"...but the echo began in some indescribable way to undermine her hold on life. Coming at a moment when she changed to be fatigued, it had managed to murmur "Pathos, piety, courage - they exist, but are identical, and so is filth. Everything exists, nothing has value." - E.M. Forster, A Passage to India
1791 - New Orleans, Louisiana
Despite the poetry of spring and all of the rebirth that is supposed to come with it, the only thing that Caroline Forbes was met with in the warmer months was a dark and rancid despair fit for the coldest of winters.
It was in early March when William Forbes set out on a journey up the Mississippi with a small fleet of ships loaded to the rim with last seasons profits in tow, only for the various vessels to be overrun and disbanded somewhere along the way. He was pronounced dead immediately and without suspicion or cause for investigation. Pirates, they had said - they being the single ship out of the five that had managed to return home with a completely unharmed crew and no apparent losses to its manifest - had taken them by storm under the veil of night. The men swore on all that was holy that Bill Forbes had died a hero, a man of honor defending his men, his ship, and his cargo with his last breath. Caroline, however, had her suspicions in regards to her father's disappearance. Suspicions that only deepened when not a week later, his second in command, Stephen, abruptly abandoned his post within the Forbes' great indigo plantation in favor of exploring 'new horizons', taking a large sum of her family's remaining wealth with him. It was no surprise when Caroline's mother had fallen shortly after, driven to suicide by a mixture of grief and shame that had settled over their home since her father's abandonment.
For two days, the young woman had sat beside her mother's casket in the parlor with the shutters drawn tightly closed and only the shadows to keep her company. Caroline had stared at her mother's face until spots appeared before her eyes and she could feel the welcoming sway of unconsciousness looming. Still, she forced herself to stare - to study the odd angle of her mother's head as it rested on the silken pillow in comparison to the swan-like way she had always managed to elongate it just so and the discoloration that darkened the tips of her elegant fingers that had danced across ivory keys and worked intricate braids in her hair - until she could hardly endure the pain and the smell of decay a moment longer. Even months later, with the plantations sold, her grief buried, and Caroline moved into a townhouse in the city, she could not seem to escape the pain that ricocheted inside of the empty space that now filled her chest where her heart had once rested. She could think of nothing but her complete and utter solitude in life, her father lost to another life and her mother buried beneath the dirt and gravel of St. Louis, and so she gave little care to the social norms and delicacies that she had once held so dear.
Instead, she lived like one who wished to die but lacked the courage to do so, herself. She tested fate every chance that she was presented: walking black streets and alleys alone, drinking until her head was an unnavigable sea of thoughts, and passing out in cabarets within the company of those that knew her for little more than the finery that she wore and the currency that lined her purse. It was that same disregard for self preservation that lead her into the bowels of the French Quarter that night, with no thoughts outside of the promise of champaign and some semblance of a distraction from the black ache that filled her tired soul.
To Caroline's great annoyance when she arrived, the opera house was full with every box spilling over and each seat from the stalls to the Heavens occupied. She had chosen a seat in the second row - the private box that her father had purchased long ago feeling less appealing than a moonlit stroll through St. Louis Cemetery - so close to the stage that she could see the pearls of sweat dancing across the performer's painted cheeks and feel the heat of the spotlights burning, but still the chatter of the crowd gritted away at her nerves. The music of the first act had been sloppily performed and only served to feed her agitation as she, unlike the majority of those in the audience, attending with the sole purpose of being seen out and about, wanted nothing more than to become lost in a world that the performance created. She had chosen the evening's activity from a place that had once been filled with great passion rather than one of vanity, the prospect of the caress against her ears proving to be much more appealing than that of another suitor's greasy compliments in hopes of claiming her - and what was left of her family's fortune - in marriage or the prospect of yet another moment alone with her misery. She wanted nothing more than to feel the music; the fine white hairs on her arms standing on end as the tempo peaked, or the swell within her chest as the aria comes to a close. When she exited the building less than an hour later after finding little to no relief in the arms of the symphony's lackluster performance, she once again took to the darkness of St. Charles Avenue in search of a release from life.
2017 - New Orleans, Louisiana
The beat of the bass rattled against Danielle's bones as she moved in the dark club, each step taking her deeper into the sea of dancing people and making her feel oddly weightless amongst the pressure of writhing bodies. The air was thick with humidity and small beads of sweat had begun to slither from her hairline to the base of her spine from the moment that she'd walked through the door. It made her grateful for the sheerness of the small scraps of dark, shimmery fabric of her outfit, sure that she would be reduced to little more than a puddle on the dance floor if she had decided to don anything more substantial. Even with her familiarity with the club, she had spent the night thus far on edge for a reason that she couldn't quite put her finger on with everything from the steady beat of the music and the sway of the crowd, to the heavy gaze that she felt on her but had failed to meet causing her to question every sway of her hips and flirty smile that allowed her to blend in with the crowd.
It had been nearly forty eight house since she had left the small, sparsely lit apartment where she had met with a mysterious woman that shared her face and had given her the story that was going to change her life. A story that had already changed her life. Caroline had been a vampire - an honest to God, sleep in a coffin, burn in the sunlight, fangs-are-to-straws-as-blood-is-to-fruit-punch vampire! - and she had spent the night retelling the events of her some three hundred years of life with a pain shining within her cerulean eyes that the young writer knew she would never be able to describe with perfect accuracy.
When the vampire had completed her tale, Danielle Molloy had founded herself speechless for the first time in her life with her eyes wide as she processed all that she had just been told and the vampire sat before her perfectly collected, with her porcelain hands folded neatly on the table and her red rimmed eyes fixed on the turning tapes of the old school voice recorder that had documented their encounter. Danielle took the opportunity to study the creature that looked so much like herself, yet so different. Where her own face was still full of the roundness of her youth, Caroline's was so gaunt that he veins of her temples showed as if she had been carved out of marble rather than flesh and bone and she sat so still that only her eyes evinced life.
In the hours that had followed, long after the vampire had bid her a final warning of her tale and the sun had risen high in the sky, Danielle had listened to the tapes repeatedly, furiously scribbling down notes as she the even, musical voice recanted her tale of mystery and woe. "It was a very warm evening, and I could tell as soon as I saw her on St. Charles that she had someplace to go…"
She had made quick work of her notes - Katherine Pierce... off St. Charles Avenue… enjoys being at the center of attention - before diving into her research. All of her digging had lead her to this place, this pulsating club on the outskirts of New Orleans' red light district, with a palpable desperation for the story to be continued and all but a bullseye painted on her back.
