paisley elizabeth wilson, 22, upper class vampire, julija steponaviciute.
um i’m still working on her storyline!!! but basically she wallowed around being a moody teenager and then a moody semi-adult and then vincent turned her into a vampire and now she’s out for ur blood and is currently his little vampire protege. oops. first world vamp problems!!
you are the ninth born, but not the lesser loved. your mother carried you for months, and she carries you still. kisses you and wraps her arms around your shoulders, keeps you safe. binds you with the shackles and chains of her love and promises you that no harm will ever come to you. not while you are here with her, living on the edge of the earth and then further still. far from god or mortal or man of any kind. living in a world where you are the seeds springing forth from fresh earth, where you are a flower unfurling or the fruit that ripens and grows on the trees. here in the ever-summer - where the world turns and spins on it’s axis and everything is always bright and new. and you’re growing, growing, growing - stretching up towards her like you’re a sunflower and she is the sun. because she is your sun. perhaps because she is your mother, perhaps because you have no-one else. others slip into your life briefly - nymphs and dryads passing through on their journeys around the globe. but their friendship is always ill-fitting, like a coat you wear that is not your own. uncomfortable in your own home, in the presence of others who know more about the world than you could ever hope. you are taking root and sending shoots, and you will stay. perhaps because you want to, perhaps because it’s what you ought to do.
and demeter still wraps you up, but now her arms are too tight. (perhaps they have always been, perhaps you simply never noticed) and locked in her embrace, you can hear the steady thump of her heart - and it beats a message. here you are safe. it says. once you leave me, i can no longer promise you that.
sometimes you try to tell caspian about space. about how there aren’t possibly any words to explain just how big it all is. how you could search forever and ever and never reach the edge of anything at all.
felicity, he says, twirling a loose curl around his finger and looking at you with that stare that make you shiver down to your bones. if there are no words to explain it, they why are you trying?
and so you do your best, try to articulate the way the earth is spinning and looping and being held down by nothing but the cold press of space and the heavy weight of everything. everything that could possibly exist or would exist or existed but you just hadn’t found it yet. and isn’t that amazing? you say, ankle deep in the ocean and feeling like you were nothing more than stars and burning light and a feeling that you can’t quite place that sends fire boiling through your veins and makes you feel like you’re about to supernova.
and then you grow quiet, think that if there was so much out there and you were so impossibly small, then what did you mean? what was the point of you? and maybe you were all made up of fragments of stars, dead weight floating in the atmosphere and being breathed in by people who didn’t even notice. and you know that to be true - because of what you are, what you all are. how deep down inside you might all be as far-reaching and wondrous as space.
like peter. peter always knew he was the sun. it radiated off him in waves, touched everyone he saw and sent them spinning into his orbit. or charlotte, who was so obviously mercury - burning red hot and almost getting close enough to touch, only to spin away again in search of something else.
and you think caspian is like a far off star. dark and mysterious and so impossibly wonderful and vast. as if you could spend all of your time studying him, the way he moved - the way he acted and still not know enough. never know enough.
and you think that perhaps he’s your counterpoint, your balance. peter may be the meridian that keeps you spinning in orbit but he is the one on the other side - your equalizer.
maybe the person anchoring you here is him.
you’re lying on the bed, bandage firmly wrapped around your middle and head propped up with entirely too many pillows. that’s bart’s doing, but he wanted to help and you weren’t about to say no. not when he turned those puppy dog eyes on you and asked if there was anything he could do. when he told you that he was so worried.
he was also, apparently, angry.
you’d sat through half an hour of ‘he was really worried carin, you scared him. you scared all of us. you should have told us.’ before he’d up and left, planted a kiss on your forehead and raced out the door and down the stairwell. you knew it must’ve been important, then. for bart allen to risk getting cooties.
you’re only alone for a few minutes before tommy’s there. leaning in the doorway like he’s not sure if he should come in. that hurts, the fact that he’s so unsure about something that should be so natural. you’ve been friends for months now, and he’s standing in the doorway like you two can’t be in the same room.
‘hey.’ you say, motioning for him to sit on the bed. ‘come here.‘
he shifts uncomfortably for a moment, then sits down and rests his head against the bedframe. he sighs and stares at the wall, looks like he’s about to thoroughly tell you off. you’ve heard tommy get mad before, but never like he did today. you can tell that whatever’s coming isn’t going to be good, but you don’t want to hear it. you don’t want to, not after today. not when he’ll tell you that you’re part of a team. that you have friends. because sometimes you feel like you don’t deserve any of it at all, and you just don’t know if you can do it. not today.
so you lean over, angle your head so that it’s resting in the crook of his neck. and he lets you, he lets you. that has to mean something. you can feel the steady rise and fall of his shoulders as he breathes, and if you listen closely - you can almost hear his heart.
‘i’m sorry i didn’t tell you, okay? i’m sorry.’
