Lumina (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
chaoticwhimsy) wrote2014-12-07 01:07 pm
chaoticwhimsy) wrote2014-12-07 01:07 pmContact post for ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
eachdraidh
Lumina will almost always answer her locket, wherever she happens to be!
chaoticwhimsy) wrote2014-12-07 01:07 pm
eachdraidh
no subject
"I think I can manage that," she said, rolling her eyes at the condescension. A casual wave of her hand and two vicious dog-creatures appeared out of swirling balls of chaos, prowling ahead of both of them before stopping to look back at Lumina for orders. She made a faint hand gesture and they both flopped down on their haunches to wait.
"See? Entrance guarded. So go...do what you do."
warning for blood and death.
Once she walked past the dogs, she disappeared into a blur inside of it.
It wasn't difficult to track the kitsune down. In hindsight, Katherine should've suspected she was waiting for her, tempting her to come inside with the steady beat of her heart and scuffle of her feet. She followed the echoing sounds, so loud in her own ears, to a corridor deep inside the cave.
When she turned, a woman stood before her. She was tall and lean, olive-skinned with dark eyes and curly, dark hair. Katherine thought there was something familiar about her.
She arched her brow, peering up at the woman. She was dressed modernly, almost like Katherine herself.
"It's always polite to knock," the kitsune said. She spoke with a familiar accent. It wasn't difficult to discern she was Bulgarian, or so she wished to be.
Katherine shrugged. "I don't need an invitation, so I thought I'd forgo it."
The kitsune didn't bristle, nor did she cease smiling. Her eyes travelled up the length of Katherine, as if sizing her up.
She thought to do the same, blank expression as guarded as she could make it as she assessed the woman before her. "Where's your whiskers? Aren't you meant to be a fox?"
"I don't need my whiskers, so I thought I'd forgo it."
Katherine did her best not to roll her eyes. Instead, she crossed her arms against her chest and pursed her lips. "And how many tails do you have?"
The kitsune smiled. "A few." Katherine didn't lean to the side to try and see if the woman had any sprouting from her tailbone. Perhaps the kitsune wished for it, but she simply stood there, unnerving smile never quite wavering. "I only have one heart."
Pressing her lips together, she lifted her shoulders, before scrunching her face. "I'm going to need that."
She took a step forward. The kitsune took one back.
"I can take it by force," Katherine singsonged. "But I just got my nails done. If you just give me what I want, this won't have to get messy."
The kitsune continued to smile. Katherine did her best to remain unaffected by how unnerving she found it to be.
She took a step forward. And when she did, she found the dark and damp interior of the cave shift.
Her heart pounded in her chest. The blackened and glistening walls of the cave had shifted into the inside of her childhood home. The cottage was small and warm, oranges splashed against the walls from the fire.
She wasn't standing in front of the kitsune any longer. Sitting in her bed, she felt the warm hands of her mother hold her, the damp sheets sticking to her legs. The room smelled of blood, rich and tangy on her own tongue.
When she peered out of the corner of her eye, Katherine found herself in the nightgown she had worn five hundred years ago.
It was difficult to pull herself from her mother's embrace, but she tilted her head away from her chest to peer around her. There, the woman stood.
Clenching her jaw, Katherine looked to the kitsune. She stood inside the cottage, hands clasped before her. She seemed smug, but Katherine had a feeling that wasn't the right term to describe her.
"Don't you remember me?" she spoke in Bulgarian. When Katherine looked down there was a baby in her arms. "How could you have forgotten me already?"
Katherine looked at her through the blur of her own tears. Hearing the faint thud of Lumina's own heart, she steeled herself. Standing taller, shoulders held back, she glared at the kitsune before her.
She felt the fire flick against her skin, as warm as it'd been on the day the kitsune had brought back to life. If she wasn't a creature who could manipulate reality herself, Katherine thought perhaps she'd believe.
If Armel hadn't told her what a kitsune could do, she knew she would think herself Katerina once more.
As real as she had wished for it to be over the last five centuries, the one thing that had always kept her grounded, even when Stefan had manipulated her own dream, was the reminder good things never happened to Katherine Pierce.
Tempting as it was to remain in her mother's arms, with her own daughter in hers, Katherine knew she couldn't stay. But she wanted to. And she found herself hesitant to even move.
But she heard the yelp of a dog outside after the kitsune clicked her fingers, the corner of her lip quirking up as she did so.
And Katherine leapt from the bed with the speed that hadn't belonged to the girl who had once broken down in her mother's arms.
So quickly she moved, a blur shooting toward the woman. The kitsune leapt away from her, easily moving herself to stand where Katherine once did. The cottage shook, but the illusion maintained.
The kitsune stood by her mother who held her child. "You could have this," the woman said. "All you need to do is accept it."
Katherine gritted her teeth together and shook her head. "No." And she sped toward the woman once more.
The kitsune leapt over her, standing behind her again. When Katherine turned, she was closer now. "I can give you what you want," she said. "They can't."
Katherine shook her head. Remembering what Armel had once said, of the kitsune holding the same hatred as Katherine herself, she pressed her fingers to her lips and whistled as loud as she could.
The cave didn't shake, but Katherine had a feeling perhaps the kitsune would.
The fire of the cottage shimmered. The kitsune remained standing, hands clasped once again before her. Katherine remained in her place, waiting.
Watching the woman before her, she didn't need to listen nor look behind her to know when one of the chaos dogs found its way to their very tunnel. The illusion didn't shift at all.
The kitsune's eyes widened and she took a step back.
"I brought a friend," Katherine said, tone acidic. She looked down at the dog and then the kitsune. The cottage began to shake, the wood of the walls shifting into the damp stone of the cave walls.
With the dog growling beside her, Katherine watched as the kitsune kept her unblinking stare on the dog. She didn't take too long.
In a blur, she sped toward the kitsune. Her features shifted, eyes darkening into a blood red, veins popping against the skin around her eyes. Her teeth protruded as she transformed from an attractive woman into a monster. Copying a move of Elijah's, she thrusted her hand into her chest, feeling skin, muscle, and bone break at the sheer force. Her hand gripped her heart, fingers slick with blood, and pulled it out of her. "First lesson: Don't forget who I am."
And Katherine sped out of the cave as quickly as she could.
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Katherine stood before her as though she was made of stone, but the hardness of her gaze and the slight glistening shine to her eyes was the only tell she wasn't as invincible as she wanted to posture herself as. Her eyes remained dark, blood pooling around them, with veins popping beneath the skin. They eventually vanished; the vampire retreated as the woman Katherine was returned, features smooth and eyes are dark as they'd been previously.
With her lower arm slick and dripping with blood, she held the heart in the palm of her hand. The heart was red and unmoving in her tight grip.
"Here's your heart to save your little bird," she said, tone a lot more sharper than she had intended for it to be.
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She didn't like feeling this indecisive, usually she just did whatever struck her at any given time. Worrying about it though, that was...not new, exactly, but not something she was used to either. She didn't like it, but she knew she couldn't go in after her. Even if she thought she probably should.
Ugh.
After a minute or two of silence, she stopped right in front of the cave, frowning into the darkness, and then looked over at her two lounging guard dogs. "Go help her." She said, pointing into the cave, and the two beasts exchanged a look before hauling themselves onto their paws and loping into the darkness.
There. She had done something, at least...
~
Lumina had gone back to pacing when Katherine reemerged, and she hopped half-a-step back in surprise when the woman was suddenly there, her blue eyes focused on the bloody heart. Well yuck.
Still, after a few seconds she reached out with her gloved hand to take it, carefully and reluctantly, only to stop at the last moment. Instead she fished a black bag off her belt and held it out, open, for the woman to deposit the magical organ inside.
"...Thanks."
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She watched Lumina with a tense expression on her face, jaw clenched and her eyes slightly wide. Her hand remained palm-up in front of her even after she had taken the heart.
Closing her fingers into a fist, Katherine's tone was clipped with only a sliver of a note of desperation, "Get us out of here."
no subject
Instead, after a couple seconds she just nodded, switching the heart-bag into her bare hand and then reaching out to take Katherine's wrist with her gloved one.
With a swirl of magic, they vanished.