Chapter Text
The carriage was cold, not unusually so; the snow tread tracks of the horses with their legs shivering with the anticipation of the next step.
Elizabeth had hated to use the horses so, abhorred it even to bring such bastardized discomfort to such a peaceful creature only obeying orders of their masters.
But had it been her or the horse, she would have chosen the one with further sentience and choice, unlike those of the horses and the little insects she studied so.
The butterflies she captured and had sent to Victor, how had he managed her rejection?
Had he crushed and drank the white blood of the Lepidotera Rhopalocera to chase the wine drunk of vengeance?
To chase the flattening of its wings and pin it down and cover it in resin?
Hush the flattering and pittering, the gentle wind that follows the flap, to set the currents in stone and the past in a wooden plaque aligned with golden lining, only to be read and never gleaned from?
The butterfly is a creature of beauty and choicelessness, as is Victor Frankenstein. One naught of human status, one who acts upon instinct rather than logic, like the horses, whose gentle steed pauses at a break in path, waiting for the harsh whip to bring order forth to the disorderly; the very conscious of animal being. To be controlled, is what he wished. The beauty in the simplicity of human want and weakness.
To be taken by leash and shown the vastness of humanity, to create it- and to be told he has done a good job in doing it.
He has simply not done a good job in doing it.
His Eve lay bruised and broken within the desolate stone cist, warm crimson still aflame, oozing stitches from a multitude of valiantly slain soldiers.
The blood of Adam, from whence she was born of his rib, poured into a wine that fed the weak and needy who wished to defy God's purpose for them; who wished for greater things, of riches, lust, and gold, to break the divine foreboding of fate and reroute it to their pleasing.
Victor had seized this light of Heaven and was burned by its brilliance, given the gift of life-bearing and has rejected it so.
A mother he is and a mother he is not. An abhorrence to he is Elizabeth, a dent in his perfectly crafted human exterior he can no longer keep up the pretense of.
That is why he hates Lavenza so.
She had begun to visit His creation.
He believes a simpler intelligence and interpretation of the human condition a failure on the will of the great Lord, that he has done a disservice by creating an unequal life. Elizabeth does not believe this so.
And he has lost his purpose and intelligence, the same . he believes the creature has been borne naught of
He is sick with a delirium, to which no ailment of any mass can be procured or sustained, the ailment of humanity that can only heal those willing to see the beauty of the human circumstance.
He despairs the day the creature awoke, the day he recognized the failure of Life, his sacrilegious damnation of the human conscience and being.
What he cannot recognize, however, is that life is a losing battle, one no bayonet nor cannon assure victory. Life is war, and his ego will not allow him to bear a failure beyond the failure of Elizabeth. The enrapturing of her soul and henceforth, bearing her dowry and hand in marriage. Lavenza cannot find any interest in such pale and courage-less men.
Born this world without a voice or say, Adam stayed chained, and from henceforth Lavenza spoke to her as Adams speech and opinion.
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Lavenza had arrived first at the tower, and second, at the judgement of Victor's sin, the Adam that never procured a fruit, a perfect being yet to be tainted with the essence of spirit and life. The garden of Eden, this prison of poisoned chain, of isolation and iceberg that chilled Elizabeth to her core.
Elizabeth was destined not to show him that side of life, yet. She could not find it upon herself to damn the boy; with the inevitablity of her tenebrous shadow.
Elizabeth would withhold Victor from meeting her with sweet, soft whispers of a chariot cupid, shot with an arrow he will be struck with the stillness of love, and leave the poor creature alone for a stead of time. Long enough to imprint her memory in the Adam, and allow him grace to fall upon whence she had to leave, her stay of a week.
Luminiosity alites the steps of stone she descends, careful to not trip on the rotting smell of corpses and the spit of her words yet to come.
Lavenza had the idea to read to the creature. Like a bedside tale told by a mother to babe, to see the sparks of the world far removed from this gilded cage of stone and desolate.
Elizabeth felt horrific upon seeing the stateliness of the creature and the distaste upon her tongue laid profane words she wished to yell at Victor, but had no will or procurement of possibility. The creature will remain chained for now, though she might feel privy to pickpocketing a key soon enough from a pocket of her captor.
Whence she had reached the overgrown stone of vine and other little nonvascular plants, she crouched, stepping on the underfoot moss and blue dress. Lapping up the water from the irrigation stream that led to the giant lake oppressive and surrounding of the castle, the vines were healthy, and she distanced her feet from them so as to not crush the plants.
“Im Elizabeth. Can you say Elizabeth?
A spectral being, the one in front of her. Ghastly; painted in colors of bruises and crimson handstitches. As pale as the white blood of the insects she studies under her microscape and paints upon vallum on young frenzied nights. A specimen, Adam be, a beaute and a brute accursed of human disposition.
“Eliza-beth.”
Had one person else stuttered, she'd chuckle, but of Eve it was rather full of intrigue and attention she directed back towards herself with a smile. Eve had said her name. She was clearly working up to his comforts and electric beating heart.
Lavenza guided the coldest of hands to lay upon her larynx and backhand of her nape, a descending chill rising gooseflesh as two hands in differing tones and temperatures connected to a lukewarm equilibrium.
“My throat, makes sounds.”
Elizabeth spoke her name again, repeating the gesture of rubbing her hands against her throat and waiting for the man to follow.
The creature's fingers fluttered across Lavenza's neck, and the gesture would have been uncomfortable had it been anybody but, the proximity and enclosure of the fingers to encroach upon the neck, so easy to end the life and give it so forth.
She chuckled at the dramatics, and allowed herself her teeth to slip past her tongue into a soft and prideful smile.
“You see?”
The creature had, and repeated the gesture upon its own throat, curious as to whence this vibration had originated . With gentle encouragement Lavenza beckoned the creature's hand back into her resolve, palm against the back of her hand and glided it upon the ice of her neck
“Do you feel me speak?”
In a gesture akin to a nod, a head turn, whence a prey animal dare hear a twig snap, did the young nod back to Lavenza, heaving, attempting to catch the chuckle of Elizabeth before it escaped the confines of her throat. Elizabeth let his fingers dart across her neck, wearily searching for the source of such a thing of sound, such a newfound discovery of the human noise.
The beautiful sound of laughter was the solace in which Adam resided her perfection in, his bothered humanity, and burdened hands of life.
Laugh, she allowed the boy grace, Lavenza echoing the gesture twice back to the woman to assure he had understood the simplicity of the humorous.
With this assurance did Adam, in finality, give his stained glass eyes full attention to the woman in front of him with colored reflections of a teary eyed laugh, the forcefulness of the unknown action wearing the salty taste.
Professional curiosity, you'd call it, that she was attracted to his growing hair and dastardly stench. Covered in the blood and vigors of a newborn, she could carve from like Michelangelo, the David already within the stone.
The creature's fingers twirled and curled within the slow rhythm of the flowing creek, carrying the outside foliage within its bounds. It procured a leaf, hid it behind its back without a single utterance, and waited for Elizabeth's hand to reach behind its back and pluck the leaf from Adams still twitching fingers.
He was still learning how to use her newfound appendages, limbs, and the billowing of her vocal cords.
It was an adoring experience to hold his fingers interlocked, and pull on the tendons and watch the creature full of admiration as the fingers curled. It let go off the leaf henceforth, and Lavenza caught it swiveling in the air before it dropped unto the floor.
“Is this leaf for me?”
Elizabeth had whispered, not to arouse the creature's suspicions and frightfulness.
Victor had often a loud countenance that could intimidate those even unknowing of the emotion, for as a babe of Eve, she had no inference but to assume he had used it upon him. Her toes and fingers inched upon their respective foot and hand, digging keratin into flesh in a desperate tense when she had entered the room, anticipating the entrance of naught a kind stranger but a familiar tale of threat; of cane and power.
He had struck him, multiple times, Lavenza had realized.
Lavenza consoled the creature's flush coat of human skin, running fingers over many a stitch and severance, bumpy in its trail and comforting in its wake; blood drops upon the re-irritation of the wounds.
Elizabeth carried her hand forward and with a light finger dusted the blood off Adams cherub cheek, and kissed him goodbye.
“Goodbye, my dear Adam, Till tomorrow."
To the lengths of which he pulled her chained fingers forth, it was endearing of the lamb to wish beyond the wooden fence, and past the slaughterhouse. Endearing it was, to behold Adam’s soft entreaty that Lavenza not forsake her to the darkness yet again; for in that tender defiance, the slumbering hope within her stirred anew. His humanity was revived just as he, born of the rib and naught of a womb, borne of pain and not into a world he deserved so.
“I have to go now. Im sorry.”
She carried the forefronts of her dresses lace hem, soiled by the many various dirts and soils of the Eden beneath her feet, the apple ripe yet unchecked, and picked up the waxy flame of waning light from upon the floor. With the encroaching night, Lavenza struggled around to the exit, the grandeur of the castle obscuring the moon's view of her indigo fashion that called to trip beneath her feet within the inky coat the night wears with clouded countenance.
Following the candlelight, she stalked close the silver handle; feeling the sweltering of her breath and warmth of the flame against the sheet of her breast. Lavenza let a frail hand flicker flameless over the burning candle, marking the tips of her fingers upon Prometheus's borrowed flame. She discerned that the fire was kinder than the eagle that feasted upon the liver of the damned.
She withdrew to her bed, succumbing to a dreamless sleep; only the fevered rise of breath and the quiet torment of thoughts circling the destined visitation of tomorrow mornings toils having perturbed her mind.