Amaranthine: Beauty Within Darkness

Assignment One: A Map, A Mystery

Light notes of jasmine and honeysuckle brush the almost non-existent breeze of a New Orleans sunset. The beauty and the cloying intensity of summer heat make it a place like nowhere else. It's been a long time since Eleni has been able to sit in her garden and watch the sunset. It stirs emotion in her heart, memories of happy days and of the sting of loss mingling together.

For everything that is lost, something else is gained.

Remembering this mantra is something that's pulled Eleni through the chaotic journey of her life. The woman who sits in the garden, mesmerised by the scents and colours of a home almost forgotten, is a pretty thing who looks twenty-five. Perhaps she becomes older when she speaks of her children with the pride reserved for mothers who have grown past themselves and into the world of others. Perhaps, upon closer inspection, she's more sophisticated than a cursory glance betrays. She is not a seductive girl in a black summer dress and dramatic red lipstick, pulling her hair back into a thick black braid that gives her an air of timelessness. Instead. she is a wealthy young wife of about thirty who can afford expensive jewels, and the procedures necessary to maintain a flawlessly pale complexion and bright blue eyes that show no hardship or worry.

Some people have the gift of being whoever others need them to be. In reality, Eleonore Vigneron Denimore is two hundred and forty-two years old.

She runs her hands through the New Orleans soil and watches the sunset the same way she did two centuries prior. Sometimes, it's the moments like this that make her feel as if no time has passed and nothing has ever changed.

Eleni clings to those. Change has been harder on her than most people; more dramatic, and certainly more final.

Whatever happened in life, she'd always come running back here. Eleni was born in the now-forgotten splendour of Versailles, once the jewel of France. It was now a tourist attraction, a monument to tragedy. She preferred not to pay her respects. Instead, a sprawling home once rumoured to be a plantation was her retreat, gardens buzzing with memories and roses.

People call it the Garden District for a reason, after all.

A sort of mournful expression touches Eleni's face, then fades into the pools of sapphire blue . It's as if she stores all her emotion in her eyes, making her expressions otherwise unreadable. It has taken her many decades to master the fine art of expression. Even when alone, she won't allow herself to be vulnerable.

Eleni is surrounded by a ground full of holes, places where her beloved rose bushes once grew and thrived. Sadness mixes with anger as her fingers run through the soil of each one.

Odelie, she thinks to herself. Only her spiteful and rebellious youngest child, gifted with so much beauty, would find pleasure in destroying it. Removing the roses from the beautiful old home is certainly symbolic, like removing Eleni herself.