#yeah we waxed a little poetic here but I'm allowed as a treat

[latibvles]

25. temple for vicki please and/or 15. memory of the cliffs for gen also please.

EXTENDED WORSHIP METAPHOR SAVE ME! SAVE ME EXTENDED WORSHIP METAPHOR!! I'm doing the other one too don't get it twisted anyways here's the first of these. The inbox is open! Send me prompts!

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##TEMPLE — VICKI GRAVES

The nature of her leaving felt almost heretical.

Which feels dramatic, but the more she thinks about her childhood, it feels more apt. Her mother, an unreachable and unsatisfied deity, and Vicki the devoted worshipper, offering good grades and quiet disposition and any manner of appeasement for a blessing. The blessing being a chance to be heard at their dinner table, an “I’m proud of you” or a hug and a kiss. Sometimes it worked, and the reward would leave her smiling for hours. Oftentimes though, Vicki felt like the ghostly clergywoman of a Victorian horror film, slightly crazed and a little bit desperate for acknowledgement from God.

Which had made the disillusionment of her adolescence so jarring, because if she wasn’t working towards her mother’s approval than what was she working towards? Was a preacher with no beliefs of her own still a preacher? Her mother wasn’t a god, but coming to terms with that was jarring in and of itself. She remembers grieving — like this was something worse than finding out Santa wasn’t real. In a way it was. What was the point of any of it? What’s the point of making lists, or praying, if none of it’s real.

When she leaves their home in Sydney with a half-baked promise to call, she feels like she’s turned her back on the only thing she’s ever known.

Her apartment had nothing at its center to revere and she was okay with that for a long while. Because it was still hers, and only hers — something to put her name on. An achievement meant to appease herself and not a false God, not something she’d conjured up in her head to please arbitrarily. And for a while — a long while — she’s okay with that.

He is not the thing she worships, but when he sweeps through, they do make something worth devoting themselves to.

The feeling of his mouth, the way the ring he gave her catches the light, the way he makes her laugh and listens when she talks. It all feels fragile, sacred even. She wasn’t in the business of taking it for granted.

A new temple, with something worth revering at its center.

#. vicki graves #the pacific oc #bill hoosier smith #bill hoosier smith x oc #yeah we waxed a little poetic here but I'm allowed as a treat