isolt griffin

I'm more alive than I've ever been

"He does," she affirms, the syllables themselves issued in little more than the hush of a whisper as the delicate bulbs of her fingertips tap apprehensively at the glass clasped between them. Isolt, at least for now, can offer only this and nothing more. She cannot possibly convey to her dearest friend what Damon had done for her in those weeks that had transpired in the stead of her transformation; cannot possibly tell of how he had come upon her when she was so weak and weary, wilting as the petals of a dying bloom because of the starvation that Risque had enforced against her in the nightmarish oubliette that may as well have been her tomb. He had sought out the emotionally-persecuted, fledgling vampire in what had surely been her life's darkest moment and had, ever so slowly, unearthed the proverbial phoenix that had lain beneath the scattered ashes of a mortal lifetime. He had gifted her with the wherewithal to exist in a world that had never been meant for her; he had taught her to live this life by dying. Damon had lifted her, bolstered her against circumstance that would have otherwise seen her fragile soul obliterated... he had taught her what it was to be immortal, what it was to be vampire.

Everything else is simply lost, any other words that she intends are a casualty of emotion and circumstance. Even though Harley yearns so desparately for an explanation, for the explanation, Isolt cannot bring herself to give it. She cannot bring herself to tell the tale of her gruesome and ever so untimely departure from the mortal realm or the succession of grisly encounters that had punctuated the dawn of her immortal life. And so, stilled heart set aflame with the conflagration of grief, Isolt offers what terribly little she can though she knows it will do nothing to sate her friend's hunger for the truth. "I can't even begin to explain," she nearly whispers, an asphyxiated pause forcing her to silence for a few long, weighty moments. "But... I wanted so badly to go home. I wanted so badly to come back to you... I thought about it every day, I promise, but it would have been so, so much worse if I had." It is but one of the young vampire's greatest wishes that her companion might bear witness to the veracity that exists in every cerulean helix of the woman's eyes as she speaks.

It was a truth, though perhaps not the one that Harley sought with such vehemence; Isolt had thought of evading the unrelenting clutches of her Maker to return to the home that she and Harley had made together, she had wanted in so desparate a way to confide her woes in the single person she was certain that she could trust. She had thought about Harley every single day. But it had been for naught, for Isolt knew that to wander astray of Risque's labyrinth would only bring the wretched minx and all of the troubles for which she was herald to Harley's doorstep. "And I did," she offers, breaking the pregnant silence that had seemed to consume the syllables even as they had parted the curl of her tongue. "I did come home... but by then you were already gone."

And that is all, it seems, as their conversation veers down subsequent avenues both dark and light. Mention of her impending nuptials coaxes a grin that whispers of lightheartedness to Isolt's lips. "Yes," she sighs, the gentle slopes of her shoulders sagging somewhat as if to assuage the press of an unseen burden. "I don't even know where to start, or where I should end, or what I even want it to be like. I just want to be married... I just want him, you know?" An exasperated chortle accents the question she knows full well may go unanswered, Harley having never been the half of this pair that was heartened by the notion of matrimony. "Thank you," the redheaded Supreme very nearly whispers, her eyes falling to their glasses for a moment as they come together in a toast. "I'm so happy that you're back, Harley. I've felt like a piece of me has been missing for so long... like I haven't been myself for years." Another truth, an axiom beget by the distance that circumstance had placed between the pair of childhood friends. She may very well have found her "one", but what mattered now and most of all was that Isolt had, finally, been reunited with her soulmate.