exactly one week has elapsed since a regular occurrence became something extraordinary, altering the course of her existence in a manner she never expected. three girls, treated by mother miranda using the cadou parasite, delivered to castle dimitrescu for routine observation under lady dimitrescu’s proficient eye, now dead and born anew with the dispositions of lost children. three swarms of ravenous flies assimilated with women, they flit and buzz about the castle with a thirst for discovery and look to alcina like infant ducklings who imprinted on a comically unsuitable charge.
but alcina can’t reject them as she might have expected to. no, the moment she laid eyes upon their confused, frightened faces, she felt some thing stir within her cruel and ruthless heart. was this perhaps the phantom call of an emotion she’d only heard described by her once-peers who burdened themselves with repulsively helpless offspring? never before a mother, lady dimitrescu has no words in any language to give voice to her vast feelings, but given twenty-four hours to muse ( and muse she did, endlessly ), she believes she has a grasp now of this new path in the road that had once appeared so immutably straight before her. she will shelter them, teach them, welcome them into her black soul. yes, she will be their mother.
and as any good mother should, alcina must bestow upon them names. their old names would no longer do —- irina, mihaela, and lois are dead, after all. so, just as ponderously as she had considered her new place, alcina considered the girls’ new identities. she would name the eldest bela, for a film she’d seen three years ago about a curiously similar man to herself. the youngest would be called daniela —- ironically, of course, because she would be free to reject the old god’s judgment altogether. and the middle child?
❛ cassandra, ❜ murmurs the matron, the name almost reverent on her tongue. lady dimitrescu summoned each girl alone ( with some difficulty, as the three could hardly part with each other ) to bequeath their new identities, and the middle child now stands expectantly in front of her having certainly learned from her new sisters that she, too, will be named. alcina looms tall, taller than most people in the world, but she hopes that the affection in the amber pools of her eyes and the gentleness of her words will breach the girls’ trepidation and warm them to her. ❛ you are cassandra, dear one. ❜
@monstrousdivine / 𝐂𝐀𝐒𝐒𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐑𝐀
