The Darkest Eternities

XXIV. The old and the new

Cara

As the months faded away, I did too.

I felt like a completely different person now, a ghost of my true self. This was weird considering that I had lived this exact same life before...before Ivan came along, before everything happened.

As I stared at my reflection in the mirror I felt oddly bored. I should have been happy, but I wasn't. I felt like I wasn't doing what I was meant to do. I felt unfulfilled.

The long black gown flowed down my legs, falling nearly at my feet, only inches away. My two inch, silver stilettos matched the diamond studs I wore. The earring were a gift from my father and the gems on them were real too, a few carats. I had been overjoyed when my father gave them to me just the night before, saying I would have to wear them on this day.

My light brown hair poured out from under the graduation cap, cascading down my shoulders like a waterfall and reaching my waist. It had grown longer, I hadn't trimmed it in a while.

My lips shined with cherry red lip gloss, a little graduation gift from Liza, I had in turn given her a key chain. To Alice I gave a wooden paint palette and a tiny set of artist's brushes, she had been indulging in painting lately. We had all agreed to keep it small and cheap when exchanging gifts.

It was nice to have friends. They provided good companionship and sometimes kept me from thinking about Ivan.

Alice and Lisa were the first true friends I had ever had, not to mention the longest lasting friendship. Whenever I made friends, it would only take a little while till my father and I were moving again and I had to begin the entire process again.

In addition to our unstable lives -which was a result of my father's career -, when my mother left us, it became a serious problem for me to socialize as I feared everyone would leave me like she had. It had taken a lot of reassuarance from my father that her leaving had nothing to do with me to get me to the right place emotionally.

Now that I had Alice and Lisa, I was truly grateful. They were amazingly supportive, even when I could only tell them that I was just feeling down. They almost made me forget all about him. Keyword; almost.

I must admit, I missed him, a lot, too much in fact. I missed him coming over to my place. I missed curling up on the couch and watching a movie with him or talking in the kitchen as I cooked something up for the both of us. He never failed to complement me on my cooking, or on anything for that matter. Whenever I opened the door for him he would greet me then tell that I was beautiful.

Just the memory of his voice made me shiver. My ears would drink the sound in like a thirsty man does when he finally gets a sip of water.

I thought about him frequently, when I was in the kitchen, in the living room and especially when I went to the forest. I guess that's why I liked it there so much. It made me feel like he was there. Everything about it brought him back to me, the fresh scent, the peace.

Over weeks, since what happened happened, I had started to become less and less afraid. Of course it was traumatizing, what he did, seeing it happen right before my eyes, him turning, ripping Hoff apart, taking away any shred of life left. It brought chill in my mind.

Honestly, I did not know where I stood. Did I want to see him again? Did I fear him? Definitely. Could I look past this? Highly unlikely.

But I would release a breath of relief when remembering what Hoff had almost done to me, knowing in my memory that any second now Ivan would appear and save me.

My eyes moved to the lacrosse stick on the bed. Aeren had returned it. It looked the same but it wasn't. He had modified it for my protection. All you had to do was grabbed both sides of it and pull. It would instantly split into two, revealing a blade that was attached to the back of the stick. It formed a short spear-like object and boy was it sharp.