(Untitled)

[captive_childe]

Claudia is curled up on a couch. She's wearing a simple dress this early in the morning. Not sure why, but it was what Bar had given her when she'd asked for a new dress. She missed Louis buying her lovely, expensive gowns

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[weighted_wishes]

There is a woman near the Bar, she may have just come from outside...her dress is simple, plain may be the term. Her fly away blonde hair hastily braided back to reveal a thin face that still holds a sad beauty...

Work roughened fingers curl gently on Bar's surface as she settled herself on a stool gingerly, looking around after receiving a glass of water.

[captive_childe]

Her memory pricks when she sees this woman.

A memory long ago of dirty streets and plague.

...

But there is more. Memories before that. A woman left alone after her husband fled. Who took such good care of her angelic-looking child. A woman who had made her sawdust dolls and danced with her for hours just to see the solemn child laugh. A woman who loved the golden haired girl and worked so hard to keep their shabby little home and the plain food they ate each day.

"Mama?" she says, her voice trembling as memory and sadness rushes over her to see this long-dead woman in the bar.

[weighted_wishes]

Tired blue eyes, like a sky after rain, glance in Claudia's direction at the single uttered word. The Bar is a place where the living and dead often mingle is it not?

Is it so hard to believe who this woman may be?

"Mon tresor?"

[captive_childe]

For Claudia it is.

At least, it is hard to believe her mother stands in front of her.

She slips from the couch, walking on tiny, unsteady feet.

'How is my treasure tonight? I have brought you something special.'

'Mama! A kitten!'

She shoves the odd memory away. A pet. Her mother had brought her a small white kitten on her fifth birthday.

As she approaches, her eyes fill with red-tinged tears.

"Mama."

[weighted_wishes]

With her, it's all in the belief.

Opal colors may dance in her eyes a moment, a touch more sadness enter her smile, but deep down, Claudia wants to see this form.

"Little one, look at you..." she crooned softly, reaching out to tuck a stray lock behind Claudia's ear.

[captive_childe]

Claudia's arms go around her waist in a tight hug.

The scent of the laundry, sharp in her opened memory, and the scent of the woman she had clung to as the borough had died around them.

She had missed her mother, more than she'd ever known.

"I never thought to see you again!"

[weighted_wishes]

Wish's fingers wove gently through the child's hair, smoothing the tresses across the girl's shoulders like any mother who loved their child. "And why not?" she teased. "I would be very sad if such were true..."

[captive_childe]

It had been so long since seeing her mother, and she just clings.

A woman of nearly eighty years, and she felt like the five-year-old whose body she still wore.

She looks up at her with a wide smile, forgetting for a moment that she was a dead vampire.

"This place does strange things! Oh, Mama. I am so glad to see you here."

This was the figure she had longed to have while alive, realizing she would never grow. Her mother's. For in Claudia's eyes, this was adult perfection.

[weighted_wishes]

Somethings are never out grown, nor some loves ever killed. This is something Wish knows well, and so the girl of eighty is treated just as she wishes to be...

...as if she's five.

Gathered into her mother's lap as she sits, lips pressed warmly to the girl's hair. "I've missed you mon tresor...tell me, how did you come to this strangeplace?"

[captive_childe]

She frowns, curling close.

"I died. A selfish man wanted my guardian -- my Papa. So he had me killed."

No point in lying.

"I don't much like being dead. It would be better were I as I was before he killed me."

[weighted_wishes]

There's a heartbeat beneath Claudia's ear, a pulse in her mother's arms...and warmth in her skin. No dead woman this...

"That is terrible to hear..." she sighed, tears in those words, and soft upon Clauia's hair. "Were you treated well before...before..." she can't say died.

[captive_childe]

She nods, nestled close to her mother's breast.

"I was. Louis loved me. Took care of me."

Claudia leaves out Lestat.

She still isn't sure what she thinks of him.

"He bought me beautiful dresses and took me dancing and to the theatre."

[weighted_wishes]

"And now...you cannot do that" Wish mourned for her. "You stay here yes? And you miss your pere?"

[captive_childe]

"Louis is living. David comes here often. He cuddles me and tells me he loves me and that I am pretty."

She was very attached to David, and the tone of her voice alone displayed that affection.

"I'm not like them anymore. Something a little different now. Because I died, I have to stay here." She sighs, closing her eyes. "I just wish Armand had never killed me."

[weighted_wishes]

"Do you truly mon tresor? Think hard. Wishes are not always kind, even to beautiful little girls...what if you could still not go back?" she rocked Claudia in her arms gently, a mothers musings, nothing more.

"What if this Armand would think to harm you again?"

[captive_childe]

"Armand is frightened of me. He's guilty. He's also miserable, which serves him right."

She continues to be soothed by the rocking, the nearness of mother.

"And what keeps me from going with David is that I'm dead. I can go for a little while, a day and no more, but I want to stay with him. I want to see Louis and... and maybe Lestat will want me again... if I weren't dead. Lestat was once so proud of me, and I think I loved him in a way like Louis, but Armand fudged it all up by killing me."