writing_shadows

The restraints are cold and unforgiving, bruising almost, but not half so much as they will be if they become necessary later. My gown is crimson shot silk – this colour is my cleansing colour – unusual, I know; you’d think I would wear white. But this is the colour of blood.

I have been knelt in silent meditation for hours, thinking over everything that has happened this year, the burdens I must shed and move on from, the questions I need answered and the paths opening up before me.

Emile is dead. Were he not, he would be here now, watching over me until my rising day. Then again, were he not, perhaps I would not be here at all. But since his death, I have grown, flourished, become something greater than I was. I am learning, gathering strength, blossoming. I am, day by day, one mortal and one Kindred at a time, fulfilling the destiny that was wrought upon me.

A familiar face appears in the doorway of my stone chamber. “It is time,” he says, with kind eyes.

The Via Dolorosa was the hardest it has ever been for me since my embrace, but I feel better for it. Now he knows everything.

I lie back on the soft velvet, and can feel the cold, hard stone underneath as he draws close and secures my wrists, palms open, supine.

I am helpless.

With all the gentleness of the father I never had, he strokes the hair away from my face and smiles reassuringly. I think he can see the flicker of fright behind my eyes this time.

“I will be here until you wake, Darcy,” he says quietly. “I will not leave your side.”

He has been so much to me these past eleven years, but his is not the face I long to be reassured by. I cannot think now, though. Those thoughts will cloud my mind, disrupt my realignment. Now, I need focus. I need peace. Every time I touch the Divine, my destiny unfolds a little more.

My wrists are bare; no lace gloves tonight. The old wounds are deep and beautiful. He nods to me, and I nod back, and close my eyes. And then with no small exertion of will, I bleed.

The scent of my blood is like fragrant death; sweet, warm, rich and heady. As more and more of it leaves my body, I can feel the hunger rising in proportion to my loss, and the Beast stirring with me. It is closer these nights than it has ever been, and it rears its head more readily.

Fists clenched, wrists slick and red, I feel it creeping upon me like a rising tide, closing up my throat and stinging at my eyes.

Three nights.

The body starves and decays while the soul is given lease to commune with the Divine.

We are creatures of Suffering.

But I am also a creature of destiny.