isolt griffin

I'm more alive than I've ever been

It is as if she is merely watching the exchange from afar. As if her mind, her soul, had taken leave of its fleshy tomb only to observe, to consider the pair of women through the lenses of eyes that were no longer her own. It is surreal in every way, a moment that Isolt had long ago found futile to even wish for; long ago the redheaded woman had resigned herself to the irrefutable truth that she would never again lay eyes upon her oldest companion, that Harley would exist only in her stilled heart and in the endless abyss that was her mind, and in the short lifetime of memories that the two had made together. In truth, the sole hope that Isolt clung to with all of her not-inconsiderable might was that immortality would not come to corrode this final part of Harley that would forever reside within her, that the ravages of a thousand years would not sully the finer details of their friendship.

It may have seemed as though the two women might resume precisely where circumstance had parted them all of those years ago, as if the respective paths that they had taken that fateful eve had been naught more than a dream from which they had awoken with a start only to find that never had they parted. Isolt had never met an untimely end and Harley had never been left alone in a world that had seldom ever shown her the simple decadence of kindness. For the barest of moments they were, as they always had been, Harley and Isolt, best friends forevermore.

The redheaded woman even chances the smallest chuckle at her companion's expression of absolute surprise with the news of her betrothal. "His name is Damon," she offers shyly, pondering what extent of detail it would be wise to offer when, all at once, the jovial simper crumbles, falling from her crimson bow of her lips as quickly as it had blossomed. The agony that followed Harley's statement was greater even than the cruelest torture Risque had ever inflicted upon the youthful vampire; it was a thousand venomous spires plunged into a forever bleeding heart. She had known it would come, for the great enigma that saturated the air betwixt them could not be disregarded for any substanial amount of time; they could not long perpetuate the guise of forced normality.

But, that her dearest companion could have ever believed that she would have vanished for a man was sacrilege. Isolt would have never denied that the love she bore Damon was absolute; however, never would she have dared to sacrifice Harley's companionship for another's presence within her life for theirs was a bond the likes of which did not come about often or easily. In this moment, though, it seems that the fire-crowned woman is capable of little more by way of protest than the shaking of her head. "Harley," she nearly pleads, "that's not what happened at all. I wouldn't..." Isolt cannot bring herself to finish, the wherewithal to do so lingering embarrassingly far from her desparately-outstretched fingers. Her greatest and most enduring desire was for Harley to come to know the circumstances that had pilfered her childhood friend from her and for her to know that not a single day had met its end without Isolt's thoughts having shed their light upon the memory of them.

Soon, perhaps, she would have the strength to tell her so. After all, the guise of mortality was one that would not long proffer its advantage to Isolt in the presence of her lifelong friend; the sun would soon rise upon them, and more would be cast in its light than Harley could have ever realized. But for now, she is content to bear the metaphorical spears that the raven-haired woman unintentionally skewers her with; it is, after all, still a dream come true to have her here. To have her back.

She knows not whether she should feel grateful for the change in subject, an expertly-manicured brow pitching skyward at the verbal labyrinth within which Harley seems wont to entangle them both. It was axiomatic, really, the fervor with which Harley seemed to find herself within such troublesome situations; it was a fact that had proven itself time and again through their shared childhood and adolescence. And yet it is nothing compared to what comes next, the utterance of a name that had come as companion to so very many of the more tenebrific moments in their lives. Ryker. Isolt's pristine brow furrows, sown and stitched into worried lines at the notion that Harley's insidious suiter had sniffed her out as some ravenous wolf on an unending prowl for the tender flesh of his prey. And... now he was vampire. The redheaded woman remembers well the brooding man whose shadow had darkened both literal and proverbial doorsteps for far longer than either woman would have cared to tell; but, to think him immortal now, to consider the atrocities that he might now prove capable of with such invulnerability bending the odds further to his favor...

"You're not on your own now... not anymore," she assures her dearest companion, the usually delicate features of Isolt's face bolstered by the resolve that peeks so tentatively from beyond the angelic veneer. "We'll look out for each other... just like we always have, okay? I promise."

I promise.