It was all getting to be too much for Ebony Goth.
A controversial wedding between her sister and a vampire, her parents filing for divorce, and now almost losing her sister and niece to scary pregnancy complications. None of it directly affected her and yet all of it deeply affected her. Everything had always cut Ebony so much deeper than most people. She was such a sensitive soul that struggled to bloom her entire life under the constant barrage of bullying she was subjected to over her less-than-ideal looks.
Until she met Lilith, Ebony had been a quiet shell of a person, too scared to make a lot of noise about anything. Too scared of confrontation. Too scared of everyone and everything. The panic disorder she developed as a teen consumed her life but was invisible to everyone but her. And Lilith. Lilith always saw her and knew what she needed.
Like now.
“Why don’t I take you away someplace nice and quiet for a little while?” Lilith murmured against her hair. “Just us. Give you some breathing room to recharge your batteries. Your nerves are fried, Ebbie. I can see it.”
That sounded nice. So nice that Ebony was almost tempted to agree without hesitation. But reality set in almost as soon as the fantasy did. She sighed and shook her head.
“I can’t, Lil. My mom needs us right now. I don’t want to leave her alone. And what if something happens to my sister or Lucy? We’re right next door, we’re the only ones around who can help. I’m needed here.”
“Has anyone bothered to ask you what you need lately? Or ever?” Lilith asked her gently. “How can you expect to take care of anyone when you’re like this? You’re not sleeping well. You jump at every little noise. You’re cracking under the pressure, Ebbie. You need a chance to breathe.”
Ebony opened her mouth to protest again but her mother interrupted by walking into the room. Bella’s concerned eyes caught the expression on their faces.
“Girls? Is everything alright?” Bella asked them.
“Yeah, Mom, I’m f–” Ebony started but Lilith gave her a look. Ebony knew that look. She both hated it and loved it at the same time. It was a look that said ‘Stop pretending for the sake of pleasing other people; you’re hurting yourself and you know it.’ It was both an annoying and desperately-needed reminder to fight for herself. Something Ebony still wasn’t very good at but having someone like Lilith fighting with her made it a little easier.
She sucked in a breath and let it out in a small whoosh, admitting to her own deception. “Actually… Lilith was talking about taking me on a little trip somewhere. To relax. She thinks I’m stressed…”
“You are stressed,” Lilith said with raised eyebrows.
“I told her that it wasn’t a good idea right now because of Cassie and the baby and you and Dad going through a divorce and everything, but–” Ebony started but her mother cut her off.
“I think that’s a wonderful idea. Why on earth wouldn’t you be able to go because of your sister or me?” Bella asked. “Cassandra has Caleb at home with her. He took paternity leave to care for her and Lucy and I’m right next door if anything happens. Your father and I are grown adults who can handle our own affairs, honey. And so are you. If you need to take some time away to look after yourself, do it.”
“But… Winterfest?” Ebony struggled to come up with more excuses to put others before herself. “We can’t miss Winterfest. That’s like missing Spooky Day.”
“We can be home in time for Winterfest, Ebbie,” Lilith assured her. “I don’t really want to leave my brother and Lucy for that long, either. But you need at least a few days to relax.”
“I agree,” Bella said, nodding. “Lilith’s right. Everything going on lately has been affecting you. Take a few days for yourself, sweetie.”
Well, that was it, wasn’t it? She had no more excuses and… Watcher, a weekend somewhere nice and quiet with the woman she loved sounded like a dream come true to Ebony right now. With a sheepish smile, she gave her mom a big hug.
“Okay, okay, you’ve convinced me,” she admitted. “I guess Lilith and I need to figure out where we want to go. We’ll see you before Winterfest.”
They decided to rent a small, cozy little cabin in Granite Falls for a couple of days. The heavily forested area had all the peace and quiet Ebony needed to unwind and offered plenty of shade to keep Lilith safe from the sun during the day. Plus it had a covered back deck. Good for a vampire to relax in any type of weather.
As soon as they stepped inside the romantic little getaway retreat, Ebony felt like she could really take a deep breath for the first time in a while. Home had been suffocating. She felt lighter here. This had been a good idea but she wasn’t really surprised. Lilith always had the best ideas to get Ebony feeling like herself again when her mind had gotten lost.
“Thank you,” Ebony told her while holding her close. “I really, really needed this but I never would have done it on my own.”
“I know,” Lilith said with a knowing little smirk. “But it’s okay. Everyone needs a nudge sometimes. If I’m being totally honest, I kind of wanted to get away for me, too.”
“The only problem now is what am I going to do for three days when I don’t have anything to worry about?” Ebony laughed.
Lilith shrugged. “The back deck does have a hot tub…”
At first, they didn’t do anything in the hot tub. They just leaned against each other with their eyes closed in content silence, listening to the birds and forest creatures in the natural beauty that surrounded them. A moment of peace in all the craziness that enveloped them back at home. Finally, Ebony opened her eyes and looked over at Lilith.
“Hey… Lil? Can I ask a serious question? Even if it might ruin the moment?”
“Always,” Lilith said without any hesitation. She opened her eyes and locked eyes with Ebony. “What’s up?”
“When we were visiting my sister in the hospital and saw Lucy, I said I wanted one and… you didn’t really answer…” Ebony trailed off uncertainly. “Did I freak you out or something?”
Lilith blinked at her in mild surprise but shook her head with a warm little smile. “No, Ebbie. Not even a little bit. I was just… surprised. You’d never mentioned kids before and… I never really thought about having them before, either,” she shrugged. “I guess you just gave me something new to think about, that’s all.”
“And have you thought about it? Since then?”
“Yeah. A lot, actually,” Lilith admitted to her. She looked up at the ceiling of the covered deck and frowned, trying to think of how to describe the complexities of immortality to someone who wasn’t immortal but this was Ebony. And Ebony always understood her somehow, even when Lilith wasn’t sure she understood her own conflicting feelings about what she was. “It’s just… I’d always assumed that was a door that would always be closed to me, given what I am. So I just didn’t think about it because if I did, it would hurt too much to think about everything that was stolen from me,” she started off. “My brother and I just kind of drifted. We tried to leave Forgotten Hollow to get away from Vlad but it was the only place we could stay long enough to put down roots because everyone there was like us. Well… they were vampires but not like us,” she frowned with distaste. “Eventually we had to accept it as our home because we couldn’t stay in one place long enough for people to catch onto the fact that we didn’t age. We couldn’t keep friends or lovers. We definitely couldn’t entertain the thought of raising a family.”
“Caleb married my sister,” Ebony pointed out softly. Lilith smiled and kissed her head.
“Yeah. I guess she changed his perspective on things,” she said. “And you’ve changed mine, too. I always felt like my existence was pointless. Why live forever when everything around you is impermanent? What was the point of me, then? I thought I’d made my peace with floating aimlessly forever… but after knowing you and watching my brother marry a human knowing he’ll have to say goodbye to her soon. The fact that his love for Cassie made that pain worth it…” Lilith blinked back tears and cleared her throat awkwardly with a helpless shrug. “It made me realise I want that, too. I want what he has but with you, Ebbie. I want my life to have meaning and you give it meaning. So yeah. I’d love kids. A whole bunch of them.”
Ebony laughed with mingled surprise and delight. She’d said she wanted one! “A whole bunch?! How many are we talking, here?”
Lilith shrugged with an impish smirk. “Oh I dunno… maybe only six or so.”
“Oh well if that’s all…” Ebony snorted sarcastically. “We’ll see, Lil. It might not be that easy depending on how we go about it.” But the truth was, she was elated that Lilith wanted the same things out of life as her.
Lilith put an arm around Ebony and pulled her close. “Yeah, I know. I don’t want to pass vampirism onto my kids. Caleb’s already scared to death about that with Lucy.”
“And I don’t want to pass on my nose.”
Lilith burst out laughing. “What are you talking about?! Your nose is cute!”
Ebony just made a face, wrinkling her broad, crooked nose that she hated so much. “I’m glad one of us thinks so.”
“I guess we’re adopting then, huh?” Lilith concluded. “It’s hard for unmarried couples to adopt, you know.”
Ebony looked up at Lilith, something inside her telling her it was time to do something brave. “What if we were married?”
“Ebbie… Are you asking me to marry you?”
“Yeah. I am,” she murmured. “Will you? Right now?”
“Like tonight?”
“Yeah. I’m serious, Lil,” she said with all the confidence she normally lacked. “Let’s get married tonight. Just us. I don’t want to go through what my sister did with all the drama and fighting surrounding her wedding. Everyone’s always telling me I need to do what’s best for me and prioritize my own happiness first for once so that’s what I’m doing. I want our wedding to be for us and no one else. Will you marry me tonight?”
Ebony had barely finished asking the question when Lilith kissed her enthusiastically and nodded. “Yeah. I will.”
And so the unlikely vampire and spellcaster couple found some dresses they had packed with them that might in some way pass for an impromptu wedding and crafted makeshift veils using a few autumn wildflowers blooming in the area that hadn’t wilted yet and a little help from Ebony’s magic.
Hand-in-hand, they ran off into the deepest part of the woods together in the dead of night to make a forbidden promise to each other. No disapproving family members. No stuffy formalities or stressful wedding planning that would have taken away from their joy. Only the waterfall behind them, the moon, and the twinkling stars bore witness to Lilith Vatore promising Ebony that she’d be Lilith Goth from this night forward.
“Lilith Goth? Are you sure you don’t want me to be Ebony Vatore?” she asked as they clasped hands together in the wilderness. Lilith shook her head and kissed Ebony’s forehead.
“I’m sure. I can’t get rid of my father’s name fast enough, trust me. You’re my family now.”
When the newlyweds arrived back at their cabin just before sunrise, breathless and giddy with the thrill of getting married in secret, they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Their marriage still needed to be consummated, after all.
Afterwards, Ebony brushed some hair from her wife’s face, still hardly daring to believe that she could call her her wife now. “Lil, when we get home and everyone inevitably freaks out over the fact that we eloped in secret, I just want you to remember that I’d still do it again… No matter how upset or stressed out our families manage to make me over this. Okay?”
Lilith nodded understandingly. She already knew what was waiting for them at home and how Ebony might crumble under the weight of confrontation later but that was okay because Lilith would be there to fight for her happiness. Like always. “I know, Ebbie. It’s okay. We’re both going to have to answer to a lot of people when we get back but we’ll deal with it together, alright?”
Ebony shook her head. “No. We don’t have to answer to anyone. And I’m going to tell them that… but I might need you holding my hand when I do. I’m braver with you.”
“You don’t even have to ask. I’ll always hold your hand when you need me to.”
Snarky Sims 