AN: There was a time when I took pop songs as prompts, and then let Byron and his contemporaries spur my fiction. With age came the prompts from Neruda. And now, as a more mature woman, I find myself wanting to write with a different spirit.
I have not sat down to seriously write fanfic for a decade. I cannot promise the same devotion of time that I spent back then. But if you are willing to take a ride, I am willing to try out my writing hand again.
This time, Kahlil Gibran's 'The Prophet' will be my prompt. Look it up, and it might clue you in on a theme of the story.
A Moment of Rest Upon the Wind
by Catheryne
Part 1
Children come. Adults leave.
Each name that passed through the large yawning doors of the school was carved in her mind. Never forgotten. Their peals of laughter still echo through the halls in the quietest of evenings, just when the school year ends. They were the days of solitude she longed for the most. They were the nights of isolation that she craved and feared in equal measure.
They come to her as children, eager to be molded, open or guarded, yet earning to learn more of the world that lay in wait for them.
They leave her once they shed their coils, and step into the world in their true skin. They come as children, drink all they can drink, and leave—if she was successful—fully formed.
Decades now they came and went. Classes upon classes. What was a temporary stint while Alaric's turn came to explore the world became her life.
Caroline took a breath of the still air that smelled faintly of the lake. The calmness of the surface belied the depth of the water.
Here was Peace. In her immortality, this was to be her Peace.
Standing at the dock, under the sharp sun, she closed her eyes. It was ironic that she, and so many like her, would take breaths to comfort, to mull, to find calm. They certainly did not need the air. It was one of those memories, those actions tattooed in your soul.
One day, in a year or even in a century, she remembered him warn, or plea, truly she could no longer decide which. All she truly knew was that she did not cherish the words enough when they were uttered.
Too late. Decades late.
You will turn up at my door.
Here I am, she whispered. What do you have to offer? Show me.
But the air was still; the sun was sharp, the water calm.
And he was silent.
At peace.
Was this her peace—forever standing on the dock, the doorstep to the only tomb she would know for him—scattered as he had been into the wind?
Are you still here?
And he was silent. Not here. Gone long ago.
Children will come. And she will help them out of their shells and into their skins. And then she will usher them into the world. And they will leave.
And still, here she would be trapped in a prison world of her own making. Because how she would leave, she could not know. Her rational mind had known all along that he was not here, but this was where Hope had let him free.
Turn around, and don't look back, she told herself as she walked back towards her car. This was how you say goodbye, she told herself, knowing tomorrow she would return to stand on the dock, to breathe, to speak with someone she knew was not there.
Every mortal she knew before her immortality had gone. Many of those who told her they would leave forever—gone. Even the bursts of sunshine in her long darkness had left her, thinking fondly of that time when love and friendship intertwined.
A hundred years, a thousand, he had playfully teased her. When she was young, ill prepared. He came too early, and left too soon.
But he was at peace.
And underneath the calm perfection of her exterior, Caroline had never known as much turbulent storm.
Everybody leaves.
She was surprised the find an intruder inside her office. Had Caroline been the young, less experienced vampire that she had been before, she would have sped for a weapon or a shield. But violent, dastardly intruders did not bury their faces in books.
Of medieval poetry.
Her lips twitched. As much as Hope was her own woman, she was also her father's daughter.
Caroline's brows rose, then furrowed at the sight of the muddy boots on the desk she had otherwise kept pristine. She would have complained, but the girl had long been dear to her as a child and dearer as she grew into her immortal skin.
And she and Hope, loss for loss, were like competitors in a race that no one else would willingly wish to enter.
"I hope you intend to wipe off that grime when you leave."
The book lowered to reveal the bright blue eyes. Hope cocked her head to the side, her auburn hair falling partly down her shoulder. "Who says I'm leaving?"
Everybody leaves.
"The kids are out on school break. There is no one to welcome or scare off," Caroline offered.
"Which begs the question—why are you still here?"
As if she did not know the answer. As if the decades and the company did not reveal to her, clue by agonizing clue, the reason that Caroline returned. As if they were not the friends they had become by now.
How much Hope knew now that she did not know when first she donned that blue dress.
Every few years or so, Hope would pop in unexpectedly with one mission.
There was no outward sign of it. Hope had honed the skill to perfection. There was no hitch in her breath, or a spasm of a muscle. But Caroline knew.
She had become too cocky. Hope had missed the year before, caught up in a hunt somewhere in eastern Europe. The year before, she was caught in a romance that took her to a dimension that Caroline doubted even Elijah could have pronounced. Usually, she kept it well away from prying eyes. But these days, Caroline had been too caught inside her own head that she was careless. Her eyes darted to it, right by the edge of the desk. It was an unassuming velvet box that once held a priceless gift.
And now it was even more precious.
In an instant, Hope was on her feet and she grabbed box. At exactly the same moment, Caroline gasped the other end.
"Give it to me," Caroline said firmly.
Hope's eyes narrowed. "I love you, Caroline," she said, softly. And Caroline knew she meant it. "But you should not have this."
Strength for strength, Caroline knew that Hope could take it. Slowly, she released the box. Charmed by witches so powerful that no other hand could ever break the seal, Caroline released her breath. "It's of no use to you."
Hope's jaw tightened. "It shouldn't be of any use to any us," she responded. Grasping one end in her grip, Hope took the other end with another hand and with all her hand tried to break it. Once. Twice. It was a ritual now. She expressed rage with a groan, then smashed it on the floor. Did not even expect it to break into pieces before slamming her muddy boot onto it to no avail.
"Hope—"
Again. And again.
With a frustrated roar, Hope hurled the box into the fireplace.
Spelled, the box simply clattered back down onto the desk, soiled but no worse for wear.
"Are you satisfied?" Caroline asked softly.
Hope snorted. "Never."
Caroline picked up the narrow box, then picked up a tissue from the box sitting on her desk, idly wiping at the grime until it was good and clean. Who knew spells could be better than a sealant to protect velvet. When she looked back at Hope, she could see emotion brimming in her eyes in the form of tears that she would not shed.
"You shouldn't have it. No one should."
Caroline brought the box close to her chest, clutched to her heart. She walked over to Hope, then held her eyes unblinkingly. "Do you trust me?" Hope looked away. Caroline gently turned Hope's chin, the way she used to do when Hope was a young student, and Caroline had not yet been in a desperate search around the world for a solution to the twins' joining. Reluctantly, Hope met her eyes again. "Trust me. Please. I would never-"
Years of searching like a madwoman, determined to find a way to save both of her girls, Caroline had scoured through spellbooks by ancient mystics, read prophecies by wise men long forgotten by time, and copied down indecipherable carvings on walls of millennia old monuments. And then she was called to a dig, surreptitiously handed the small torn piece of parchment so old it should have broken into ashes long ago. What power it had that through a thousand years buried in the sand, exposed to the elements, the writing survived.
Should she fail, this was the only key to bring her fallen daughter back.
It was a spell that fed into itself, nourishing and sustaining through the centuries.
Caroline had prayed that she would never use it. But she had found it, and what mother would she be if she did not at least keep it close. She had never truly known the sheer magic of it until Freya had paid a visit to the school once, a long time ago when Hope was still a student here. And what Freya told her chilled her to her core.
It was one thing to bring the dead back from Veil. It was another to free a soul from a prison world.
And completely another to snake a dark smoky hand into the deepest recesses of Peace, wrap gnarly fingers around the soul, then snatch them back into the living, with all the rage and agony and madness purged rushing back to take the place of your humanity.
And with Caroline's blood and Freya's magic, the rolled up parchment was sealed into the box.
"Then why do you have it? There's no threat to the girls anymore."
"It's indestructible," Caroline stated as a matter of fact. "Where else would it be safer than with me?" She prided herself in her self-control. She was Caroline Forbes. She was Miss Mystic Falls. She controlled her blood lust by sheer willpower. She turned off her humanity and kept her head. The many times she had been tempted, yet kept herself from falling until—
"You're not selfish, Caroline," Hope allowed.
Caroline nodded, with a smile. In this prison world, all of her own making. Living dead, alive but not living. Here to stay as children come and adults go, a constant while they lived their lives and saw the world. She had seen the world enough trying to save her girls. She was satisfied to stay at his doorstep, a mock tomb to the ashes that was long rested in the wind, on the surface of the water, sank and mixed in with the silt. "I'm not selfish," Caroline repeated. But my God, sometimes she wished she was. Just a little.
Maybe she could have lived.
But what is the point of living now?
"Okay," Hope said, with finality. The same finality these conflicts ended with every year or so. "Keep it somewhere unseen, won't you? There's no point tempting weaker people than you."
And then Caroline recognized the wistfulness in the other woman's voice, realized why she returned every time, needing desperately to destroy the spell.
A kindred spirit.
With a sad smile, Caroline took the box and opened the drawer. She slid it inside, hidden from view. And then she took Hope in her arms for an embrace. "Those weaklings," Caroline whispered into Hope's ear. She could hear the tears in Hope's giggle. "Not us. Never us. Just a few decades more and we'll be over it."
Hope reluctantly pulled away, and Caroline knew how much control it took for Hope to show her strength. Her mother would have been so proud of the woman she had become. And she knew how much Klaus was.
Klaus.
First time she even thought his name. He was just always there in the back of her mind. But she never named him. Could not name him.
The pang of pain that shot into her heart turned into a vise that gripped her, handicapped her, completely paralyzed her.
Sometimes she wished she could forget his name. It was never fair how long it took, how much living she had to do, before she truly saw him and who he had become.
As if her words reverberated loudly, even if they were only in her mind, Caroline recognized the shift in her companion as Hope reached to clasp her hand. She blinked back the moisture in her eyes before they threatened to spill. "Those weaklings." This time, it was Hope that used the words teasingly. "Come on. You might not want to leave the school for this perpetual wake, but I'm sure you won't say no to coffee. My treat."
"Your treat?" laughed Caroline. "Will miracles never cease?"
tbd