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the_scent_of_lilacsTitle: The Book of Common (Uncommon) Prayer
Rating: Gen
Fandom: Dracula - original Stoker text
Length: 400
Characters: Mina Harker
Also for: my GWYO prompt: pessimism
Summary: Mina remembers her unusual request before she and the others traveled to confront the Count for the last time.
Mina slid her finger along the spine of the book. In many ways, it was much like any other volume in their library. Indeed, even the title contained the word ‘Common.’
But there was nothing common about Mina’s memory of this book. She remembered she had been beyond pessimistic; she had been mad with despair. She had forced her husband and her friends to pledge to destroy her if the sickness which she had already felt taking hold of her should consume her entirely. She made them vow to kill her if she put herself in league with their enemy, with the one who was so bent on consumption and violent conscription.
Mina’s outlook had been so bleak, so distraught. Nothing could’ve assured her of a bright end to that dismal adventure, that battle against a fiend who had taken the life of her beloved friend Lucy and almost claimed her beloved Jonathan, too, and who knew how many others. The battle had to be fought, but defeat seemed all but inevitable given the otherworldly cunning, power, and greed which was housed in the Count.
She’d asked them to take her life. Well, to be more precise, she’d asked them to eliminate her existence if that existence became a threat to life.
Oh, how it had pained her to make the request and how it had pained them to hear it. And she’d asked them, Jonathan in particular, this one more favour.
Jonathan had protested, had said death was afar off from Mina, but Mina had known differently. She had pleaded for a certain comfort, and Jonathan, wonderful Jonathan, had complied.
Mina opened the book to the page.
The Order for the Burial of the Dead.
She could still hear Jonathan’s voice quavering:
“I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”
So bizarre. How many people got to attend their own funeral?
But Mina had been right: it had provided comfort, and not just to her, but to all who heard it. They were not as full of despair, so full of dread after. It had given them the strength to go on and rise above their own pessimistic gazes.
She returned the book to its place.
A common book with a most uncommon purpose.
Rating: Gen
Fandom: Dracula - original Stoker text
Length: 400
Characters: Mina Harker
Also for: my GWYO prompt: pessimism
Summary: Mina remembers her unusual request before she and the others traveled to confront the Count for the last time.
Mina slid her finger along the spine of the book. In many ways, it was much like any other volume in their library. Indeed, even the title contained the word ‘Common.’
But there was nothing common about Mina’s memory of this book. She remembered she had been beyond pessimistic; she had been mad with despair. She had forced her husband and her friends to pledge to destroy her if the sickness which she had already felt taking hold of her should consume her entirely. She made them vow to kill her if she put herself in league with their enemy, with the one who was so bent on consumption and violent conscription.
Mina’s outlook had been so bleak, so distraught. Nothing could’ve assured her of a bright end to that dismal adventure, that battle against a fiend who had taken the life of her beloved friend Lucy and almost claimed her beloved Jonathan, too, and who knew how many others. The battle had to be fought, but defeat seemed all but inevitable given the otherworldly cunning, power, and greed which was housed in the Count.
She’d asked them to take her life. Well, to be more precise, she’d asked them to eliminate her existence if that existence became a threat to life.
Oh, how it had pained her to make the request and how it had pained them to hear it. And she’d asked them, Jonathan in particular, this one more favour.
Jonathan had protested, had said death was afar off from Mina, but Mina had known differently. She had pleaded for a certain comfort, and Jonathan, wonderful Jonathan, had complied.
Mina opened the book to the page.
The Order for the Burial of the Dead.
She could still hear Jonathan’s voice quavering:
“I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”
So bizarre. How many people got to attend their own funeral?
But Mina had been right: it had provided comfort, and not just to her, but to all who heard it. They were not as full of despair, so full of dread after. It had given them the strength to go on and rise above their own pessimistic gazes.
She returned the book to its place.
A common book with a most uncommon purpose.
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