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𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗖𝘂𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗻 / 𝗖𝗼𝗿𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗗𝘂𝗻𝗲 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Love isn't an emotion to her.
It was a sickness.
It first appears as a warm gesture, grand feelings that makes you all hot and bothered to the point you'd crumble into bed with a blanket to soothen the overwhelming fractions. Love was something people want to experience, an overseen and underestimating emotion, less avoids to get hurt.
For Coraline Arianna Dune, she wanted it but was afraid. Instead, she kept her feelings shut in a glassed case, only one held strength to break.
Alice Cullen didn't understand.
The moment her hand held Coraline's in their first meet, their future seemed distinct and not clear. Alice felt it, there was an unexplained emotion lingering in her lonely heart when Coraline greeted her with a cold but soft voice. It was a mix Alice thought she'll never expect to fall for. A feeling she thought she won't love but as of the moment, that's what she feels.
Now she doesn't understand why Coraline avoids her.
"Aspen." Her sweet and melodic voice calls for a new friend who warmed up to her. Aspen Dune hums, glancing up from her stare out the window. Alice thought she'll sound stupid or idiotic, she refrained and sighs, shoulders deflating in defeat by her unending thoughts running in her brain. "Nevermind."
Intrigued, Aspen rose from her slouching state. "Now you have got to spill. Don't mind me sounding like a modern teenager, Cora doesn't like it so I explore the idea of venturing in it." She held a grin. It was now revealed that Aspen shows her true behavior and colors to people she trusts and feels comfortable with. "Come on, who would I tell? If you'd like, I can have your mind shielded from your brother."
"That sounds like a good idea." Alice chuckles but shakes her head, "But no, I wouldn't want you to feel drained before we go to Seattle."
"Fair point." Aspen hums and then trails her fingertips against her own hands, "Would you want to talk about what you're thinking of now? Who would I tell?"
"Your sister." Alice says, could already see Aspen Dune secretly telling Coraline of what she's heard from Alice. The vision made Alice shuffle in her seat, "It doesn't matter. I'll deal with it in my own terms."
"What terms is that?"
"Art of persuasion. Stubbornness, really."
The quiet isn't Coraline's interest. She was used to a coven like hers voices everyday, infiltrating her ears like comfort that soothes her cold mind. It's what brings her clarity the most, just her family contended and happy even if it means she isn't. When Aspen met Rosalie all those years ago, Coraline is happy for her but does not do well on saying it verbally.
Like their adoptive parents, Aspen had a chance of love. In the end, it only ended up destroying her and Coraline was left to help mend her spiritually broken heart.
"Cora."
Coraline Dune turns her head to the side, away from the glass lake she found in the forest and was caught off guard when she heard Everleigh's voice calling her. By this, her fingertips left the water and she rises from the grass, "Do you need me for something?" She asks, tearing her thoughts as far away from Alice Cullen. Anything but her, think of anything else.
"Your presence alone is needed near." Coraline replies with silence, didn't know how to ask for a moment alone for she didn't need it in her centuries of living. Now, she is conflicted, confused and lost. All those words and she wished to be alone. "It's not at all bad, if I'll have you know."
"In regards of?" Coraline asks lowly, turning around and faced her adoptive mother.
"Love." The very word was repulsing. Coraline doesn't speak, didn't feel the need to when her bodily reaction answered to it. "People fall in love in hopes to not be alone in their life. We are vampires, Coraline. It is a long time to be alone."
"I don't know what you mean." She turns her head away, slowly kneeling back onto the grass and stares at the reflection of the forest on the still and clear waters of the lake.
"I think you know what I mean." Everleigh sinks on the space besides her daughter. Silence. Everleigh lifts her hand up and wind carelessly pushes west, the water that danced around Coraline's hand moved to the left by command. "It's not an act of cowardice to fall in love."
"It is to me." She gives in.
"Then you think of me, Caspian and Aspen as fools?"
"Of course not." She quickly says, being forced to defend their honor.
"Then what is the matter?"
Coraline deflated into the surface, wet hands being folded into the cuffs of her sleeve to dry them and she sighs. The term love made her want to cry endlessly even though she has yet to experience it. It made her perspectives of the future blurry enough as it is. It gives her an unreasonable excuse to act so weak and vulnerable for someone who expects you to do so.
"A lot." Coraline thought of her biological parents again, the blurry but key detail burns in her brain like lava to wood. Her human life remains tightly shut, no one — not even her family knows why she was so sensitive when it comes to her biological parents life.
It was all because of her mother, a condemned cheater who cheated on her husband and left him and her daughter to be with the man he loves who already has another family and a late-wife. The thought brought out a sense of sacred look on Coraline's face.
Fear of abandonment.
"It doesn't matter. I'm good to no one in my condition." Coraline didn't feel like she deserves to be loved. It didn't make her feel better to burden someone with her dark and heavy emotions. Especially not to someone as pure and sweet as Alice.
Alice is everything Coraline is not. Open, friendly, loving. . . everything.
"Coraline, you were made before empires even rose. You've been alive longer than anyone I've ever known, don't you think it's time you let someone love you?"
Coraline had a reply for her. It was simple but devastating.
