isolt griffin

I'm more alive than I've ever been

This was, well and truly, the most foolish endeavor she had yet undertaken. A fool's errand in its very essence and a decision she would likely come to regret come the warm sweep of the dawn's radiance. Should Damon ever discover her whereabouts this eve surely he would punctuate her return with a stern and thorough rebuttal of the decision she had made. Her lover's desire, his need, to ensure her protection in the tumult that was the aftermath of his discovery of this New Eden was as severe and as passionate as ever it had been. He worried so much for her that she dared not breathe even a whisper of what she had intended.

And still, here she sat.

There had been more than a small share of moments forfeited to the consideration of whether or not there was any merit in offering a response to the mysterious message that had blossomed with such innocence upon the screen of her phone, though even this could offer no comparison to the mind power allotted to the mental impasse that was the question of who. Even now, perched atop one of many pristinely-varnished bar stools in the lounge of Ceara's fortress, Isolt could do naught but upend the proverbial stones of what few possibilities there seemed to be. Nimble fingers turn her phone over idly, an occupied brain desperately seeking some employ for them as conduit for the anxious energy that skips and crackles betwixt every nerve. Such was the intensity of her preoccupation that Isolt senses naught of the approach of the one whose identity she seeks with such fervor. Hardly does she realize the woman stands so near until a voice rings out into the ether of the redhead's considerations.

It is an eternal moment.

A moment within which her fingers grow rigid, the phone within their grasp thudding haphazardly against the polished oak of the bar. Had she breath it would have caught against the phantom knot that constricts, coiled and hard, within her throat, the gnarled fingers of a chill far more glacial than that of death dragging down the curvature of her spine. Isolt would have known that voice anywhere; not even the corrosion of a thousand years could have pilfered the memory of that voice from her for she had heard it every day for well over two decades. Those notes were elation and they were sorrow, joy and fear.

Harley.

All at once does Isolt spin to face the woman she now knows she will find standing there. The possibility had, admittedly, never even whispered itself to life within her mind for the sheer impossibility that it presented. Isolt had toiled, battled within herself with the nearly instinctual need to return to Harley in the aftermath of her transformation; however, try though she certainly had to make her way back to her childhood companion, the young vampire had known in her deepest and most private heart of hearts what fate would have befallen her most cherished friend had Risque come to know of her existence. When the time had come though, when the heft of Isolt's shackles had finally fallen from her body and she had been able to return home... she was greeted by naught but the shadows and dust of dreams and memories long since passed. She had died anew that day, convinced in every ailing part of her soul that her presumed abandonment had proven the catalyst for Harley's departure. Isolt had born the weight of this guilt every day since.

And yet here she stood as if no time had passed at all... Harley, who had known Isolt during both the greatest and the darkest moments that had punctuated both of their lives. In this moment the vibrant redheaded woman cannot find it within herself to question after the reason for her friend's return, the only axiom of any value was the singular notion that she had returned. With this Isolt throws her arms around the raven-haired woman before her, compelled in part by the admittedly illogical fear that she might coalesce into the wanton ether of a dream should Isolt allow her to do so. "I can't believe it's you," she nearly whispers, the words so seemingly useless as they fall from her lips, but for the moment at least they are all she is capable of offering.