Post by Emily on Sept 16, 2015 19:01:43 GMT -8
"we danced in graveyards with vampires 'til dawn / we laughed in the faces of kings, never afraid to burn
oh, these little Earthquakes / here we go again / these little Earthquakes / doesn't take much to rip us into pieces
I can't reach you / I can't reach you / give me life / give me pain / give me myself again"
-- Tori Amos, Little Earthquakes
Full name: Beth Marie Lyons
Goes by: Beth, Bethy
DOB, current age: 12/22/1993, 21
Occupation: Student at Shepherd University; third year, diachronic linguistics
Immediate family: Robert and Carole Lyons (parents, father deceased, mother living); Murdoch Lyons (brother, deceased)
Face: Penelope Mitchell
Screen name: How she quakes
Webpage, optional: N/A
Story
Beth was born to Robert and Carole Lyons just minutes after twin brother Murdoch, and while normally the birth of a child -- of multiple children, even -- is an occasion for joy, there were bitter tears shed that early morning.
"Only one," Carole had choked on a whisper, expression haunted by panicky indecision as she looked down upon two perfect infants. How could she choose between them? "Only one?"
"No one ever gets to choose, Carole," Robert silenced her with his stoicism. "Not the which, not the when, not the how. No one."
Sixteen years later, Beth and Murdoch left a childhood wrought with more wakes than birthdays behind in Oxfordshire to study at Shepherd University, where a beloved Uncle Thomas could watch over them as they came into their own and embraced their bloodline's craft.
They almost made it... but only almost. The summer before their third year of study, Beth met a scruffy Cockney whose name she tried to forget more times than she could count. She did her best to drive him off, and for a while, it worked. Then it stopped working. Everywhere she was, he was, by what appeared to be coincidence but always involved trouble and his stupid, fat cat. Murdoch had noticed it, too.
The curse took him not long after Litha the same year. It left him in pieces in a nearby cemetery, part of an arm dripping red from a basket of flowers that hung from the front of a tall crypt and entrails strewn across the lawn like gnawed-at dog toys.
He had always told her that he would go first. For her. He always said that was just the way it had to be, then went into theatrical recitations of some brotherly code she had never otherwise heard of in any language to distract her from plaguing him with the inquisition he knew laid in wait behind the sparkle of blue eyes that were much too smart for so young a face.
Sometimes, Beth still wonders whether or not Murdoch knew something that he couldn't tell her. If he did and it was about this "being Chosen" business, she might more than humor the idea of trying to find a way to resurrect him just so that she can kill him again.
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