pirate voice: there's a beautiful person out there reading this post, I can feel it in me bones
mailman voice: I'm curious, what did you make me sound like?
would you?
Every body hates me because my body is made up from mis matched corpse parts and i make scary noises.
He jumped off the balcony, says Nicolas. The beast overtook him, maybe he saw a particularly delicious looking Kine and the last vestiges of his hunger, for he does not seem the type to finish his meals, reared their ugly head.
Shade himself seems shaken by this suggestion. At the very least she fixed his legs after the fall. Of course it hurt more than natural healing ever would have, but he has not been as good a guest as he could be, so clearly it is deserved.
Of all of them, he seems to cling to his humanity the most. He rejects her work and her vicissitude out of fear or hatred, yet seems to try to empathise with Nicolas, as though such a thing is even possible.
If she could remember how to, she would laugh.
She remembers how Nicolas talked about Elizabeth, her Elizabeth, as though she were no different from the blood bags the Camarilla driver had graciously given them. He thinks of her as an object, but is so crude about it. Would one take a bite out of a particularly useful vacuum cleaner, or drink from a lovely painting? No, Elizabeth may be hers, but her purpose is not to be consumed.
She resolves to keep a close eye on Elizabeth when she next comes for work.
She resolves to keep a close eye on Nicolas, lest he prove himself to be less polite than she thinks.
But, back to the matter of Shade. He seemed to wish to present her with some overwhelming truth about her own existence. He reacted with shock to the news that she had barely left the premises - indeed that she was actually incapable of it - as well as the revelation that she had never been paid a wage, and that she simply worked because she had been told to.
None of this seems particularly odd to her. Is there any particular reason it should?
For Maria he seemed to show great disdain, acting as though she had abandoned her in the house of a stranger, when she was clearly busy with work or preoccupied by some other matters.
She would never abandon Ophelia, right?
These matters have been gnawing on her since she invited the coterie to stay at hers - one of the many reasons for which she made Shade’s legs hurt so very badly. She resolves to dispel her concerns for now, and focus on the task at hand.
Shade fell victim to the beast, and jumped.
Dear Nicolas told her this, and she has no reason to distrust him. He may arouse her suspicion in some regards, but he has yet to lie to her.
But poor Shade. She could spend hours listing the reasons for which she is coming to dislike him. His barely disguised fear, his constant oscillating between treating her and Nicolas as pitiful victims and dreadful monsters, his anger leading him to threaten one of her guests under her roof, his unending infantilising insistence on calling her ‘kid’ out of some deluded paternal affection towards the unfortunate misguided girl he sees her as.
To know that this is the case could well and truly break him. As one of her guests, she has a responsibility to avoid that.
So she lies. It does not matter if all can see that she is lying. The purpose is not to be believed, it is instead to plant seeds of doubt.
‘The balcony is in some disrepair, and I have been meaning to fix it for a while.’
None of this is true.
But, just maybe, it could delay Shade’s inevitable descent towards the savage and violent clutches of the beast until he is out of her house and far away from her Elizabeth.
And if that is not the case, and he is moved to damage what belongs to her, she will tear him apart and rebuild him in the image of the monster that he tries so desperately to avoid being.
Nicolas seems to dislike him as well. Maybe after his limbs are made useless, she should hand him over to Baudelaire for a while before she reshapes him. He has, after all, wronged him.
It would be the polite thing to do, would it not?
do you guys think vampires use stakes for kink like people use knives
trying to make unlikable characters
She loved The Factory. It certainly helped that she knew little else. Every day, she rose and set about her work. She assembled weapons and machines and more. She did her part, taking care of the children being raised in their little outpost. She ate and drank and worked and did very nearly nothing else.
But in this case, ‘nothing else’ is far from inconsequential.
She told the children about the stories that had been passed down from her parents. She dreamt about those stories. These stories had endured from a time where, quite unthinkably to her, The Factory had not yet expanded to assimilate their home. They talked about dragons and fools and vagabonds and knights and - her favorite - princesses. They held messages of defiance, of truth, of nobility.
She took these stories, and held them close to get through the day.
As time went on, she grew tired. These stories seemed to become more and more distant. She made things for people to use to kill each other in faraway lands. There was no meaning to her existence, no message, nothing coming to save her.
She became dull.
{And there is nothing I detest more than dullness.}
But she was rewarded. It seems as though fate {Nobility.} had taken a shine to her.
An accident happened.
Something went horribly wrong. Maybe some munitions assembly went wrong. Maybe a load-bearing beam had been built cheaply or incorrectly. The method doesn’t matter, only the results.
For the first time in her life, she steps outside.
The stories come rushing back to her. She breathes fresh air and stares at a clear sky.
She sees trees, and plants, and animals. She is entranced, and she steps into the forest.
In the stories, how often does an errant heroine wander through the woods?
Well, not too often. Usually they are relegated to the role of witless maidens to be saved.
This story is different, for it has truth to it.
She wanders, and time loses all meaning.
Roots and leaves and branches all blur into one. She could have been in there for seconds or centuries.
She steps out of the forest.
In front of her is a castle, looking as though it had been carefully copied from the ones in her dreams. Spires and towers and moats and crenellations and yet more features fill her vision.
She steps into the castle. {And I am waiting for her.}
She greets the person within in the manner she remembers from the old tales.
{I look within her, and I see her as she ought to be. She is full of lovely tales, and I am in need of some entertainment. It seems our goals align, though she is unaware of what she actually wants. I suppose I must give it to her.}
The Princess on her throne smiles at her, and opens her mouth.
She offers her a place in her domain, where she will never have to worry about dullness and boredom. Where she would never need to abandon her stories.
She accepts, of course.
{So I took her and made her suited to her purpose. It has led to such fun results.}
And she lived happily ever after.
The End.
one of my buddies is occupying a fortified position on high ground. i'm going to kick his ass with ease
the patient needs 50 lolita dresses to live . yes the expensive ones. with the frills and ribbons. it's urgent
vampire curled up at your front door whimpering like a kicked stray puppy begging to come inside where it’s warm and cozy because it’s so so cold
timeloop this timeloop that. you people are sooo repetitive similar to something else i’m aware of
She/her, LARP doer, Warhammer and Gundam fan, that one reveal with Zane from Ninjago changed the trajectory of my life,Certified Scribblehub Eggfic Protagonist.
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