[attr="class","chartltitle"]table of contents

[attr="class","chartl-item"]Introduction: a quick summary of the Emerson Legacy and Family Tree

[attr="class","chartl-item"]chapter 1. growing pains

[attr="class","chartl-item"]chapter 2. fight little wolf, fight

[attr="class","chartl-item"]chapter 3. hmm hmm

[attr="class","chartl-item"]interlude 1. get in the water

[attr="class","chartl-item"]chapter 4. hmm hmm

[attr="class","chartl-item"]chapter 5. when does a man become a monster?

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ch 1. growing pains

[attr="class","locbody"]journaling june 2021 [break][break]

You weren't supposed to know. You weren't ever supposed to know. But on your 16th birthday you press, you beg, you plead[break][break]

It's not innocent wonder, or childish need. No your curiosity comes from a place of sour bitterness. You miss her- you miss her so much. And you remember that every year you survive while her memory rots a little bit more in the minds of everyone around you. [break][break]

Where warm hands once held you is now cold stone that doesn't yield. No words, no sympathies. [break][break]

The silence makes the hole in your heart throb, and you dwell on how unfair her death was. Amelia Cunningham was a woman in her prime. She held on, pushing life through the eye of the storm. She loves as fiercely as she lived. [break][break]

But that's the reputation of every Sybarite, isn't it? Amelia is clever, but an oddity. She is straightforward, and her business relations are all above board, legal. She doesn't run cutthroat like her mother may have once done. [break][break]

She was a woman that had seen the toll such a life took. The balance it took to keep Rosario's enemies at bay. The unspoken ruthlessness, the difficult choices. To forsake another for one's own self preservation. The shadow of Rosario's choices hung over her childhood. [break][break]

So she chose to avoid that. To live above board. To struggle as woman in a merchant company. It takes years to earn steady, good income but she does the work. And maybe it's the exhaustion of her position that weakened her, or a particularly bad case of the disease. But whatever the case, it takes her quickly.

And while her last moments are quiet, her death racks the Cunningham home like rolling thunder. The howling winds and sheets of rain and flashes of lightning never. fucking. stop. That much is apparent in those emerald eyes that barely hold it all back. [break][break]

So when Rosario and Macintosh Cunningham look into deep pools of green- when you are on the verge of snapping- they tell you of him. [break][break]

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They tell you of the briefest glances of brilliant red hair, and piecing eyes. They tell you of the strange push and pull between their daughter and him. They tell you of the whirlwind that their relationship had been. Here and gone just as fast. They tell you of Amelia's stubbornness. Of Cedric's persistence. Her passion. His obsession. [break][break]

To the Cunningham's, they clashed as much as they came together. Their time together a balance of identities- of half truths and late afternoon work. And then something breaks. He disappears. [break][break]

She is left with child. And by the Gods does she fight ever so fiercely once again. She hides herself away, she speaks of her lover in hushed whispers. She holds her little miracle in her arms and begs for silence. She has chosen this. Her family has no room for someone like Cedric. [break][break]

The Cunningham's cannot reveal the whole truth, for they are not their daughter. They don't know of the conversations- the decisions she made. They don't know the deals she struck nor the thoughts she held on Cedric Emerson. Merely that he never appeared ever again. And he never would.[break][break]

But you will never accept that. You will never accept Amelia's death. Nor her reasons. Something burns within. You carry that name in the back of your mind as you seek him out. You learn of the man's fall from grace, his abandonment of Cerberus. A war family in shambles. An old matriarch upon the seat of power once more. [break][break]

The misfortune that befell him does not sate your hunger. You needs to know what she said- why she rejected Cedric? Why she kept Aiden? And only he had the answers. Your pathetic attempts of closure lead your childish mind to one conclusion: Cerberus. The decision is akin to abandonment. You are forsaking everything you have ever known. But you are a selfish, bitter creature. And you make the decision without a second though. [break][break]

You will claw your way out hell. You will find him. [break][break]

The thought consumes everything in your life. It makes the consequences of your coven choice easy to withstand. You stand, firm in your choice and choking back the tears. [break][break]

Cerberus is as difficult to enter as you had been told. But somehow- someway- you make it to that entrance ceremony. And as you're awarded that precious golden fang, ice runs down your spine. You are under such scrutiny, eyes locked onto your form and following your every move. It isn't until after you note the whispers speak a name. [break][break]

And before you can utter it, she finds you. She disarms you with a simple command. Magic doesn't compel you. It is her eyes that do. They are sharp, piecing. They are the eyes of a predator waiting for a chance to strike. [break][break]



And with that the trap is set. [break][break]

You have yet to learn the depths that you will traverse for this truth you so desperately seek. [break][break]

Your hand aches. Your quill drops. Your mind turns over these memories and choices. You couldn't have known. But you've made your choice.

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