✔️The Woods (Stefan Salvatore)

p r o l o g u e - allegra manor

Halls were full of silence, cold now that it was all over, lightless now that they were gone. There had once been six cheerful children to excite the tired chambers of Allegra manor, to taunt the emotionless masks of the oil paintings. It was once a place of epic beauty, timeless and bright with overexaggerated wall tapestries of whites and golds, now there were hardly walls at all...

Eudora wondered through the charred remains, uncaring as she crushed blackened shards of glass and long lost items of clothing, now carelessly discarded where once held dear. Allegra had stood tall in the woods of Mystic Falls, between the trees and over creeks for generations, it had been the place where they were all born, all six blonde beauties thrived here.

To the rest of the world, they were perceived as strange, peculiar even. The six seemed to be lost fragments of one beautiful stained glass window, together the light could shine through and throw a kaleidoscope over the planet. Elva was the eldest and Eudora the youngest though time did not matter to them, only life. They were kind and beautiful, angelic and soft, all together in harmony. Their humour made no sense to others but was perfectly captured amongst their circle.

'The Witches', 'The Cult' others referred to them as, though it was through jealousy that they did so, they knew not of how impeccably close they were to the truth and they never were to find out as on July fourteenth, during the darkness of the night upon what had been a sun filled and loving day; Allegra Manor burnt to the ground, the amber flames licking high and shinning far into the distance.

None other than those within the walls that night would know of the true cause of the roaring flames. None questioned as they proclaimed it to have been the rug caught fire by the warm hearth. Though any who thought hard enough, who saw the towering flames from miles around and heard the gut wrenching screams of death knew, that this fire was not natural. This fire was not tamable, not understandable.... The six Allegra daughters were not natural. The fire was seventeen year old Amena.

The six girls were sweet, they were innocent, angelic and childlike. Though they were powerful, dangerously so. Bernadette Allegra and Mercy Bennett underestimated the power of their daughters. With great power comes great pain, great damage and it accumulated within her brain, it tainted Amena in a way that even her twin sister Amani could not foresee...

Now Eudora held the burden alone. The power flowed through to her, as each girl passed it flowed to the next and now she carried it all, unknowing of a way to still it, contain it. The beautiful bubbly baby Eudora had closed herself off, became swallowed by the shadows, she refused to allow pain onto another for the powers the Allegra family possessed.

Eudora Generous Allegra once had it all, she was the blue eyed, blonde athletic beauty with a wealthy, loving family but shadows fall more in the brightest of places. It was that which she chose to ignore until that night, until the brightness was what she wished to die, the fire was what she wished to rid of as her sisters screams bounced through her skull.

The beautiful Allegra manor was a metaphor for her life, it had been perfect, serene and dreamlike. Then it culminated on that night, the broth brewing for years bubbled over and she happened to be clinging to the side, right in the firing line to get burnt. Now this new Allegra manor was her, the charred remains of what once was beautiful, the empty shell of a loving entity, filled with memories. The manor had seen a thousand stories, a thousand laughs and a thousand smiles. And on that night, it felt as though in just those few hours, it had caused a thousand deaths for the pain it brought.

To Eudora, life was not a mountain. Life had been smooth, shallow and perfect before she was thrown from her meadow of flawlessness into a deep dark cavern where even as she clawed and screamed, nothing could bring her back into the light. Her mothers were here too, Bernadette and Mercy. The two drowning in a love for one another, the blonde having birthed all six children from an unknown father to raise alongside her life long love, only to have lost five of them in roaring flames.

Nothing was as it had once been. Since July Fourteenth, Eudora had lived with Sheila Bennett, her Grams. Sheila was the mother of Mercy Bennett, Eudora's unbiological mother and Mercy was the half sister of Abby Bennett, making Eudora the cousin (somewhat complicatedly) of Bonnie Bennett. As the school year threatened to loom nearer, sweet Eudora was taken away to grieve alongside her beloved aunt, Acacia Allegra. Sister of Bernadette Allegra. The pair met up with the lovesick and devastated Allegra parents and now, a few weeks into the school term, all four were back in town, moving into their new home that was much smaller than their previous and prepared to begin again.

None knew what this development could possibly bring...