ICARUS ▻ the vampire diaries.

𝔦. chapter one.

𝕴 : Idle Worship.

( one month ago . . . )

✡

SOMETIMES, ALL ALASKA WANTED TO BECOME WAS NOTHINGNESS.

When the constant vibrating of her bones became violent, she imagined it shaking her body apart into atoms and stardust. She could feel it in her veins, her blood tingling as if it wanted to come alive, brain ready to catch on an all consuming fire, constantly absorbing, constantly synthesizing, asking every question about every colour and object and concept. It was too much. But she could feel it when her head filled with fog and her thoughts escaped into empty air and choking silence, it felt like she might melt away with it, right into the chilled damp air at the first brush of light or warmth.

Alaska sometimes thought about how it would feel to lie down in the grass and tear her chest open, so, the flowers and rivers of obscurity inside of her could spill out and the only memory of her would be the garden that she could become. But it was as if all the obscurities had twined through and around her being like a vine that hadn't been tended to in far too long.

Part of her thought that she hadn't been tended to in far too long either.

Alaska was trying not to drown, but buoyancy didn't work very well when you were in the heart of the ocean. Round and round in circles, she kept on hitting the shores. Gravity cut her loose, leaving her floating, boundless. Alone. Until all that was left worth noting in her mind were her own thoughts whispering dull murmurs of quiet and solitude.

Alaska was sinking under the voracious tides of the unforgiving ocean, lungs filling with dark, inky water, and the weight at the depth of her heart kept her submerged, right towards the weedy disarray of the bottom.

The ocean was her grief.

Vast, dark, deep, arctic-cold. Ebbing and flowing, rising and falling like waves. It engulfed and overwhelmed. It unfolded, tormented and strangled her veins. It came with an infernal darkness in a night so wide that it could be a cavern and Alaska was somewhere underneath it. Inside it. Lost. Her grief was like an emptiness in the heart, a shear of nothingness that somehow took over and held her essence and threatened to kill her entirely. It gave her this heavy feeling, something akin to the weight of the world resting on her shoulders and there was nothing she could do to get out from under it.

Alaska tried to keep the ocean of grief trapped inside, lapping against tall, dim walls. It constantly verged on spilling. But people wouldn't know.

Alaska was trying not to think of it tonight.

It was not easy though. Because even after spending countless nights treading water, her head was still barely above the surface. Just when Alaska would start thinking she was finally learning how to swim, the universe would let out a cruel laugh, and her limbs would turned to cement. When the rest of the world embraced their dreams, their eight hours of rest, Alaska tossed and turned chasing a white rabbit of her mind. It was like a terrible pattern she couldn't seem to quit, a vice she was forced to stand by. A stubborn rope she could never really untie.

But she was determined tonight.

Alaska held her breath the whole time when cutting through the familiar British-racing-green hedges and coming across the secluded stretch of woods, finally entering the party zone ; the Lockwood mansion. It looked like a beacon in the dark, perfect embodiment of chaos with a myriad of cars lining the street, the front lawn littered with red solo cups, a pounding baseline bursting through the cracks in the pavement.