Chapter 15
An Answer To Dreams
Her monster cradles her gently and while holding her head they say, "Mother". Prometheus looks on her dying body with harmless curiosity. She thinks as she feels her creation hold her by her shoulder with their other hand, "The torture that I must have a moment to prepare myself for the prime evil horrors is true justice for my crimes. It was impudent to even persist in chase with the endurance of what I have known to be its impenetrable spirit."
Prometheus asks, "Are you Victoria? The master of the castle in Germany? I have come a long way to find you." Victoria can barely react though within her self awareness she in not without alarm to be asked a question by her creation.
"I am," She replies with much struggle, "I am… she. Victoria. I was once the master of a house in the south of Germany. Is there...n-n-n… no malice? Y-y-you are here… to enact… revenge. Are you not?"
With a calm conduct they reply, "Any expectations of malicious intent are found solely within ones imagination therefore are placed upon me without positiveness."
Victoria self reflects in her thoughts, "Is this my creature? The blood soaked titan from whence I saw what was like lightning glow within its blood and tremble in its hands? Where is thous carried dread sentencing for the wretched human crime of meddling with the realm of creation between gods and man? Their voice alone is baffling like music etched with raw emotion that brings my heart to tears as they speak refined and dignified with an elegant opinion. It is more. It is alive."
"Victoria," Prometheus says, "I have known you in my dreams; a face that I saw in the fires to which I was born in. I have seen you in a thousand dreams gone unexplained. I have learned much of the world, through the comfort of books and have named you in comparison to those literature's that taught me. By those standards you resemble the mother. Are you my creator? In all these terrains of the world's map is their anything that holds me in connection to you?"
A tear like drip falls from the corner of her eye as she fights to nod "yes". Prometheus is overcome with a weeping joy. "I have wanted for more than three thousand days to know you. To be in your presence and learn what will I was made for. I have long ago decided who I want to be. There is no longer a part of who I am that you can influence to reflect the parts of you. Know, and know from thy stance your knowing is from thy good will despite my abandonment by you. Know, that I am not a long forgotten shred of what was once human. I am a forgotten person. I am loving. I am loved. I am compassionate. I am good. I am not a monster. Thus I am also not without remorse and regret as there is an illness within me that dictates at the inescapable whims of nature. Powerless, there is no controlling it. You are my creator? Should I call you demon? For why else would a good soul abandon a child and leave them to die? Are you void of love? Furthermore are you void of love for me? Be it that there may be no validity to these notions, propose it is a wrong thought and you are merited to dream in an idols form. Provide evidence that I was not made to be ones property but in truth a wanted child. Give me a name. Name me as thous own wanted, loved thing! It is what I deserve. For I am no creature, nor monster. I am a person."
She sees now she has wasted so much time running from her regrets. Victoria Frankenstein sheds a tear and after a struggle to muster words she raises her hand, reaching to rest her palm upon their cheek but with her strength fading she falls short. Her creation leans closer and rests their face in her palm as she then caress their cheek with her thumb. Laying on the floor beside Prometheus she can see her journal. She must have knocked it off the desk when she fell.
She reaches for it. Prometheus deduces that she wants to pick it up and they hand it to her. There is no thought and feeling that is without the knowledge that she will soon be met with her demise and Victoria sees the ripples of her actions, the good of her father's name and her last chance to do right by him and do right by the life of her creation. Victoria pushes her journal into their chest and says, "You… you are of the family name Frankenstein. You were wanted... in your creation. Your… n-n-name... is… Frankenstein. You were wanted. You are loved."
She remarks to herself within her thoughts for her lips are too weak to speak, "I was wrong to allow my fears' dominance over my dreams. I have wasted my remaining years selfish and hard-hearted where I could have seen that small chamber of happiness once again. Now is no time to make a shallow artifice appear as a dilemma. In death all is without dilemma. Instead there is a parallel of joy and misery in knowing the success of reviving life that is evident in a healthy and promising child, and being too late to know of it."
She wipes away the tears Prometheus sheds in being shaken with fulfillment. Finding the beauty in good nature of their long sought maker. Victoria says, "Find it. Within my journal… find the answers you seek. In my instruction you may… fall in love with mercy. Learn from me… how dangerous is the neglect of even one child. My choices would be what punished me. By my conscience mistake you were bound to be ruled with what nature demands."
Her eyes slightly roll back as she grows weaker and she fights to keep consciousness. All her words become faint. With the energy she gathers she says as clearly as she can while looking into their celestial eyes, "You are an impossible possibility. The universe is a raging rapid that overtakes us all. Yet… here you are. My brilliant child. The universe, stilling the waters of all its moving parts… for you… to be here."
It is with the last of all her strength she tell them ahead of fainting, "There are so many apologies you did not receive. Ones the child in you deserves and what you have become are owed. I must leave you now but not without what you are owed. I am sorry. My impossible child. I am sorry for my mistakes where you were made to bear misfortune. You will come to see the hardest thing to find in this world is kindness. Make more of it for those who need see it exists for themselves."
"Mother?" Prometheus says as Victoria closes her eyes. "Mother why did you make me?"
But there is no answer. For a moment she opens her eyes and the foggy sheen has left and for the first time she lays her sight upon her creation's eyes with clarity. Her thoughts evoked would be the answer if she could find the strength to speak.
Her voice echoes the walls of her mind, "Why were you made? I could not bare it to go on in this life without seeing you again. Without seeing those perfect familiar eyes again. My brilliant child."
As she re-closes her eyes never to reopen them she can feel her fears resign. The gentle cradle of her creation holding her head and body close in lament. The doses of sleep weigh heavy and the cold slows what beating life she has left. Abandoning ambition and submitting her spirit's flame.
There is an echoless abyss where she conveys her last thoughts speaking to herself, "My heart is so tired. I feel my heart as its strength stops. I feel no pain and I did not anticipate a painless departure. It is more like a sensation of being a child again. I am a child again. I can see it so vividly. I can feel it like it's happening. Reliving a moment I know true to be of my past but I feel it consciously as though it is happening now. I am a child, falling asleep at the window nook of my childhood home in England. I can feel that heavy exhaustion steal my power and weigh down my eyelids. More than a familiar place, it is one and the same. It is just like an evening where I had dozed off against the window in the library. As I lay there drifting further into slumber I feel the firm arms of my father as he carefully lifts me up. I know he means to carry me through the house to lay me down in my bed. As we pass through the hallways I can smell each candles' smoke when he blows out their flame as we pass. I hear the soles of his shoes tap the wood boarded floors. The creak in each step as we ascend the stairs. I feel me rest my head against his chest as I wrap my thin arms around his shoulders. As we enter my bedroom I feel a pleasant draft coming from my open window. A grateful emotion gently blankets me knowing that a loving, caring soul such as he is taking my tired burden off of me. Safely carrying me to a peaceful rest. I thank my father but my words sound far away barely to be heard, I thank him for everything he's done. He lowers me down with a cautionary handling as though I was a fragile egg. He overexerts himself to see that I am laid down softly. While I lay there suspended in a painless bed of comfort I feel him still there caressing my hair for the last time. Before I drift off into that void of unconscious darkness I hear the deepness of his kind voice softly say, "Dream now."
Prometheus holds Victoria's lifeless body. Cradling her close while brushing her hair back. In the frozen dead shell of the ship the wind of the Arctic tundra seems too large as it whistles outside. Prometheus weeps for what wishes there can no longer be. The answers they still seek. The want that still resides within them. They cry and that is the pain Prometheus can feel as they are subjected to the unrelenting whiteness of the room. There is a beating heart underneath their chest and it yearns for wounds of it's young self. Those moments alone from when they first opened their eyes and began to be alive echo throughout their being. They come upon a lonely age that leaves them feeling hollow. A spiritual fear. The wild wind makes the ships wood bramble. With time Prometheus ruminates in their lament, "Their is a hollowness as barren as abandoned catacombs to wonder what small corners I may ever find again where love will welcome me. What kindness there may have been of her to bestow on what child she thought of me to be. A kindness of her I can no longer know. Surely I must accept this as a punishment with integrity. What life is more deserving than that to be in the mud with the filth casted out. I am no rabid dog, an animal, fighting to survive and acting as though I've never known the love of a mother. I am willing to be punished for my crimes. Though there is a timelessness in me. No older do I feel nor decline of vitality. Somehow I know that time will wash over me like the passing of rain and I may remain paying for my atrocities in morality. No urgencies or treating time as though fickle and short. Therefore I cannot allow in of myself to bear resemblance to the monster nature makes of me. There are no eyes that will set on me and see what lives of naturalness. Earthy be my flesh and my touch as cold as clay. Grotesque and abnormal, to be the embodiment of all the worlds fears. Victoria… what kindness more was there of you. What more kindness will I find?"
There is still so much more they wanted and they can feel it now as any hope to know the nurture their young self needed is snuffed out. The time and the effort to reconcile is positively an impossible eventuality. Those may be what the tears are for, not losing someone they hardly knew, but knowing there will always be a part of themselves that now can never be whole. What dreams must end.
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End of Book 1: Victoria Frankenstein
A physical copy will be available to purchase October 2025.
The Dread Legacies series will continue in "Book 2: Son of the Dragon" We will begin posting chapters February 17th.
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