isolt griffin

I'm more alive than I've ever been

This day was nothing as she had dreamt that it would be in those quiet moments of contemplation that, now, seemed a luxury all but banished to the mortal life that lay behind her. Her mother was not here to soothe the anxious butterflies that fluttered about rampantly within her, her father not here to guide her down the aisle towards the man that she had chosen. Aaron was absent, as was Adrien, and nearly all of the individuals she had ever known in the life that had passed so swiftly from the grasping tips of her fingers. She thinks of them, each of them in turn, her silent recollections accented only by the anticipatory bustling of her guests as they settle into their places amidst the beautiful garden she had chosen for her venue and the nearly-hypnotic flapping of the fabric of the tent about her as it danced in the cool night breeze. None of them were here to share in the gaiety of this moment... save for Harley. She was out there somewhere, presumably avoiding conversation with any of their other guests, but she was here. Fate had granted her this single mercy and had returned her oldest and dearest friend to her and she was here for this.

A smile crests upon her porcelain features at the thought, a single hand sliding absentmindedly along the fabric of the gown she wears. It is far from the grandest dress a bride had ever doned, simple in comparison and yet it is no less beautiful as it hangs so gracefully from the slope of every feminine curve. As if guided by instinct, Isolt's fingers rise to skate against the necklace that her mother had given her so very many years ago, the occasion that had warranted the gift long since forfeited to the corrosive hand of time. A gift...

The auburn-haired vampire spins abruptly, making short work of the distance that separates her from the admittedly over-loaded lounge in the corner of the tent that acted as her bridal suite, rummaging through the various odds and ends that had been brought along for the evening in order to extract the velvet box from its place within her bag. She had very nearily missed the opportunity to bestow Yumi with the gift that she had chosen specially for her, for surely Tetradore would be along at any moment to gather the flame-crowned woman for the start of the ceremony. Isolt sneaks carefully to the tent that sits beside her own, calling out to her companion as her fingers glasp at the supple fabric of the tent's would-be door. "Yumi, I almost forgot to-," she gives pause then, the words she intends dying upon her tongue, never to be uttered. Everything in Yumi's suite was, surely, as it should have been... almost. The oval mirror that set atop the woman's vanity was askew, the dainty wooden chair cast aside haphazardly. "Yumi?" Isolt's summons is marked by its quietude, the paces of her feet tentative at best as she draws nearer to the disheveled table.

She does not feel the needle as it plunges into the flesh and sinew of her back, and hardly does she register the heavily muscled arms as they coil as twin constrictors about her slender waist. These are sensations that are simply lost, robbed from her senses by a greater, far more agonizing sensation as the mesh of the silver muzzle is pulled taut over Isolt's mouth. The near-instantaneous stench of boiling flesh and the tell-tale sizzle of organic corrosion would have stolen her breath had she any to give. Unable to scream, naught but a muffled groan from deep within her gullet sounds. Driven by the primal yearning to battle her assailants do Isolt's arms lift to clasp at the individuals at her back and yet... she discovers in a moment of horrifying realization that she can hardly bring herself to lift them. Every part of her, every appendage, grows heavy as if filled to the seams with sand, even her eyelids threaten to forgo wakefulness at any moment. In this moment her body seems only capable of the painfully slow and erratic movment of her leg as it is flung against the reflective glass of the mirror. Her efforts, so very little though they might have been, are rewarded with the crackling of glass. A splendid spider's web of fissures mars the once-prestine surface, stray shards finding their place within the flesh of Isolt's bare feet.

It is the last thing she feels, the last thing she sees, before the world around her is swallowed by darkness.