New Beginnings

10. Carmilla

Laura nodded at her own impressive statement of intent. Adopting what Carmilla supposed was her best 'determined action hero about to set off to fight the bad guy face.'

It lasted all of a few seconds before.

"Uh, so I'm not sure exactly how to go about that, any suggestions? Usually when people say stuff like that they immediately follow it up with a super awesome plan that they lay out in a montage, although sometimes they don't say what the plan is and the story just continues to keep you in suspense. Which is kinda cheap really, I mean if the characters know the plan why can't we?"

Carmilla shook her head but grinned as she did so. Only Laura could bounce from cute to brave, to dorky nerd and back again as fast she did. If Carmilla waited only a few more moments she was sure Laura would rebound from this dorky outburst to either something impossibly cute or an act of awe inspiring bravery.

Despite what she had said and despite her current doubts Carmilla knew she would come up with a plan eventually. She always did as crazy and dangerous as they sometimes were. But why not help her along?

"Well, to start with, we should probably work out where we are."

Although to be honest, she didn't feel like planning right now. She had other things on her mind. It had been stupid of her to think after everything they had been through, Laura would take issue with one more story of violent misdeeds. She knew that, had known that. But regardless the moment Laura had accepted Carmilla's part in the Sarratum's dark past without reservation she had felt such a rush of affection. It was as if her heart had started pumping the emotion through her veins instead of blood for a few beats.

She hadn't been able to quash the desire to keep such stories away from Laura if she could. She had so enjoyed telling stories about herself to Laura that didn't involve that kind of thing. Instead they would be stories about her life at the Karnstein castle or her travels throughout the world as a vampire. She loved the way Laura would stop everything and listen to her when the storytelling mood struck with such passion and excitement, hanging on to every word. For so long Carmilla had felt that her life was one lived without meaning, without any purpose that wasn't according to her Mother's grand designs.

Laura was changing that. Not only in terms of her present but in her regards to her past as well. One day at the cottage after a particularly long remembrance of her first public appearance after becoming a vampire, a gala at a palace near Prague that resulted in quite the adventure when a caged Minotaur escaped, Carmilla had later found Laura scribbling down the story as close to verbatim as she could remember on a notepad. She had been doing this for all the stories Carmilla had told her.

"I don't want to forget any of them." Laura had explained simply.

She'd rummaged through Laura's things and found the notepad that night. Personal boundaries were never something she was good at. The experience of reading about her own life told in her own words was surreal to say the least. But somehow flicking from page to page and reading the words provided pleasure. She really had lived a life and by trying to shield Laura from the truly awful she unintentionally had participated in creating a record of the rest. Some of it was even good.

Laura found her still flicking from page to page while sitting on their bed, an anxious expression betraying concern that Carmilla had taken exception to her Elizabeth Gaskell impression. Carmilla patted a place next to her for Laura to sit, when she did so Carmilla spoke.

"No one, not a single person has ever cared enough to do anything like this." She flicked through some more pages before continuing. "Would it be okay if I could take a look at these from time to time?"