isolt griffin

I'm more alive than I've ever been

She was a shell, a disgarded husk left vacant and bereft all that she had been before.

She was a ghost.

A ghost that haunted the bowels of Red on the Water left empty and dark at her own behest; an ambiance to reflect upon her surroundings the cold, desolate void that had taken over within her. She existed solely in her own enforced seclusion save for the frequent appearances made by Damon in a loving and yet heretowith futile attempt to have her emerge from the solitude of their shared office or to coax her to feed, something she had voluntarily neglected for nigh to a week. Her body and her mind would not allow it.

It had been Damon's unfortunate task to impart upon his lover the news of her cherished companion's demise; such an innocent and lighthearted eve that had disappeared, evaporated and fallen away around her as the cooled, windswept ash of a dying ruin. The pieces of life's puzzle had only just begun to fall into place, revealing the splendor of the grander picture only to be obliterated in one fell swoop by fate's well-aimed hatchet. Of all of the loss that Isolt had known in this life and the one that had come before it, this loss had proven far too great a blow... far greater than the strength she possessed to meet the challenge it presented. And so she had collapsed entirely. Isolt had spent what felt like an eternity upon the polished wooden floor of her and Damon's office, crumpled upon herself in a show of fragility hardly characteristic of an immortal, sobbing inconsolably and profusely into the chest of her lover while he could do naught more than hold her. She had wept until it was doubtful that she could have any longer.

The once-vibrant vampire queen found then that not even in the slumber of the undead could she discover some small measure of solace... for then came the tide of memory. It was a peculiarity of those no longer living that, just as they did not sleep in the same manner that they once had, nor too could they dream as they used to. No new visions could her mind prepare for her, no blessed and temporary distraction from the woes of her waking hours. No, only memories of Tetradore and all that they had been through, all that they had survived together. Surprisingly though, it was not the recollections of Risque and her unending wraith against the pair that pulled the barbed wire of sorrow ever tighter against Isolt's ailing heart. Rather was it the times that had followed that stung as barbarically as any blade: the admittedly awkward Christmas dinner Isolt had hosted for Tetradore and his reunited family, the night they had danced so calmly amidst the chaos of the Ark's patrons... and the sunrise he had worked so diligently to gift to her. It was now, all of it, naught more than dust to collect within the farthest corners of a memory that would go on forevermore.

Shadows and dust.

Isolt's footfalls were soft as she seemed to float down one of the pub's darkened corridors in another seemingly-aimless journey to avoid the intensity of stagnation's heft upon her ailing body. It was then that the momentous thud and accompanying shatter of glass captured her wandering attention, bringing her slight frame to a hesitant halt. "Damon?" She calls out, the lilt of her voice now hoarse, her dazzling cerulean eyes rimmed with red as they search for any sign of movement that would betray the source of such a disturbance. When none comes, the wayward vampire approaches the small guest quarters, pausing for a long moment before tentatively easing the door ajar. And when she does... she must place a hand upon the door jam to keep herself upright, a strange glacial sensation working its way down the smooth curvature of her spine, down her limbs and to the very tips of her fingers and toes. "Oh my god," she whispers, choking on the words as they fight to pass the fibrous knot that clenches, eclipsing her throat. This wasn't real, it couldn't be real. Surely the picture of Tetradore's bare frame upon the floor was but her affinity attempting to soothe her sorrows with an illusion of him. Though why he would be naked and appear to her to be in such pain...

It is this thought, this notion, that has Isolt take those first, tentative steps towards the specter of her lost companion. She falls to her knees beside him, hands raised as if to touch him though they pause for an exceptionally long while, perhaps subconsciously hesitant to shatter this illusion her mind and powers have built for her. "Tet". This single word is but all she is capable of offering her ghost before her bottom lip begins to tremble and a crimson line appears at the boundaries of her eyes.