#vampire!eris

She was born in 1837, in a now forgotten village that would currently have been in Poland. Her mother was a stern woman, and her absent father a wealthy merchant, who barely remembered he had three daughters at home. When his wife died of influenza, together with his mother-in-law, the girls were left in the lurch, but what really took a toll was the loss of their fortune. Gambling, drinking and a nasty spending habit nearly threw them on the streets, and since Nesta was the oldest, she felt the need to do something.

The woman in the woods, a middle-aged lady who lived in a stone hut surrounded by trees and shrubs of all sorts, had seemed a solution as good as any other. It mattered little that many feared her, and that her name sounded like it came from times now forgotten. Nesta had knocked on her door when the moon shone bright in the sky, and had returned home the next morning as something different, no longer just a desperate girl, but the pupil of one of the most powerful witches in Europe.

It hadn’t taken long for the student to outdo the teacher, and so Nesta had taken her place, initiated her sisters, and begun to age so slowly that staying in the village, even though the hunt for her kind was long over, became dangerous. She’d said the only goodbye worth saying on a dreary winter evening, Claire wrapped in a heavy shawl, her now grey hair tied in a bun at the base of her neck. She received a letter the following year from her daughter.

Mom passed away peacefully, please don't come back.

Few words, but they made her understand how little she was welcome in the place she once called home. Within a couple of minutes, the paper had become a pile of crunching ash in the fireplace, all evidence of hatred destroyed before her sisters could see it. For nearly fifty years it had been only the three of them, but over time they’d understood that a bond as strong as theirs didn’t require constant closeness, so each had taken their own path. The first to leave was Elain, although, to be fair, it was Nesta and Feyre who left her behind. Their warnings had been of no avail: she had chosen to marry a human, and it mattered little if after about ten years, fifteen at most, she would be forced to leave him, she loved the guy and wanted to be his dutiful wife. They were in Provence at the time, and the wedding had been so lovely that Nesta had almost managed to ignore the burning sensation she felt at being in a church. Feyre had been the second to meet who she thought was the love of her life, the head sorcerer of a French coven located on the northern border with Spain. Nesta let her go reluctantly, but the liaison didn’t last long, and in 1940, shortly before the outbreak of the war, they all fled to America.

New York had been Feyre’s favourite place. Despite the dark period, it was teeming with art, with new and experimental painting techniques the youngest of them couldn’t wait to try. Elain was the one who had struggled the most the adapt, so Nesta was left to act as a bridge between them, even though what she would’ve most wanted was to go somewhere warm and read the novels of her era, those she’d set aside in favour of grimoires and religious dissertations. She’d never worried much about what would be of her soul, but she feared for those of her sisters, so she’d tried to understand if Catholicism and the Bible were really to be taken so literally. After the end of the war, she told herself that if a God existed, he couldn’t be so benevolent.

From the 50s onwards, change had been so rapid that Nesta had struggled to keep up with it. Technology and globalization made slow life and superstitions die, but at least they allowed her to move freely from place to place without too many questions being asked.

She had already resided in half the states of America when she met Eris Vanserra, and for a brief moment, she thought Massachusetts was a place where she could grow roots and finally rest. She was in Boston, doing some research on the actual existence of the Túatha Dé Danann, to whom Feyre's new boyfriend seemed to be related, when she decided to take an evening walk in the Public Garden. Somehow, the place exuded magic, so she wasn’t surprised when a vampire tried to seduce her, probably in an attempt to drink her blood and then throw her body into the Atlantic. Being a witch, Nesta hadn’t fallen prey of his spell and he’d begun to court her with flowers, jewels, and hard-to-find editions of her favourite books. When she finally gave in, long games of chess and slow dances in the moonlight became the norm, until he told her le loved her. It was 1968, just after the preview of Promises, Promises at the Colonial Theatre. Truth be told, he said he loved her laugh, but something had shone in his eyes, so Nesta run away the next morning, leaving behind most of her things and a short apology note. Feyre had hosted her in New York for a while, and there she’d met Cassian, a werewolf who’d made her forget the way her heart fluttered when she was in Eris’s arms, at least for a dozen years. Upon hearing the news of their reunion, Elain also returned to New York, but after a brief fling with a friend of Rhysand and Cassian, she left again to join a traveling circus as a seer. Nesta had attended one of their shows, but one of the acrobats had reminded her too much of her immortal lover to bear the entire performance.

She met Gwyn on that occasion, the skinny girl struggling in a vain attempt to escape the grasp of a guy twice her size. He’d dragged her in the darkness behind the colourful circus tent, convinced that his wickedness would go unpunished if he’d chosen a novice as his victim. Nesta had made him change his mind, and Gwyneth Berdara had abandoned her pious life to learn how to defend herself with the most unorthodox means she could find. Her powers had proved less destructive than Nesta’s, more based on life than death, but for the duration of the 80’s they’d formed a duo worthy of a couple of newspaper articles. They’d told themselves they’d made the world a better place, for what little they could, and it was on the day they met Emerie they received the long-awaited confirmation. She was a werewolf, young enough she managed to survive alone after she left her pack to look for the witches who killed her father. Nesta never thought she would receive gratitude for the murder of a relative, and although she was relieved, from that moment on they’d dedicated themselves to helping the victims rather than prosecuting the perpetrators.

The Valkyries, the association they’d opened with proceeds obtained in a not entirely legal way, helped women who no longer wanted to hide what the violence of patriarchy had done to them to find a voice and a support system. Emerie had found her calling in running it, and although she once used to transform often to stay young, she no longer did so. Last time she saw her, her once perfect skin had begun to shrivel and her joints started to ache as well as her back. Nesta, who had faced that kind of suffering before, had stuck around to help however she could, but Gwyn, who had only endured the consequences of mortality when she was mortal herself, had walked away, choosing to travel for a while further north. She hadn’t notified anyone of her return, nor did Nesta knew how to take her invitation. Had she continued to practice magic like her or had she aged like Elain did in Provence? Would they still look almost the same age, or would Nesta have to hide her face with a mask?

I don’t know if I have anything suitable to wear, she replied, casting a wary glance at her immense wardrobe. Thirty years of fashion and memories, plus some memorabilia she wouldn’t have worn to a costume party even if someone threatened to torture her, were all she had left.

No problem, Gwyn had replied, so quickly that Nesta wondered if she hadn't been glued to the phone the whole time, waiting for her attentions, we can always go shopping!

So Nesta found herself in a thrift store more similar to an antique shop, surrounded by old oil lamps and countless replicas of the most disparate items.

“Were you alive when they used these things?” asked Gwyn, who hadn’t changed a bit, waving some obsolete electric hair rollers under her nose. A smile spread across Nesta’s face, and although she was very amused that her friend didn’t seem to have the slightest idea of how different things were when she was born, she simply nodded. In all honesty, she had never styled her hair much, preferring the thick braids of the Polish tradition to frizzy bangs and ringlets, but Elain loved them and was the first to try a perm when it boomed.

It was one of the things she liked most about her sisters, how each of them had their own personality, well-defined interest, and unmistakable sense of style, yet they still supported each other no matter what. If someone spending so much time together could lead outsiders to not understand where one person began and the other ended, the differences between them were so clear there was no doubt even whether a dress belong to one of the other. Maybe that was why Nesta recognized the gown as soon as she saw it, because nobody else would’ve liked it as much as she did. The velvet was a little dusty, and the golden chain on the back had been removed, but the design, the draped bodice, and the flowy gown, were still the same. It was one of the few lavish things she’d managed to bring with her from Europe, a piece that earned her many compliments in the twenties for how it accentuated her straight shoulders and slim figure.

“I think it will suit you,” Gwyn said, once she reached her at the end of the aisle. “Maybe it needs a bit of readjustments, but you’d make a great entrance.”

Nesta knew for a fact that the dress would fit her perfectly, but since she wasn’t ready to share its story, she didn’t contradict her and asked the owner how much he charged for it.

“When I got it they told me it was a one-of-a-kind piece, but from that day on no one gave it a second glance,” the old man admitted, and although Nesta was sure he was right, after all it was custom made, she still gave him less than a hundred dollars. Being a witch undoubtedly had its benefits, but she wasn’t able to make money appear from thin air, and as long as she didn’t turn to theft, or decided to abandon the Valkyries to find a real job, she couldn’t splurge.

“You should add a pair of fake canines,” joked Gwyn on their way home, but Nesta had put the idea aside, determined to relive one of the balls Eris used to bring her to.

A quick glance at the fabric neatly folded inside the unassuming paper bag made her relive a sea of moments she had relegated in the depths of her mind. Feyre’s laughter as she dragged her to on the French dance floors, the chatter with Elain as they ran arm in arm through the narrow streets of Paris, and Eris’s long, thin fingers, caressing her bare skin in the privacy of their apartment.

“You still haven’t told me why you care so much about this party,” she teased, if only to chase away the melancholy. It was normal to stumble when you’ve lived so long, yet Nesta was determined to compartmentalize and not let the mistakes of the past ruin her present. Boston was an error, she knew it now and probably already knew back then, but life went on, and judging by where she’d found one of the dresses she’d left there after her hasty departure, Eris did it too.