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[attr="class","lyric1uni"]miracle

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[attr="class","lyric2uni"]It never goes the way that you planned
Success is a door that always slams
I'm trying to break it

[attr="class","textboduni"]Camilla thought she had made a good move, meeting up with Kingsley earlier that day. He was under a lot of pressure and she knew he had more on his plate than any sane person could possibly balance--but that was just the way the Shacklebolts had always been. Going above and beyond, standing out in the crowd, it all just came with the name. If she was being honest, it was part of the reason Camilla had never changed her name after getting married. She would always be Camilla Shacklebolt, no matter what, and a part of her couldn't bear to leave her name behind. She wore it proudly. All of them had done something, at some point, to make a difference. Something to make sure they were remembered. Several things, usually, and that trait did seem to get passed on to their children. Well, except for MJ, who seemed to go out of his way to fly under the radar... but he was still intelligent, and it was recognized, whether or not that was the intention.

Her walk with Kingsley through the pumpkin patch by the Lufkin campus had been good for both of them, honestly. It had given Camilla a chance to clear her head and talk to her brother without any outside forces. No secretary giving them a rather timid reminder that Dean Shacklebolt was running low on time, and no paperwork in front of him to use as a barrier. Besides, Camilla figured that after the week he had had, a reason to escape campus even for a moment would have done him some good. And that was what it had been, in the end. Good. Between people getting sick, both Bangor and Lufkin shutting down, and the magical world trying to piece itself back together, Camilla hadn't even taken a moment to breathe and check in on her brothers. Her husband and children were important, yes, and she would always put Esme, Em, and MJ before anyone else. But before all of that, Camilla had been the older sister to two very outgoing brothers. And she hadn't really had a chance to play that role in a while. She knew things were different with them as adults, that Kings and Chris didn't need a big sister to look out for them and be their listening ear, but Camilla would always be loyal to playing that part.

If she was being honest, she had also wanted to scope the aftermath of everything that had happened with Oralee - which, yes, was a less than honourable intention. But Camilla just cared a lot about her brother and ex-sister. Lee was also family, and hearing about everything that was going on between the two of them broke her heart just in t he slightest. Never mind the fact that it shouldn't have been happening in the first place. Camilla didn't think their divorce should have ever happened, really, but leave it to Kingsley to be the dramatic and unnecessarily overprotective one. 

And maybe she had asked Kingsley to meet with her today, of all days, knowing full well that she would be meeting with Lee and Zahra later. But that was entirely beside the point. Camilla reached for the wine bottle . on the coffee table and poured herself another glass, then sat back into the couch with a sigh. The point was that she was having an evening with her sisters. Strange, Camilla had always had Kingsley and Chris... the idea of sisters was still something she cherished like a novelty. "So, anything exciting happen lately?" Camilla asked. "Or are we just going to go ahead and avoid the elephant in the room," she continued with a light smirk before taking a sip of her wine.

@oralee + @zahra | 627 words | outfit

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF GS + WW

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miracle

Searching for words, praying for signs

I struggle to find the rhythm and rhyme

There was quite a lot going on in their lives, and Zahra knew that the loss of magic was affecting her family a good deal. The Shacklebolts were not the family that she had been born into, but they were the family that she had chosen, through choosing Chris. They were important to her, and they were the only family here in England that she could hold on to. Technically they were in Wales. But the point stood. She was going to do right by her sisters, and Zahra knew that that meant that she was going to be here, and that she was going to work out how to help them. Both of them.

Camilla was the eldest, and Zahra knew that she wasn’t necessarily going to want her younger sister looking out for her, but of the three of them she was the middle sister. And she knew that the old standby was true. Camilla made the rules. Zahra was the reason that they had rules. And Oralee… The rules didn’t apply to Oralee, because she was the baby. She knew that that wasn’t always true, but most of the time it felt like it. There was always something special about the dynamic between the three of them, and Zahra would credit that, along with Chris’s calmness, and guiding hand, for what kept her sane here on this rainy island.

Dealing with what she knew and knowing that she couldn’t talk about the things that she was working on, she tried to keep a level head about the whole thing. Though it wasn’t her head that she most often worried about. It was her gut. And the feelings that she always had about needing to get her family out of here. That England was not, and would never be, safe enough. Not for her children, not for her sisters, not for any of them.

Of course, she knew that England was home. That the UK was where they were going to stay. She had missed her window to convince Chris to go back to her own homeland. And it wasn’t like they could leave now anyway. She knew about the spells on the borders. Whether the spells themselves were common knowledge or if they were Ministry secrets, she wasn’t entirely sure, but she did know that there was no leaving the UK right now. They were lucky that they could still travel between countries. That would have been harder still.

She was curious about what it was that they were going to do. And more curious still about how each of their families were holding up. There were only a few of them that had been spared. Herself, Audrey, and Kingsley. They were fine. But everyone else had been touched by this thing. They were going to have to talk about it, but she had beaten her younger sister here, and she knew where it was that Camilla had been today. Where it was that Oralee had been today. That was a mess. The divorce itself was a mess, but Zahra was trying to not stick her nose in more than she needed to. If they wanted to talk about it, she would. Otherwise she was going to consider them adults, that had made a rather foolish choice. But adults nonetheless.

Taking a drink of her wine she nearly spit it back in her glass at Camilla’s words. “Subtle, Sister.” There was a smirk on her face as she turned to look at the blonde. There was no doubt about what it was that she was referring to. Zahra moved her legs around to curl under her, a move that showed just how long she had been a cat, and just how much of the feline had bled over into the way that she moved, even as a human.

@ sisters • 641 • zahra's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

miracle

NEVER GOES THE WAY THAT YOU PLANNED

SUCCESS IS A DOOR THAT ALWAYS SLAMS

Meeting her sisters tonight was probably the last thing that Oralee actually wanted to do. There was enough going on without having to deal with the fact that Camilla knew. Because Camilla always knew. And she didn’t think that that was necessarily a good thing. Her sister-in-law was going to find some way that this was all tied together, and she didn’t think that she wanted to hear it. She didn’t think that she wanted to deal with all of that. Because at some point, something had to give. At some point, someone had to be wrong, or right. And Oralee didn’t want to deal with that yet.

She didn’t think that she really wanted to deal with that ever, but that wasn’t an option. Because she knew what she had said, and she knew that he knew. And that had made what she had done all that much harder. Because she wasn’t supposed to walk out on him. She wasn’t supposed to fight against him. She was supposed to fight with him. They were supposed to fight together, and she knew that this was not that. She knew that they had made, or he had made, their choices. This was how it was going to be now, and the decision that he had made this morning, it was one that she was going to have to stick to.

It was one that she wasn’t going to want to give up on, and she didn’t really know what to think of the whole thing. If she was going to do this, she had to pull it together. She had to be okay before she really let her sisters see that she was upset by what she had done. And she thought that that was already a shot in the dark. They knew her well enough to know that something was wrong. And she didn’t think that it was simple coincidence that they were meeting tonight, when things had happened the way that they had this morning. She wouldn’t have been surprised if Camilla had already talked to her brother. If she knew exactly what had happened this morning.

Oralee was trying to think about anything else as she settled on the floor opposite of her sisters. The wine glass had been tipped to her lips when Camilla spoke, and it took a good deal of self-control not to sputter into it. That had been an attack if she had ever heard one. “Camilla!” The blonde felt her eyes go wide but she shook her head. “Obviously you already know. So, there’s no point in discussing it.” And there wasn’t, unless they were somehow going to have an answer for how to make Kingsley see that she still loved him. Because while she had said it a month ago, today could very well have looked otherwise.

This whole thing was a mess, and she would have rather not dealt with it at all. Setting her wine to the side she wrapped her hand around her scarred arm. Things had been easier, even when they had been hard, but that had been the before. And now here they were, two years into the after, and everything was still a mess. Choices had been made, they continually pushed one another away. And yet, here she was, sitting on the floor in Camilla’s living room, because somewhere in there, she had been a Shacklebolt this entire time. Neither one of them straying from that, no matter that there was only the children still technically binding them together.

@ sisters • 593 • oralee's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0