Information

Ivy
Legacy Name: Cheri

The

Darkmatter Telenine
Owner:

helix

Age: 13 years, 1 month, 1 day

Born: April 6th, 2011

Adopted: 9 years, 10 months, 2 weeks ago

Adopted: June 17th, 2014

Pet Spotlight Winner
August 17th, 2014

Statistics

Level: 1
Strength: 17
Defense: 16
Speed: 10
Health: 10
HP: 10/10
Intelligence: 0
Books Read: 0
Food Eaten: 0
Job: Unemployed

what never shall be

The antiquated house was situated on an overlook bordered by the woods. Its positioning made it so that the ring of the doorbell was carried on the buffeting cold air over and under gnarled branches. A curious eye might have caught glimpses of red lipstick, lips upturned in jubilance, and the pointed smack of lips against cheeks that left slight smears to be noticed later in the critical light of a bathroom.

It was, in fact, the tiniest of mistakes, hardly noticed by anyone but the restless hand that twitched in the absence of routine. Years later, she would look back and wonder why something so small as forgetting to turn the lock on the door could be the beginnings of the tectonic movement that causes a tsunami. Maybe she would have noticed if the lights were a little brighter, the piano a litter quieter, the guests a little less charming.

She had never been without guests. Her house was grand but her ego outweighed it by two tons. After it happened, she promised herself that VANITY was the deadliest sin. But somewhere inside her it had always been innate, the need to show people that she had everything that they yearned for and more. Her inheritance was twice the size of their bourgeoisie earnings and she was proud. She kept a 24karat diamond nestled in the hollow that her collarbones made when they met in the middle but she made sure that it wasn't so incredibly large that it would steal the attention away from the emerald adorning her middle finger.

She had never yearned for a child. But when she had one she found that it wasn't as bad as she thought it might be; in fact, the girl was quite the proper little doll, perfect to dress in custom-made imported Chinese silk dresses.

Could that change the fact that she hadn't been ready? Somewhere along the road, she had made a mistake â€“ infertility, she had found, was not as reliable as she thought it would be, and before knowing the ins and outs of motherhood she had looked at herself for hours on end in the vanity with red-rimmed raccoon eyes and the imagined curve of a burdened stomach. But she hadn't (how could she?) let pregnancy stunt her ego; she continued to stare at her upper body proudly during the dull ache of nine months, relishing in the bony protrusions that were her shoulders and turning a blind eye to the swollen mess that was her belly. At first she had thought the growing life inside her naught but an inconvenience.

But as any well-ripened mother will tell you, imagination and experience are never one and the same. Upon delivery, she found a kind of joy that had previously been alien to her; the frustration of rising like the dead in the wee hours of the night to tend to a screaming, unhappy munchkin somehow transformed into a reluctant fondness for the wrinkly little thing residing in the crib near her terraced bed. She finally understood what being a mother was.

Mother she was, but recluse she was not. She never lost her vanity. The parties were the only way to feed the ravenous beast in her breast that craved late nights and loud music and tiny meals; the parties were the only way to quench its thirst for showing all. The first things the guests saw when she opened the door were her gold earrings and bannisters behind her. Her father was long gone but her money wasnâ€™t. Once that was all that mattered.

So when the child was born fat and rosy she took her home and wrapped her in a monogrammed cashmere blanket. The hours between parties were hitherto spent nuzzled in a ball with the content little beast spooned against her and a Wilde novel in hand. The facets of childhood were revealed to her second by second; she uncovered the key to quieting the bundle - letting her rest her head against her bony chest. Affection was all but known to her but she had soon enough let her hand rest hesitantly on the little thing, cheeks growing hot.

All in all, she had pried from deep within herself some odd capability for â€¦ what was it that they called it - love? And though she had yielded to this grisly concept, the parties were perpetual. Sometimes in the hours leading up until midnight she would hear the despairing wail of the child piercing through the air and some guests would turn their heads, wine sloshing against the inside of the wine glasses precariously. Her response would be to inch up the volume on the phonograph and smile at them with pearly teeth and finely arched eyebrows.

No one could say that she didn't love the child â€“ she loved watching her grow up and she loved (albeit hesitantly) watching Father Time leave her face sculpted instead of pudgy. She liked to see the girl's limbs elongate and she was proud, in a way, when she saw her chest developing. But she was afraid. She was afraid that as the girl got older, she would find herself obligated to give her more of her time and more of herself. She was afraid of losing the nights of houses packed full of bodies sweating lightly with mouths moving quickly and eyes wrinkled at the corners. At base, she was afraid of being alone with her. Her parties were long but the hours before and after were longer.

She wouldn't realize until it was too late that, with her, she was never alone. The girl was the only one who stayed after the parties had finished.

After it happened, the thought crossed her mind in fleeting and broken fragments â€“ had she, catering to her deepest desires, left the door unlocked unconsciously? Had she been that afraid to lose what she deemed so important, the constant human interaction?

She denied it wholeheartedly. She felt the need to prove it to herself. She was afraid that she didn't quite know. But what she did know was that the consequences were the same: she had left the door unlocked and in the heat of moving bodies and casual conversation she hadnâ€™t realized that the child was gone until everyone had left and she had checked in on an empty room.

She couldnâ€™t remember leaving the house but she could remember the cold night air burning her bare skin. She remembered the fat droplets smacking against her forehead, frigid and unpleasant, but dwarfed by the hot waterfalls making their way down her cheeks and curving down her chin. She hadnâ€™t known that she was screaming until she was in the middle of the woods and she heard it bouncing off the looming pines.

The child was quite tangible, like a phantom limb; she could feel her in her arms, almost feverishly, but the ghost was fading quickly and she couldnâ€™t hold on to it. Her fingers were too slender, too bony and too accustomed to holding spindly glasses of wine. Her grasp was tenuous and the irregularity of her sobs punctuated the evergreens. She felt her mascara running thick and heavy.

The moonlight pooled in tiny reflecting ponds at the base of a wizened elm and she melted in front of it. Upon returning to the house she would discover that she had raked her nails bloody on the bark, splinters dotting the soft skin between the fingernail and fingertip. She had felt nothing. The rosy child was gone and she wouldnâ€™t come back.

She woke in the morning huddled at the base of the tree with pain in her abdomen and saliva crusted on the corner of her mouth. She was confused at first, disoriented but alright, until she remembered and her face crumpled and she held herself and cried.

It was the morning and it was too hot and too bright but she hauled herself up and wiped the leftover lipstick from her mouth and got into the station wagon and drove. The missing report was out hours after it was issued but she knew in her gut that they wouldnâ€™t find her.

The tree became her best friend, a looming reminder but at the same time a beacon of comfort that she could go to every night and remember every detail. Every part of her was numb but her heart and she wished that she couldnâ€™t feel anymore. She spent more nights by the tree than she did in her bed.

And I think it goes without saying that the parties dwindled. They reduced from weekdays to weekends to none at all. She wouldnâ€™t miss them; not really â€“ she couldnâ€™t. She hadnâ€™t realized how much she needed a child, the warmth of a tiny body against her every once in a while piled under cashmere blankets in front of the marble fireplace.

She visited the tree every day. There was nothing more important. She saw in it, in all the curves and the lines and the imperfections of the bark, her child. Her only child.

CREDITS
Thank you to

Set for letting me adopt!
Amazing profile by User not found: collision
Stunning art by

roar
TC help from the lovely

Eros
Background Pattern byVaneea @ colourlovers.com