[color=gray][i][indent][indent]Two letters; two strings of fate, each in scarlet twine, each sobbed through with ebony malice, each woven delicately through the fringes of destiny unknown and eternally bound. Each failed promise spun from penmanship done thoroughly and scripted so elegantly that she could decipher the intentions lain through every scrawl of ink and illustrated signature that summoned her daughter’s name. The name she had given, the name whispered through time, the name that spun sorrow through the eyes of the almighty and everything that Charlotte Cahors could see. The galaxies that collided and churned away through bidden lashes, the eyes of All, the eyes of many that fell upon her likeness undone. Ebony hair and bright gaze stricken with the fate of a creature both born of life and death and the delicate touches of her father– a name she muttered into the night, forsaken and without, a name that loomed before her and summoned their child of love promised and yet lost. But– She had never told him that she was with child, she never uttered of the conception, never gave word to even when she was born in the first touches of winter. Though little surprise colored her facade as she received the letter, only a few days after the one she had received from Jonas, each so carefully crafted; the promises of a better life, a means to see the power within contained, controlled, conformed to the betterment of a child that would know nothing but pain for the terrifying manifest within. Charlotte would look upon these letters for days on end, as red bloomed and sparked and suspended over the innocence curled next to her time and time again, as she held her breath and allowed the name of the man she loved to sway her final decision in the end. When she gave Amma over to those waiting embraces of life undone, knowing not what loomed beyond those doors, unaware of the cruelties calculated and placed and already decided for the child that heralded the eyes of the world’s end. Life for Charlotte Cahors would be a journey through the underworld and back, her eyes fated to weep blood for All she had seen and could not stop. To the family she had once reached out to, the name Baxter so carefully ruined by the machinations of man and the eternal vexation to be as mortals struggling to obtain the ultimate mantle known as God. Immortality was spent through leagues of dread, suspended through the sunken chasm of the unknown that accompanied the life of Cahors as a shroud of death. She would only know, maybe some months later, what true hell was decided for her there; the artful words Jonas had spun, to speak of the future and then not, to be forever damned as a man so many steps ahead and detached from reality; unable to save even himself. Charlotte would spend years trying to get her daughter back, the things she would do, to try and save her. Only for it to have never meant anything at all.[/indent][/indent][/i] [center][sup][color=#2e2c2c]_____[/color][color=#373534]_____[/color][color=#403d3c]_____[/color][color=#494644]_____[/color][color=#524f4c]_____[/color][color=#5b5754]_____[/color][color=#64605d]_____[/color][color=#6e6965]_____[/color][color=#77716d]_____[/color][color=#807a75]_____[/color][color=#89837d]_____[/color][color=#928b85]_____[/color][/sup][sup][color=#9b948d]_____[/color][/sup][sup][color=#928b85]_____[/color][color=#89837d]_____[/color][color=#807a75]_____[/color][color=#77716d]_____[/color][color=#6e6965]_____[/color][color=#64605d]_____[/color][color=#5b5754]_____[/color][color=#524f4c]_____[/color][color=#494644]_____[/color][color=#403d3c]_____[/color][color=#373534]_____[/color][color=#2e2c2c]_____[/color][/sup][/center] [CENTER][img]https://i.imgur.com/DxXCQ1u.jpg[/img][/CENTER][indent][sub][COLOR=978184][B]Location:[/B][/COLOR] [I]Campus Grounds - Pacific Royal Collegiate & University.[/I][/sub][sup][right][COLOR=#978184][b]Dance Monkey #4.032:[/b][/COLOR] [I]atlantic.[/I][/right][/sup][/indent][center][sup][color=#2e2c2c]_____[/color][color=#373534]_____[/color][color=#403d3c]_____[/color][color=#494644]_____[/color][color=#524f4c]_____[/color][color=#5b5754]_____[/color][color=#64605d]_____[/color][color=#6e6965]_____[/color][color=#77716d]_____[/color][color=#807a75]_____[/color][color=#89837d]_____[/color][color=#928b85]_____[/color][/sup][sup][color=#9b948d]_____[/color][/sup][sup][color=#928b85]_____[/color][color=#89837d]_____[/color][color=#807a75]_____[/color][color=#77716d]_____[/color][color=#6e6965]_____[/color][color=#64605d]_____[/color][color=#5b5754]_____[/color][color=#524f4c]_____[/color][color=#494644]_____[/color][color=#403d3c]_____[/color][color=#373534]_____[/color][color=#2e2c2c]_____[/color][/sup][/center][INDENT][sub][color=#978184][B]Interaction(s):[/B][/COLOR] -[/sub][SUP][RIGHT][COLOR=#978184][b]Previously:[/b][/COLOR] [color=gray][I]The Price of Mercy.[/I][/color][/right][/SUP] [indent][INDENT] [i]The ferry ride had been easy, anticlimatic at best, Haven stayed by her side and though apprehension feathered through her and she looked over her shoulder at every turn, Amma remained close by, similar tension that coiled through her entire frame even as she browsed through a myriad of colors and fabrics and palmed through the racks with little care to the final selection. Her earlier encounter with Sierra played over in her mind, her eyes drifting towards Harper every so often. She didn’t spare much thought to the dance before, as Amma had been determined to not attend, every moment of its mention having been met with a careless shrug and a lackadaisical commitment. Memory served it being brought up at the beach, where Harper had approached her with Katja and Gil, and here she stilled, fingers delicate and threaded through chiffon and silk, she could’ve sworn someone had asked her, a hazed affair through her thoughts and the shadow of memories betwixt her ears as she then caressed through sleeves of nylon and ventured further into the store.[/i] [i]Gil hadn't asked her, and she did not return the favor in kind. To inquire such, with the promise spoken of seeing him later, prompted answers to things that they were not prepared to acknowledge. Amma found that it was enough but the heated breath and the flush that sired through her bones rekindled the perplexities she discovered in his kiss; the calm she had found, the disassembly of the projected creature that was she - forever intertwined with the meaning of ruin and despair. The advocate for pain and rage traded under the moonlight for a girl who just wanted to love and be loved in return. [/i] [i]Just like her mother, perhaps, her memory gone thick and hazed and donned in a veil as if a maiden. The haunted figure of her dreams, laden through silver glass shattered at the corners that bled through with oozing black, her likeness cast upon a shell of a woman that clutched two letters betwixt her trembling hands drenched and stained in dried blood the color of rust.[/i] [i]Amma’s expression descends onto melancholy, tinged in retreating delicacies of wistfulness and confusion as she traces the ebony lines of a dress tucked somewhere in the back, an obsidian color adorned in silks, a daring and dramatic number assembled carefully from what she observed as she pulled it down and allowed the fabric to pool over her scarred arms; it would push boundaries. It would sire madness. It would compel caressing gazes. [/i] [i]It seemed almost normal, perhaps a bit mundane, to purchase a dress for a dance, something so simple and yet an accomplishment as she gathered her selection and walked up to Haven, letting it drape against her form.[/i] [i] [/i][i][color=#978184]“What do you think?”[/color][/i] [center][sup][color=#2e2c2c]_____[/color][color=#373534]_____[/color][color=#403d3c]_____[/color][color=#494644]_____[/color][color=#524f4c]_____[/color][color=#5b5754]_____[/color][color=#64605d]_____[/color][color=#6e6965]_____[/color][color=#77716d]_____[/color][color=#807a75]_____[/color][color=#89837d]_____[/color][color=#928b85]_____[/color][/sup][sup][color=#9b948d]_____[/color][/sup][sup][color=#928b85]_____[/color][color=#89837d]_____[/color][color=#807a75]_____[/color][color=#77716d]_____[/color][color=#6e6965]_____[/color][color=#64605d]_____[/color][color=#5b5754]_____[/color][color=#524f4c]_____[/color][color=#494644]_____[/color][color=#403d3c]_____[/color][color=#373534]_____[/color][color=#2e2c2c]_____[/color][/sup][/center] [color=#c8a2a7]Do you ever wonder, what could have been?[/color] [color=#c8a2a7] Had Charlotte not given you to them?[/color] [color=#c8a2a7] Do you ever wonder, what you could be capable of?[/color] [color=#c8a2a7] If you had gone, stayed, if you had just been.[/color] She did. And now she knew. She had come back to her dorm to shower after shopping, only to find the letters and her old uniform laid out on her bed, mere objects to some, but sacred artifacts of her past left undone through the shackles of broken memories. She was sure she had put them away, but now they remained there, calling to her, tempting, and with trembling hands she set her things aside and studied the bindings of lace and chains, the gossamer fabric that used to glide across her skin, the mesh and fortified lining that clung to every cleft and curve of her body. She glanced from it to her dress, and finally to her closet where an assortment of muted yellow danced across the eternal black of her wardrobe; the damned wolverine poised in a shield, a branding she had always mocked. Never knowing what it meant, but still, she wore it, and why? She doesn’t have the answer, not as the letters beckon to her, their own inquires poised to maim and rend her asunder. Her humanity balanced there, on a precipice of no return, where the beast lay and a little girl beside it, both wrapped in fated strings of red. She tore those seals open with little thought or reflection, seals she realized had been opened countless times and then sealed anew, as if in an attempt to conceal the sins of those responsible. The contents of each letter spin a delicate tale, a lie, the forgeries in each that promise her a better life, a better world, a world maybe that did not hold breath on the chaotic whims of her powerful nature. P.R.C.U and The Foundation both beckoned and clamored for the power, the potential, that was Amma Cahors. Jonas. He knew of her. Saw her. He knew of her fate. Did that mean he tried to save her? Did that mean somewhere, deep within, [i]her mother knew[/i]? And then she sees it: the next letter, where a name has been scratched out, ran through so many times she cannot make ends meet of the intended embossed there under swatches of black. It’s all redacted information; answers to things she has longed for, now bitterly denied. [color=000000][i]Dear, Charlotte, my love –[/i][/color] [i][color=#978184]“No.”[/color][/i][i] [/i]She seethes. It takes a mere thought, only a single spooling of it, that single thread of red that forges from her shattering heart, her breath that punches out in a sobbing gasp. The line of scarlet attaches to the letters, shaking, she was shaking, her entire body shook as hated power threaded through delicate sheets of paper and forged her anger and her rage down the middle of each. [color=000000][i] I know it has been some years, and I’ve been trying to get back to you –[/i][/color] [i][color=#978184]“NO!”[/color][/i] The letters she cannot destroy, but she could mark them. Yes, she could defile them, just as someone had already done. Amma drops them at her feet and allows them to lay as they are, lines of red spin through the words that had sealed her fate so many years ago. Black ink bleeding into fragments of her power marked to the scrawling of empty words she could never unsee. [color=000000][i]I know about her, our daughter, I know they will try to convince you that she is better off with them.[/i][/color] To think, she really could have been saved. To think, she didn’t have to suffer. To think she didn’t have to pay the price. She could’ve [i]lived[/i]. [color=000000][i]The campus is not safe. It is compromised. I know I could only tell you so much, about The Alexandria Foundation –[/i][/color] She turns, and there her dress lays, wrapped, pristine, a pool of ink and soft silks that she is undeserving of; to think, she really could have just [i]been [/i]as she was: a girl. [color=000000][i]But you cannot trust Jonas, I implore you to send her to me. I’ll help her with her powers, I know you are afraid. However, she will be safe with me because I'm her father, and I can help her.[/i][/color] If only her mother had chosen differently. [color=000000][i]I promise, I will allow nothing bad to happen to her.[/i][/color] All the power in the world, to find her mother, to find her father, only for it to turn to ash in her hands. [/INDENT][/INDENT][/indent][/color]