truthfully, she didn’t feel much different then she had when she turned eighteen or nineteen. Perhaps in some small way, she was a bit more at peace with herself, but still mostly the same person she had been before. The tempest within her heart had calmed into smoother waters, still as dark and as deep, but the storm had quieted, as did Cordelia.
But, of course, she had always been quiet and Eve had always been dramatic and loving, in her own loud way.
So as much as Eve went on and on about parties (that Cordelia didn’t want) and guests (that Cordelia wouldn’t invite because, again, she didn’t want a party) and a million more things. And Cordelia found herself laughing at her little sister’s excitement at such a silly thing, more amused than annoyed. No, she didn’t want a party or anything big and no, she hadn’t changed her mind about it.
She just wanted what she always wanted:
Just an afternoon on the isle with her family, some books, CDs, perhaps a pretty dress or jewelry, as she liked, and little else.
Her mother would bake a black forest cake.
Her father would tell the story of her birth, how she came six weeks early and while her parents were on a boat with a few friends, forcing a wild ride back to the beach where they met an ambulance crew and she’d been born before they even reached the hospital.
Her sister would buy her a set of charms for their charm bracelets, a tradition of theirs, one of Cordelia and one for Evie, always something that paired well together but remained an opposite.
Cordelia was a creature of simple comforts.
And Eve was a creature of another kind, growing older and louder and more dramatic as the years went on. Evie had their father’s stubbornness and their mother’s dramatics and the sisters had begun clashing here and there, more and more often.
Sisters so often do, especially sisters that were as different as they were.
They’d always been different but now it was more so than ever, opposites clashing again and again. Ocean and earth, ice and fire, starry night and brightest day. It was as their grandmother often said, one was sea salt and the other was sugar. Different, but in the right situation, they could compliment one another.
This was not the right situation.
“How can you not want a birthday party?” Eve asked again as she played with the cotton and lace jellyfish lanterns hanging over Cordelia’s bed. “It’s your twentieth birthday! That’s, like, a huge freaking deal.”
Eve laid on the bed, cherry red hair splayed around her in wild curls. She’d dyed it one whim a few years back with Cordelia’s help, wanting to start high school with “a big bang” and it had been a trademark ever since, long and bright red and beautiful. Sometimes she braided in metallic silver or black extensions, just to glitter a little more. Cordelia quite liked it, actually, even though they’d stained their hands and the bathtub red for what felt like forever (much to their mother’s chagrin), it matched Eve’s fire. Smiling over her sister’s dramatics, she sat at the desk, glasses perched on her nose as she worked on a paper for class.
“I do want a party,” Cordelia replied. “And I want to borrow your pearl earrings for it, I’m wearing one of my white dresses.”
“White eyelet sundress? Or the pretty, nightgown sort of one that makes you look like a lighthouse keeper's wife?”
“Lighthouse keeper’s wife.”
“Cool. And that’s not a party! Lunch with Mom and Dad on some creepy old island is the farthest thing from a birthday party, Cordy. And they won’t even be here this year, it’s just us so it’ll be even creepier, a total horror movie. Like I Know What You Did Last Summer, some guy with a hook will kill us.”
“Are you confessing to committing a hit and run, Evie?”
“Go to dinner! Dancing! There’s a thousand guys who’d dance with you.”
“Do you want to dance? I’ll take my little radio with us to the isle and we can dance together all night long. Just us.”
Eve sighed, swatting the jelly fish and jumping up from the bed. But she wasn’t nearly as annoyed with her hermit of a sister as she usually was, Cordelia catching a glimpse of a smile as Eve turned away. Evie had such a pretty smile, full lips she always painted with red or pink lipstick, a little mole she always drew just beneath them.
“Alright, alright,” Eve sighed. “I’ll drop it. And you can borrow the earrings.”
And with that, Cordelia settled into the gentle mundane.
She studied and wrote papers, worked shifts at the coffee shop (one good point of her power: she always got great tips), painted, and played her guitar. Studying wasn’t just an excuse these days. There was a research trip coming up next year and Cordelia was hoping to be a part of it, if she was offered a chance, the details of it printed out and pinned on the cork board behind her computer. Students would go off in pairs or groups to quiet locations, distant from the touch of humanity, to study marine life. They didn’t go alone anymore, which is what she’d have preferred. Too many accidents and tragedies and a boy that had vanished some years back had changed the tides against that and, though she still didn’t know who she would go with or if she would even get it, Cordelia had hopes. Her grades never dropped, Doctor Lee was friends with her professor and had sung her praises, and Professor Bronte did seem to like her.
It would have been easy to just charm her way into it, but that would have ruined everything, the way it always ruined things.
Like oil spilling through crystal waters, poisoning spreading slowly.
She wanted it to be simple and clean. She wanted to earn it. So Cordelia was so focused on school and work that she didn’t think much of anything else, especially her birthday, beyond the idea that she might go camping afterwards. It had been some time since she’d gone and she missed the isle.
In fact, she forgot it was even her birthday when it came along.
Waking before Eve woke, Cordelia did what she always did. Mom and Dad were out for a while, visiting some old friends and not returning for a week or so. She liked having the house to herself, since Eve was mostly gone if she wasn’t sleeping and she slept like death. Nothing, not even an apocalypse, could wake her sister. So she showered and got dressed, wearing her favorite ivory sweater and dark skinny jeans, tall black boots laced up over knitted cream socks. She carried the same old black messenger bag, the one she’d had to patch here or there and stitch the strap back together over the years with shades of blue and green thread, a thousand keychains and charms hanging from it: a silver glittering star, a string of pearls and a sage green silk ribbon, a heart-shaped bell singing happily as she walked out the door. The coffee shop, Tempest in a Tea Pot, was a decades old place tucked between a candle shop and a jewelry store, the scent of coffee beans and cinnamon wafting out the door.
It wasn’t until after her shift was over that the word “birthday” came into mind again, a coworker giving her a gift.
“I didn’t know what you’d like,” Emma said, smiling shyly, pushing back a blonde curl from her green eyes. “But I wanted to give you something and my grandma taught me everything about stained glass.”
Wrapped in newspaper and tied with twine, a mermaid was hidden inside.
Sitting on a gray rock beneath a sky swimming with blue and greens, the dark haired mermaid looked up to a blue moon. Cordelia held her to the light, watching her shimmer. Sunlight caught the moon, blue light glittering over Cordelia’s fact as the mermaid danced softly.
“You made this?”
“It’s nothing, I ‘m not very good yet.”
“It’s beautiful,” Cordelia said. “Thank you.”
Emma’s smile brightened, a little surprised over Cordelia’s delight. She couldn’t blame her. The quiet air she’d kept over herself made her seem a little cold at times, she’d heard that before. So this must have been a rare moment of warmth, Cordelia feeling a little guilty that she so rarely showed that side of herself.
The mermaid glittered in her hand the whole way home.
“Are you ready to go?”
Eve was already waiting for her at home, wearing her black sun dress and red cardigan, poppies hanging from her ears and lips painted to match, a thousand silver bracelets singling a metallic lullaby on her wrists.
“You don’t have to come, if you don’t want to.” Cordelia offered. “I know the isle’s more my thing than yours.”
“Duh, that’s why I got the beach house and you got a creepy and totally haunted lighthouse. But it’s your birthday and I’m an awesome sister, so…” she held out her hand, silver nail sparkling as she offered the freshwater pearl earrings to her. “Let’s go.”
Cordelia liked the quiet of sailing to the isle.
The only sound was the waves rocking the boat and the wind and the near constant chime of Eve’s cell phone, her sister rarely looking up as she texted away. She was quiet, too, and Eve was rarely quiet. Cordelia could not help the feeling that was settling inside of her, nervous and cold…
The boat reached the isle.
And the moment she did, Cordelia felt her heart sink into her stomach. Music. There was music blasting and lights strung through the trees, a crowd of people waiting for them, her haven trampled under dancing foot.
She knew them, of course.
In a town like Castine you knew everyone, even the hermits. It was impossible not to. Many of them were the crowd she’d gone to school with, a great many more were of Eve’s crowd, all of them smiling as Cordelia watched on in quiet horror and Eve smiled, babbling something that she couldn’t hear over the roar of her heart, tempest rising within her.
“Surprise!”
Cordelia tried not to scream in horror.
~
My sister loves me, my sister loves me, I’m going to rip my hair out and scream until the sky shatters and the stars fall, my sister loves me-
Cordelia’s mind was a mess of emotions as the surprise party swirled around her, as much of a mess as she was. Luckily, beyond shouting well wishes at her, no one seemed to care very much about her at all, allowing Cordelia to sit by the bonfire and remain frozen in place. To them, this was nothing more than a chance to party on a private island.
But as calm as her exterior seemed, body stiff and frozen beyond her long fingers playing with her hair and pale face expressionless, eyes wide and dark, Cordelia was quietly panicked.
A few odd glances were passed her way.
Once or twice, some stranger asked if she was alright or offered her a drink.
Hours passed, one into another, morning creeping ever closer.
But what was more bothersome was the gazes that lingered on her, the eyes that never seemed to leave her alone. One gaze she could not seem to find, forever lingering from the darkness...the other belonged to her sister. Eve kept glancing at her as the night went one, emotions shifting from one to another. Elation, at first, then confusion, annoyance, and finally to anger. Both the Graycott sisters were furious with one another and, before there was a scene in front of anyone else, Cordelia forced herself to flee.
The lighthouse.
She’d be safe there, it was always safe there.
Soon, dawn would break and she could watch it from the tower, something that never failed to amaze her. She loved the way rosy dawn broke through darkness, the way the light glittered upon the sea. And while there wasn’t anything keeping others off the isle, the lighthouse at least had a lock and key, set safely around her neck as it always did, strung on a silver chain.
Walking quickly through the crowd, Cordelia was thankful that the party hadn’t gone too far into the isle.
The crowd was grouped together on the beach, for the most part, a few couples scattered here and there in the shade of the trees. But the lighthouse had been left alone, too far and too strange looking to be of any interest, thankfully. People were avoiding it like a plague. Maybe Eve had actually convinced a few people that it was full of ghosts and rats and whatever else might be in there.
Cordelia felt that fiery gaze upon her once again and walked faster...just not fast enough to escape it.
“Cordy!”
Eve caught her arm, pulling her back. She was upset...and normally that sort of thing worried Cordelia a little but tonight, she was struggling to be sympathetic.
“Cordy, what’s wrong with you?” Eve whispered. “You’re totally ruining the party.”
“The party seems to be doing just fine to me, Eve. I’m certain it’s everything that you wanted.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“This party isn’t for me,” Cordelia snapped, her voice cold. “It’s for you. Your plans and your friends and everything you wanted. Everything you think that I’m supposed to want but I don’t, Evie. I never did.”
Evie flared, eyes alight with anger.
“Everybody came here to see you! Doesn’t that mean anything?”
She didn’t know how to tell her.
They were supposed to keep the siren song a secret, the few times the Graycott women had told another...it hadn’t ended well. It never did. She’d heard the stories and kept the secret, no matter how heavily it rested on the tip of her tongue, longing to share the burden with another. Tonight was one of those nights. She wanted to tell Eve the truth, to tell her that no one was here because they actually liked her. That the infatuation was like a drug to them, her power seeping into everyone around her, heroin in the air like sweet perfume.
It was true and she hated it, all of it.
And all she wanted was something true, something real to have and to hold...but how could she tell her that?
How could Eve ever understand her?
“I only wanted to dance with you,” she said softly.
And Cordelia said nothing else but that and simply pulled away, Eve storming off back to the party as she did.
She’d get over it.
Pout for a day or so, then finally realize that maybe, just maybe, she’d been a bit of a brat. And while she would not apologize (because Eve was like their mother and rarely actually said sorry for anything, even when she ought to), she’d find another way to make the regret known. A quiet way. Coming home with the peppermint ice cream that she liked from the store, doing Cordelia’s night of dishes for her without being asked, some little thing to silently say that she was sorry. The way Eve always did it and the way Cordelia always accepted it, quietly. Turning back to the lighthouse, the sight of it made her soften.
Her safe haven.
A shadow passed in the window, dark eyes watching and wondering if someone had slipped inside.
But that wasn’t possible.
Walking quickly along the cliffs, Cordelia hurried towards safely, only for a voice to steal her away from it once more.
“Cordelia...”
Only 26 stacks bois
Anything necessary
Revenge time bois
“Do you by any chance know how to cook?”
my mom took me out to buy flowers and now i have some roses and a cool looking plant in my room named fred