Hollstein

Breaking Waves

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"The job is done. Did it make you feel better, Creampuff?" Carmilla asks from where she reclined on Laura's floor in the center of her pentagram. It was a shoddy attempt at summoning, the vampiress was glad that it was her who Laura had summoned, otherwise her golden innocent would be dead.

"No, I don't feel anything at all." Laura sat on her bed, hugging her yellow pillow to her chest. She trembled so hard that Carmilla could hear the shaking of the bed springs.

"I didn't think that it would. What you need to to do, sundance, is to let go of your anger and allow yourself to use that energy for grieving." Carmilla advises, wishing that she could hug Laura who so clearly needed it.

"What have you lost? Why would you ever need to grieve, you're a vampire." Laura obviously didn't know much about what it was that she had summoned. In her rage and her grief she had just gone for it and had done next to no research on the matter.

"I am centuries old, Pop Tart, and back when I was human, I did have a family. I had a mother and a father and siblings who grieved for me, not knowing that I would be forced to watch them die, and watch my siblings die, and their children, and their grand-children. I have grieved, Laura Hollis, more than your young soul could ever hope to bear." Carmilla studies her hands in her lap. The little figure crosses the room slowly, and despite the danger that she should have thought of Carmilla as posing, she wrapped her arms around Carmilla's waist and hugged her tightly.

"I'm so sorry. I couldn't even imagine. Here I've been complaining to you about losing my mom, and you've lost everyone." Laura cried into Carmilla's t-shirt.

"You always have permission to grieve over a lost parent who loved you and whom you loved. To lose a mother is one of the hardest burdens to bear, especially at your young age." Carmilla lifted her arms away from the child, unsure of how to respond to the show of affection. "Just stay away from all of this stuff from now on, okay kid? You've made several potentially dangerous mistakes here." Carmilla points out. "I could have killed you hundreds of times over by now."

The two spent the next hour with the vampire pointing out and teaching Laura how to do better if she ever felt like she had needed to something incredibly crazy like that again.

"And if you ever need to summon anyone for anything again. You come and check with me first. Before you do anything." Carmilla repeats herself again.

"I get it, 'summoning demons and monsters and vampires is dangerous'." Laura rolls her eyes as she prepares to release Carmilla from the magical hold that she had placed the vampire under. "Thank you...for everything." she told the vampiress with a soft and sad smile.

She didn't summon the vampiress again for two years.

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"Hello, my name is Carmilla and I will be your vampiric slave to- oh, it's you. How have you been, cutie?" Carmilla asks. "You're taller than I remember."

"And you look exactly the same. I'd thought that I had dreamed you" Laura gets as close as she is willing to to the edge of the pentagram.

"How long has it been? I have no concept of time when I am ... there." Carmilla asks, excited to be seeing Laura again. I could have been a week since the last time she was summoned or it could have been fifteen years.

"Six years." Laura answers.

"So, you're twelve now and almost as tall as I am." Carmilla says with an affectionate sigh.

"The doctors say that I'm probably done growing. I won't get any taller."Laura says with a light blush.

"You're growing up well." Carmilla tells her with a soft smile. "Did you summon me just to chat or do you have a job for me?"