literature

Family Candles

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Once she arrived at the Cloisters, she threw herself into the final preparations of the halls. She checked on the cake, and placed the toppers herself. She checked on the lanterns in the garden and double checked that the daffodils were planted along the right path. She checked the baskets of rose petals for the ghouls on the upper level. She checked to make sure the toast glass was near the cake.

There were hundreds of other little things on her list that she wanted to check - but someone took the list away from her and insisted that she leave the menial work to others. It might have been Nataliya... she wasn't quite sure.
So many people were trying to herd her into the little Bride's room - to cage her until she was allowed out again. She escaped one after the other - they finally did sic Nat on her at one point.... maybe - it was hard to remember all the faces.

She had held up the charms as her excuse. Said that she HAD to be the ones to hang them in the garden, that others wouldn't know the right places or the right ways to hang the special protections.
Alright - but hurry - no funny business.
That had been the response she'd heard.
She'd only smiled in response and headed out to the garden.
Others had followed - supposedly to make sure that she was out of sight and getting dressed before the guests arrived.

She felt Damien's blood in her rise in anger at being babysat like a child - at being treated like the flower girl instead of the Bride. No! She was the Queen of tonight! They had no right to push her around. Not tonight!

"Leave me! I want to be alone in the garden where I will pledge myself to my husband. I want to look at the stars in peace - alone!"
She stomped her foot down, but the ghouls were not swayed. She pulled out the big guns.
"It's always been my dream to do it this way - to have the moment there alone. Do you want me to tell Damien that you wouldn't let me do this the way I wanted? That you fouled my mood and ruined the perfection of my wedding?!"

It worked - as she knew it would.
Oh, she wasn't foolish enough to think that when she stepped out into the garden that she was completely alone and unwatched. No - she knew that security was keeping a very close eye on her tonight. Somehow she'd gone from a lowly beast to a protected treasure and she wasn't quite sure how that had happened.
Ah well.

She hung the charms along the vines and the walls - this one for protection against the dark fae... this one a charm against the alluring powers of the fair folk.... this one in iron to negate their powers of enchantment.... this one covered in holy water to ward against demonic forces..... somewhere in the back of her head she knew that they were probably only folk charms and held very little real power. But she was, at her core, one of those simple folk - and she still believed in the power of such charms. So - up they went to protect her wedding.

Once the last of the charms was hung, she approached the large planter in the center of the garden that would become the substitution for a church alter in the ceremony later. From the pouch she had been carrying the charms in, she pulled out three votive candles and some matches.

She lit the first one - the one for the newest lost but most likely the one born longest ago.

"I honor you. Though I never knew you, though we were never given the opportunity to meet, I thank you. I thank you for inspiring his cherry cigars, for having a hand in shaping him into the man he is today. I wish I knew your name. I wish things could have been different. I wish you could have been here to see how he chose. You may be missing from those gathered to wish us well, but I know that you are here in spirit because there is a part of you in him.
Thank you for embracing him."

She lit the second candle, and as she did, her hand began to shake.

"Seren.... the light went out of our family when you died. Like the star you were named for, there was nothing but darkness left after they put you in the ground. They named me after your favorite tree - but that was the last of your wishes that they held dear.
You would like him mama. He is a good man. A gentle man. He protects me the way that father never protected you. I wish your light had not been swallowed by the dark of the Evening. I wish that you had found strength enough to give life to me without using up the last of yours. I wish you could have been here to see how I chose. But I forgive you for leaving. I forgive you for choosing heaven over me. Look down on me mama. I don't know which of the stars above is you... but please shine down your blessing for tonight, I escape the Evening that trapped us both for so long. When next I light a candle for you, I will no longer be one of the Noswaiths - the Evenings. He's helped me to find a strength inside me that I never knew I had. He's shown me that I can be your daughter instead of the failed son of my father.
I wish you could have known this kind of strength and love mama."

She lit the third candle and spoke in the language of the jewish children she had known so many years ago.

"I wish things had been different between us. I wish it hadn't happened the way it did. I hope that you forgive me for what I did. I wish I knew if you lived. I pray for you. I pray that you are safe and well - that you have made choices that bring you happiness. My little lamb.... my child.
I wish you could be here. I wish .... I wish so many things for you my Rachel. Most of all, I pray that God watches over you since I cannot. You are in my heart tonight as you are all nights.

She stood and looked at the three candles she'd lit - one for the Mother in Law she would never know, the mother she had never been allowed to know, and the daughter she had been forced by circumstance to abandon. She would have stood there for much longer but a ghoul approached her with a package in his hand.

"Miss? This was just delivered for you. Security says it's clean."

She opened the box and grinned ear to ear. The Nosferatu of Wales had come through for her yet again.

"Thank you. It's the myrtle from the bush that grows under my mother's willow tree for the bouquets. Just in time."

She left the three candles burning behind her and wondered if the efficient ghouls would sweep them away before the ceremony or not - after all, they weren't on the official plans and they were all under a great deal of pressure to make sure everything was perfect. She smiled as she stepped into her gilded bridal cage to get dressed. The candles didn't matter now - she didn't need the candles to have the light of those three women in her heart.
Helygen the Gangrel prepares for her wedding to Damien Keen of the Ventrue and lights candles for His Sire, Her birth mother, and her missing Childe.
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