Elle sighed in frustration. It was supposed to be over. The nightmare was supposed to be over! But she was still here. Why was she still here?! Oh, that was right, her own bloody curiosity. She was free to go, Carmilla's sacrifice having opened the doors of death, but now Elle was too afraid to leave. She still didn't want to die and some other strange magic type decided to rear its big ugly head at her and her curiosity wound itself up. Hard. What was driving her so crazy? Well, shortly after Carmilla and her friends fled her schloss, Elle found a little book. It was the very same one of Carmilla's friends had used to help initiate the ceremony that freed Elle and every other ghost trapped here by Carmilla. That book had been left behind by Carmilla and company in their haste to leave. What Elle found in that book was quite fascinating. For all of her hard work, Elle hadn't translated too much of the old tome, but that friend of Carmilla's managed to create a key that pretty much decoded it all for Elle. She took the time to read the book in full and ended up reading about people called Dreamwalkers.
Dreamwalkers, as the name entailed, were people with the power to walk in the dreams of others. They were used by the ancient gods as messengers and people who crossed boundaries that other beings could not. The reason Elle found these people so fascinating was because they had some of the same skills Elle herself already possessed. In time, she began to realize that Dreamwalkers could be born or made, Elle was one of the few people who still fell into the former category. Of course, she was no stranger to odd dreams, but she had always attributed it to some other divine or supernatural force, never once dreaming that it might've been her all along. It didn't help, either, that the first strange dream she ever had was based around Carmilla. It happened when she was six and those strange dreams of the alluring vampire and her feline double would come and go as the years passed. Once Elle realized what Carmilla truly was, she attributed the dreams to Carmilla, thinking that only a vampire would've had the power to do something so weird and amazing. Then, even after Elle began to walk in dreams herself, she still blamed it on Carmilla because the only dreams she visited were the dreams of other girls Carmilla was trying to seduce.
According to this book, though, Elle was actually the one to blame. It had only been dumb luck that Carmilla was the star of every bad dream she ever had. In truth, Elle had created those dreams and walked in them herself. It hadn't been Carmilla who contacted her. It had been her who contacted Carmilla. As insane as it sounded, though, it made sense the more Elle read about it. Even when she was directly dragging Laura into the dreamworld and tormenting her by distorting reality, Elle still thought it had been some other supernatural force but she finally began to see just what she, as her own person, was capable of.
So she was a Dreamwalker. Now what? Well, according to the book, that made her a potential servant to the gods. Gods? Elle had been raised a devout Christian but, after her fall from Carmilla into the Pit where the Deep One resided, Elle lost her faith just like she lost everything else. For the longest time, she believed in no deity or natural law. Instead, she believed only in the concept of "kill or be killed, all else be chuffed". There was no God as far as she was concerned, or else he would've have let all this happen. But now this book was suggesting that the Sumerian gods were the correct ones and that they were very real indeed.
"This book's got to be crazy!" the ghost sighed as she curled up in her library, still trying to decipher the last few pages. It was the first time in 150 years that she had been in the library without reliving the exact moment she and Carmilla betrayed each other. She didn't care, though, because she was far too invested in trying to understand the laws of nature as written by this book. So the Sumerian gods were real? That seemed impossible! But it was coming from the same book that pretty much was able to prove that she was in fact a Dreamwalker. So maybe there was some levity to all of this?
For a week more, Elle continued to hone her Dreamwalking skill and she traveled the globe in search of more info regarding Dreamwalkers and the gods they served. It was the closest she ever had to leaving the schloss to see the world. It wasn't nearly as fun as she'd expected and since she was only able to travel in dreams, she still wasn't technically experiencing life the way a normal person would. It was a sad and discomforting thought, but if Elle wanted answers, she had to get out there, so she did. At the end of the week, though, a new feeling set in. Dread. Although there really was no rush for her to move on, a strange new sensation kept urging her to stop beating around the bush and just go.
"But I don't want to! Who knows what lies on the other side?" the ghost girl pleaded with herself as that familiar sense of urgency overtook her. She was able to stave off the desire to move on for a little while but, ultimately, it did get the better of her.
"Fine!" she snapped in defeat. "I'm going!" she said, then after setting the rest of the schloss aright, she made her way to the front door. It was funny, she went from trying to find every way possible to open it to not even looking at it. Now at last, she was standing before it once again. It was shut but she knew it wasn't locked. Once upon a time, she would've been delighted. Now she was terrified. She was about to face her destiny and she was terrified. She had no idea what to expect. Was there Heaven? Hell? Nothing? Limbo? Some mix of the four? Reincarnation? Something else entirely? Well, there was only one way to find out…
When Elle finally found the bravery to open her schloss door, she had expected anything ranging from fire to darkness to clouds. What she got was simply her schloss' garden. She opened the doors of death and found herself… outside.
"What?" she asked aloud, but no sooner had those words left her lips when she heard something fluttering overhead. She looked up and her jaw dropped. An old man with a beard of lapis lazuli was flying towards her on a winged bull. It was a sight she never thought she would see. Then again, her life was always so full of supernatural surprises. She could only stare as the bull landed right in front of her. Now that it was closer, Elle could see a saddlebag of U By Kotex sanitation products tied to its side. The man's eyes shined silver when he saw her on the schloss' doorstep.
"Elle Sheridan! It's about time you came out! I've been waiting 150 years for you!" he cried. Elle could only stare. "Oh, yes! How rude I am!" he cried, slapping his wrinkled forehead. "My name is Nanna, Sumerian God of the Moon! And have I got the proposition for you!" he added gleefully. Elle could only stare. Did it never end?
Apparently not because, an hour later, Elle was riding that bull back up to the moon with Nanna still talking.
"You'll love it!" he said. "The job is fun and the pay is pretty good! The moon ain't a bad place to live and it's the best place to launch off of in order to reach the dreamworld. And already, I can see that you're a promising Dreamwalker!" he added. "I'm so glad you agreed to give it a try!"
"It's not like I had any other choice!" Elle deadpanned, thinking about the fact that if she denied his offer to become his divine messenger, she would head to the afterlife instead. It sounded very depressing, being little more than a giant underground cave where everyone regardless of deed would spend eternity drifting through. Being a Dreamwalker didn't sound that depressing in comparison despite Elle's aversion to the supernatural.
"That's the spirit!" the moon god replied, laughing happily as his mighty bull flew higher and higher, a few tampons slipping from the saddlebag along the way. Did it never end?
AN: As you already know, I hated the way Elle's story ended so here, she comes back. In the same way Mattie became Ereshkigal's servant, Elle became Nanna's. This is fitting because the moon, dreams and menstruation are often linked and those three words sum up some of Carmilla's most important symbolism. Mostly, though, this is just a setup to a story with more Elle (which I will not write because I can't think of a decent plot. I've tried five times before and scrapped the story each time. If any of you readers wish to adopt the story, please do. I know I won't be writing more than this intro).
Basic plot: Elle starts working for Nanna, God of moon and dreams. The dreams start going haywire. Elle has to team up with the other Carmilla cast to find out why and fix it. Ultimately, it's Geshtinanna, sister of Dimuzid (who was the husband of Inanna). She still hasn't forgiven Inanna and isn't happy about Inanna's divinity being restored. It was going to be very Percy Jackson with all the Sumerian gods in the story and then each of Elle's companions was going to be a human avatar for one of the gods (Laura was going to be Utu's) and they were going to defeat Geshtinanna, fix the dreams, and save the world (again). So yeah, this story is up for grabs if anyone wants to try and write it. I tried, but it never flowed well enough so this summary of the intro is all that remains).