Who: Diana Woods, Open When: Week 9, Saturday, early evening Where: Elijah Mikaelson's house, Library What: The new addition to the house shows her face. Rating/Warnings: TBD Status: Open/In-Progress
It had been a few days since she'd been brought back to the excessively grand manor house, unlike any home Diana had ever been inside. Her mother's home was large enough to sleep at least a dozen guests, but in a different way; everything was natural wood, there were small staircases that led to sleeping nooks, twisted around to a bedroom, stopped for a small landing overlooking the central hearth, what her mother called the heart of the house, where the fire never died and there was almost always something in a cauldron or a pot.
This place was more like it's owner; sleek, manicured, intimidating. Diana had spent all of the time she could in the bedroom he'd given her, not far away from his own. She knew they slept during the day, so it was these times when she'd been creeping down the stairs like a little mouse, stealing food from the kitchens before scampering back to her hiding place. There was going to be a night soon when she wasn't left in peace, when his patience would wear out and she would have to start getting to know him, as he had said in the little room where they'd met. And then he would bite her, and drink her blood to feed himself. All she could hope for was that it would be true that he could make it not hurt, and that he would like how she tasted just enough to do it when he needed to, but not enough to end her brief, and so far sheltered life. Things were going to change now, and for some reason, there was something that told her she wanted to be there to live whatever came next.
It didn't mean that it wasn't starting to get a little boring, confining herself to the little corner of the vast house that had been designated as her own. Diana waited until shortly before noon to get out of bed, take a shower, and pull on the warm robe that had been hanging beside the bath. She crept downstairs again, wrapping two of the mysteriously appearing pastries in a towel and an apple from the bowl. It was on the way back to her staircase that she noticed it was different down the hall; lighter? A door was open with sunshine streaming through the crack, and after glancing around carefully, Diana tiptoed her way down to it. She eased the door open enough to poke her head inside.
There were books, hundreds of them, and no one else inside the room, occupying the chairs or couches. Diana set her pillaged breakfast down on a table, wandering closer to the shelves. There were books of all sizes and shapes, bound with leather so obviously ancient that she didn't want to touch them, gilded letters of some language she didn't know adorning their spines. There were books of more modern means, the advent of the printing press making their numbers far more abundant. There were books she recognized, titles from the occasional afternoon when she'd spend ten clandestine minutes in the library after school, lovingly browsing the wares on hand. Fiction, non-fiction, tombs of photographs, it was impossible not to pull a few from their resting places to peek inside. She carried one to a couch, breaking off a piece of the muffin she'd taken and eating it while slowly turning the pages on a large book of color photographs; majestic vistas all across the United States.
She returned them each back in their places with the care of someone browsing through possessions not her own, until she found one that everyone always said was good. Then the pause became longer, the posture on the couch shifted to something more relaxed, and as the pages turned and Diana's attention rooted deeper and deeper into the story, a lamp was turned on idly, sun having set on the horizon without notice.