isolt griffin

I'm more alive than I've ever been

How did one go about telling a story like this? How did you impart upon a person the tale of your own demise and accurately depict what is was to slough off the confines of one's mortal skin? How did you paint a picture as macabre as the one Harley was demanding that she compose?

Start at the beginning...

Oh, dear sweet friend, if only it were that simple.

For a small handful of tortourously lengthy moments does Isolt simply remain in place, cerulean eyes fixed upon the spot of Harley's room that had, until mere moments prior, been occupied by Ryker's formidable heft. She thinks of nothing and of everything all in the same moment, her companion's query after her wellbeing a question bearing far more weight than perhaps either of them could rightly comprehend. And, Isolt discovers then, it is one for which she does not possess an answer.

Without the utterance of a single word, Isolt meanders obediently after her drunken friend into the devastation that had previously been her living room. "Wait," she commands suddenly, pressing a gentle hand to Harley's arm to stymie her advance into the war-like ruins of the apartment. "I... I think I can fix this. Just give me a second." With a last surveying look about the chaos of the room does Isolt allow her eyes to fall to a close, beckoning forth the memory of the room as it had been hours prior. And, as the two images converge within the scope of her mind's eye, she can feel the atmosphere as it begins to shift and sway about her, can hear the miscellaneous scrapping and snapping as various articles of furniture mend and right themselves. All the while do the redheaded vampire's eyes remain closed, willing the shift, exercising control over perhaps the only tangible thing that she can in these moments of personal termoil.

When finally her eyes do open, Harley's living room is precisely as it had been when they had taken their leave of it earlier in the evening... before Ryker and the devastation that he had wrought upon them. Devastation that had shaken them to the marrow of their bones, treacherous aftershocks rattling them even in his absence. Isolt could feel te phantom tremor as it slithered its way down the length of her spine at the prospect of having, finally, been forced to reveal the truth of her present form to the one individual from whom she had sought most desperately to hide it. But now everything that she had fought to keep hidden, all of the insidious darkness that she had attempted to protect her dearest friend from lay betwixt them in a suffocating vortex separating one companion from the other. Never before had there existed such cataclysmic distance between the two women...

... and Isolt would tolerate it no longer.

"Okay," she whispers softly, almost as if she says it merely to herself, though she gestures for her comrade to sit upon the plush sofa at the center of the room. Tentatively, Isolt perches herself upon the opposing cushion, legs curled and tucked to her chest in a near-perfect mimic of the pose she had so often adopted during their childhood. Start at the beginning. "Do you remember that night that I called you about getting accepted into my residency program? I was super stoked and we were going to meet for drinks after you got off work. I wanted to try that seedy little place we had driven by a dozen times... Syn." It is hardly a query that warrants a response, for surely both women could recollect without difficulty the final time that they had spoken before circumstance and tragedy had taken them from one another so suddenly. Isolt could recall that night faultlessly, for it haunted her nightmares more often than she cared to attest to.

Her eyes wander then, settling on nothing in particular as she continues in a choked whisper. "I had gotten there early 'to test the place out', managed to find a seat at the bar and order a drink and... there was this guy there. Tall, dark, and handsome, brooding and all. The most gorgeous green eyes you've ever seen," she smiles then, despite herself, casting a knowing glance in the direction of the woman opposite her. "We started talking and he said that he worked there and offered me a tour of the place. I said yes... it seemed harmless and I knew it would be a while before you arrived." She gives pause then, eyes falling to a close as the delicate expanse of her brow pinches painfully and a single hand raises to slide through her glistening mane of crimson locks. An expanse of years separated that night from this one and still the barbs of anguish tighten mercilessly against the tender bulb of her stilled heart at the thought of what had transpired next. It is a tale that she had repeated only once, only to Damon in a moment of abject despair, and she finds rather swiftly that its searing burn had not ebbed in the retelling. "He was showing me the office or something and there was this... woman there. Everything happened so quickly and I coul-," the fibrous knot clenching painfully within her gullet catches the words that she intends, the dazzling blue of Isolt's eyes brimming with the traitorous crimson of tears that had too long been dammed. "I couldn't move, I couldn't breathe. And he- he just watched. He just watched while she..." A pair of blood tears trace their ghastly path down the gossamer paleness of her cheeks, for she could hold them back no longer, before Isolt quickly swipes them from existance. "Sorry," she chuckles half-heartedly, though for whose benefit remained to be seen, "it's really disgusting when I cry now..."