clair de lune

the flower that blooms in adversity

is the most rare and beautiful of all

Gwen knew that with the ways that everything had changed, some things had been put to the wayside, and she knew that she had fallen slack in caring about her humans again. That meant that it was time to look into their lives. It was time to check on them. And to her, it could have been no more than a day, but then she realized it had been months before she had seen them again, and that was unacceptable. She had to rectify the situation, and she had chosen to do so by inviting Constance here.

It was Saturday, and she was sure that she had plenty of other things that she would have rather been doing on a Saturday night than spending her time with her, but Gwen had wanted to see her, and the invitation had been extended, and now it was just past dusk. The gardenias were blooming in the greenhouse, and she was pleased with them. It was an odd thing, taking care of something living, seeing it grow, and bloom, and change, and having no ability to do the same.

But that was where her humans came in. The Wentzell girls she loved. And she loved Philip, and young Izák as well. But it was the girls, and their mother, that she had doted on for years. Anička had come first, caring for her, finding her that day, when she had run amuck in the palace and ended up in an area that she should not have found herself in… Gwen thought it lucky that it had been her that had found her and no one else.

For she was not supposed to have been there either.

But she had been governess to the young witch for a time after that. Assuming the role, and no one ever really questioning whom it had bene that had hired her. She had raised the little princess, for a time, after her mother had come to England, and when it had been time for her to move on, she had. When the little princess had gone to school, Gwen had left the palace, but she had been a part of Anička’s life since then. And she came and she went, but she made sure that they remembered that she was there. That she would come if they needed her.

And she hadn’t quite forgiven herself for not being attentive enough. For missing everything that she had missed. But the problems of the mortals were often missed if one did not take the time to look too carefully. And Gwendolyn had forgotten to look deeper than the surface. Not everyone’s lives played out so cleanly on their faces.

Still, she was here now, and while she was here, she was going to see to it that everyone was taken care of. She had dropped in on Eleánora by surprise the other day, and now she had invited Constance here. Theodora was next on her list, and then she would find her way to see Temperance, before she made her way back to their mother. She was getting back into the habit of looking after them all, and now that they were not longer together in the same household, it was a longer project.

When the doorbell had rung, she had headed back through the house and opened the door for her niece. “Hello. my darling.” Leaning forwards, she brushed her lips against Constance’s cheek before she beckoned her into the house. “I thought that we could choose from the cellar tonight, whatever bottle you wish.” Her wine collection dated nearly as old as she was, and there were some things that she would not open, but she thought that the Wentzell witches were aware of which bottles were off limits, even if she claimed nothing was.

Constance Leysa Mountbatten • 638 • gwendolyn's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

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[attr="class","ctopline"]I'm your hell, I'm your dream

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[attr="class","clyrics"]you know you wouldn't want it[break]
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[attr="class","cbody"]Months had passed since the epidemic, and Constance had been trying to get back to life as normal. She knew that there was no room for her to continue to feel guilty about everything that had happened. She knew that it wouldn’t do her any good at all to wonder why she hadn’t gotten sick. To wish that she had, if she could have protected the people that she loved from losing their magic. There was no rhyme or reason to why she had stayed healthy, but she had. Time had continued to pass, and there were still outbreaks written about in the Prophet—smaller ones, but still, and she had not gotten sick. She didn’t think she was going to, at this point. Merlin knew how many times she had been exposed, but she had never so much as had a sniffle. If she was going to get sick, in the first outbreak or any of the ones that had followed, she would have.
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She couldn’t know why that was, but she knew that it wouldn’t do her any good at all to worry about it or feel guilty about it. She couldn’t change what had happened. It wasn’t her fault that she hadn’t gotten sick. Constance knew that nobody blamed her for that, so she shouldn’t blame herself either. It wasn’t going to do any of them any good at all.
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So, she had tried to focus back on school, and back on ballet. And on wedding planning, since she was officially doing that. Now that things were on their way back to normal—or as normal as she could hope their lives could be without magic, Constance knew that she had to start thinking about that sort of thing. She didn’t want to wait too long. She knew that Liam had said he’d wait until after she graduated Lufkin, if that was what she wanted to do, but she didn’t think that it was. Waiting that long just seemed a little bit unnecessary. They already lived together; in a lot of ways, they were already like a married couple only without the actual marriage part. There was just no reason to wait until she graduated to make that officially.
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Constance also just thought that everyone could use the distraction. Or at least, she hoped that they did, and that it didn’t come off as rubbing her good fortune in everyone’s faces. It was hard not to think like that when she’d gotten engaged in the thick of the epidemic, so getting married while so many people were still without magic and suffering could be taken badly too. But she hoped that it wouldn’t. She thought the planning process would likely distract her family and keep them occupied, and then they would have a celebration to distract themselves with. That was the hope, anyway.
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There was a lot that went into planning a wedding, though. She knew that she’d really need to get help from all of her sisters. Ella had been through a wedding before, even if it was… small, so she knew plenty. Thea was the artistic one out of the lot of them, so Constance knew that she’d be a big help, and she was sure that her twin would have input too. Her matka was the one to trust with the wedding dress, of course. And she would want Gwen’s input on… honestly anything that she wanted to give her input on. If that came up on her visit tonight, she wouldn’t have a problem with that, but she wasn’t going to push the topic on the vampire either. Constance had no idea if she’d invited her over for any specific reason, or if she just wanted to catch up. Either way, she’d been happy to get the invitation. “Hi,” she smiled in response, before kissing her cheek in return. “Any bottle at all?” She teased, though she knew there were some bottles that were not included in that. But that was fine—Gwen didn’t have bad wine.
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[attr="class","cnotes"]674 ● @ gwen ● outfit

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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CLAIR DE LUNE

THE FLOWER THAT BLOOMS IN ADVERSITY

IS THE MOST RARE AND BEAUTIFUL OF ALL

Her humans were important to her right now. And Gwen knew that she had invested a good deal into these humans, but this group was special. She couldn’t say what it was about them, but there was something about them that kept her invested in their welfare. Anička and her daughters. They were the ones that Gwen was concerned with. Yes, her sons were all well and good, and all of that. But it was Anička and the girls that Gwen looked out for more than anything. She checked up on them. She had been too absent over the years to not make mistakes, and she wasn’t going to make them again.

Not knowing what she knew. Not when she was sure that she was one of only a few people that knew all of the secrets of this family. There were three others living that she thought knew the truth of everything. And even they only knew their own secrets. Each member of the family had things to learn, and things to hide. That was what made them so fascinating. Gwen thought that from an outside perspective, they were just rather like their own little world. Something that she could study as a subculture of human development.

But using the Wentzells as a focus group wasn’t really the point. She was going to be more attentive this time around. She was going to take care of them. And she thought that there was something to be said for that. She was going to make sure that they were going to be alright going forward. Because eventually she would leave them again. She had left for a time, when the girls were growing. She had been around, but not here. And that was what would happen again. As Anička’s little twins grew, Gwen knew that she was going to have to make herself scarce for a while.

That meant that she was going to ensure that the older ones were taken care of first. She wasn’t about to make the same mistakes she had made before. She hadn’t stopped what had happened to Anička. She hadn’t known. And she wasn’t going to not know this time around. She could do something about it now that she couldn’t then. And Gwen knew that she had a tendency of getting over involved with her humans. Even overly attached, but she was invested in this family. She was invested in making sure that they were safe. And if that meant that she was going to let herself get invested in their wellbeing, then so be it.

Tonight was about Constance, and about the wedding that Gwen knew was coming, but assumed that she was going to have to pry answers out of her about. She wanted her to see the flowers that she had in the greenhouse. The ones that bloomed at night. They were beautiful, and they would make lovely centerpieces for a wedding. She wanted to help her. And she thought that it was something that she was going to have to force upon her if Anička’s talking about Constance’s attitude towards it was to be considered correct.

There was something bothering her. Something that was making it hard to be happy, and Gwen understood that. She had stood by, unaffected, by the things that had taken loved ones from so many before. But there was a difference this time. No one was dying. And that made all the difference in the world. She wouldn’t be able to handle it either if people were dying. Bu they weren’t. They were just losing magic, and there were plenty of people smarter than they were trying to fix it.

Rolling her eyes, a little bit at the young princess’s question she shook her head, “You know what I mean.” There were some that were off limits. Some that, after this long, she was sure were probably undrinkable. But since they had never been opened, she was sure that they were still worth a small fortune. And even the best ones that she had were not here. They were tucked away in the cellars of other properties all over the world. The castle in Greece had the best of them.

@ constance • 706 • gwendolyn's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

[nospaces]

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[attr="class","cimg"]

[attr="class","clbox"]

[attr="class","ctopline"]I'm your hell, I'm your dream

[attr="class","cscriptentertain"]i'm nothing in between

[attr="class","cline"]

[attr="class","clyrics"]you know you wouldn't want it[break]
any other way

[break][break]

[attr="class","cbody"]This whole wedding planning thing was something that she had always thought that she would be happier about. She wanted to be. It was a good thing. It meant that she and Liam were getting married and that was also a good thing. She loved him. He loved her. After everything that had happened with Jules, she had been tempted to just convince her matka to arrange a marriage for her simply because she did not want to go through what she had before. She didn’t want to care about someone only to have it ruined because his family didn’t like her, or she wasn’t what they wanted for their son. She didn’t want to get her hopes up for something if it wasn’t going to happen and she had thought it might just be easier to take her decision out of it entirely.
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But then she had met Liam and she hadn’t had to worry about that anymore. She thought there was a chance that she could actually be happy, but she supposed she should have realized that nothing came that easily. Nothing was that easy. There was always going to be something. That was just how the world worked. In this case, it was the epidemic that had turned everything on its head. In more ways than one. Nearly everyone in their family had gotten sick and she had nearly run herself ragged from exhaustion trying to check in on everybody. She knew that she’d likely nearly made herself sick just from not taking care of herself. It had been a miserable couple of weeks for everyone involved, but they had all come out of it, and she had wanted to think that they could all figure out how to be okay.
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It just certainly wasn’t that easy. She could put on a good face and attempt go to back to life as normal, but it was more complicated than that. Constance was still worried about her family and how many of them were without magic. She was worried about the guards that her strýc had sent. Constance knew that they were here for Ella, but she still wasn’t sure what it meant to have palace eyes on them. It made her feel like everyone needed to be on their best behavior. And, at the best of times, she wasn’t sure that her best behavior was good enough. She thought there was a good chance that it wasn’t.
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The passing months living at Liam’s had been good. Being around him made her feel good—made her feel safe, but it also made the chasm between her and her family grow wider in her mind. She already felt very isolated from them, being the one sibling that hadn’t gotten sick. She already felt like they were mad or resented her for that, and now that she was starting to get roped into wedding planning, it felt like she was just bragging. Everything just felt wrong. She should be happy to be planning her wedding. It should make her happy. But it didn’t. As much as she wanted to think that people could use the distraction, a bigger part of her thought that no one was going to be happy for her. That it looked bad, in light of everything that had happened. She didn’t know if it was the right time. But she wasn’t sure when the right time was even going to be. Was there a right time? What if they didn’t find a cure for a decade?
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Constance didn’t know if Gwen wanted to talk about the wedding. She sort of assumed that she did. Likely, her matka had told her that she was dragging her feet on making any actual decisions. She was planning, she was just not getting very far. The two of them ganging up on her in that regard would definitely be enough for them to get the job done—or at least, that was what she assumed they were thinking. “I know, I know… what about a Domaine Leroy Chambertin Grand Cru?” She thought she was in the mood for a pinot noir, and she knew Gwen’s stores well enough to know that she had Domaine Leroy, since it was some of the best wine coming out of Côte de Nuits. She didn’t even need to go down to the cellar to know that.
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[attr="class","cnotes"]732 ● @ aunt gwen ● outfit

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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